Two words for this: practical technology! Yesterday, I had come from a get together in a room with over 3,000 people all of whom spoke English, Spanish and the vernacular - Filipino (Philippines). Here’s the thing: the get together was with someone who spoke Italian and very little English.
A week before the get together, the organizers announced that all attendees should bring in mobile phones with FM radio built into the hardware and should tune in during the get together to various stations for English, Spanish and the local dialect real time translations. Here’s another great example of how everyday personal technology can be applied to what could have been a logistical nightmare. Although there were FM radios stationed outside the conference hall, I did notice a great number of folks toting Nokia mobile phones since most of the fairly recent models all have FM radio capability.
So there it was. We were tuned in to a translator giving real time translations to all three languages of the one hour get together.
(Rather funny how during the “test run” the translator would say, “if you hear me, please nod your head” and a sea of 3,000 people would simultaneously nod — how’s that for a flashmob concept!!)
Tags: conferences, crowds, earphones, FM radio, Nokia, technology
