Wearable business networking solution aims to boost collaboration at events

While business events are great for networking, most attendees find it difficult to locate valuable contacts among hundreds or even thousands of conference attendees. Similarly, for organizers, it is challenging to find out the attendee demographics and preferences. To solve this issue, Limefy, an innovative technology company, has created a solution called LiGo, which aims to help attendees meet the right people at tradeshows and conferences.

The solution uses a combination of a wearable device and a smartphone app. LiGo devices light up whenever an acquaintance with a matching preference is in close proximity. For organizers, LiGo can help in showing the "hot" and "cold" zones of the show floor, interaction patterns, most discussed topics, trends, as well as attendee demographics and preferences. Limefy has an interesting tagline,  "Business networking you can wear".

To understand more about the technology, Dataquest caught up with Constantine Korovkin, Co-founder, Limefy, who shares with us the idea behind developing this technology.

Some edited excerpts:

Can you tell us a bit about Limefy and what led you to develop this solution?
We built LiGo after years of attending physical events for networking, learning, investor opportunities, and peer connection and leaving after having had very few meaningful conversations. We wanted to build a technology platform that would help people meaningfully connect and building enhanced relationships at conferences, tradeshows, and other physical venues.

So are events currently ineffective with regard to networking?
I think they are. Events are wonderful but rarely do people connect with others in a way that brings out their true affinities. Partially, it’s a culture problem but partially its being the existing technology solutions are non-intuitive and are not “of the moment.”

Has this solution being already deployed? What is the feedback you have received?
We are in pilot mode with several customers and all of them, to a one, have come to us and said that they know there is a huge problem in this space and that if this continues the future of the event space itself is doubtful since people do pay (in fees, in time, etc) to meet others and connect.

Do you feel that the wearable form factor is the right one for this scenario?
The wearable form factor for our solution is the right one, but wearable can mean many things. We believe strongly that one has to have both a smart-phone based app AND what we call “in the moment” technology that alerts us in a smart way when we are in the proximity of someone that matters.

Can you tell us more about other scenarios that Limefy can power?
With the data play and the various “needs” at events, we can power a whole host of commerce, content, community, and connection scenarios. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves yet so we want to nail the basics and then dream big!