Actual article date: Nov 18, 2014

Let’s talk about personal data protection. The personal data protection of all the attendees at your event.

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What is personal data?

Personal data is any information that identifies a person. The challenge with data protection is sharing data while protecting personally identifiable information of your customers.

Recently, the Data Protection Act 2012 (PDPA), which governs the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data, has become a hot topic with Singaporean companies. However it must be understood that such laws have already been in place in many locations such as the EU, UK, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, for many years.

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How does it affect the events industry?

Although Personal Data Protection Acts in different regions might make operations involving data a challenge, these regulations mostly adopt a pragmatic approach that aim to achieve appropriate balance between the need to protect individuals and the need for organisations to collect, use, or disclose data.

What implications does this have for us in the events industry? Well, no more sending the full attendee lists to your delegates, exhibitors, sponsors or any stakeholders unless prior consent from the individuals have been given. While that may seem easy, more often than not, these individuals do not want to share their personal data with people they do not know.

This results in event stakeholders not obtaining the relevant, quality contacts they seek efficiently. Attendees will have to attend events and exchange business cards with many more people to secure the same number, or even less, relevant ones. With these attendees going to events to procure relevant business contacts to meet their event ROI, event organisers will lose a big opportunity to provide this value proposition.

In short, any event tool you use should not:

1. Make your attendees’ information publicly available
2. The use of the attendees’ data should not be utilised for other purposes other than what is being agreed between your event and their participation
3. Most importantly, the data clauses that your attendees adhere by must be made sufficiently visible on their agreement to adhere to your privacy clauses (a checkbox may not suffice in certain locations).

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What can we do then?

With the evolving landscape of data protection, organisers have to move away from simply providing a list of delegates in exchange for sponsorship/exhibiting and instead, set up the best platform for these stakeholders to achieve their ROIs at your event. To facilitate the latter, organisers can create specialised meetings sessions to allow the stakeholders to meet relevant prospects at your event.

One of the best way is of course to implement a business matching platform and service at your event. This specifically address the need for scheduling meetings at your event without the need to reveal private information. With the correct elements that fulfill the criteria of Data Protection Acts, organisers can continue to provide value to their attendees via quality networking. Here are some elements of what you need to look for in a business matching platform to meet the requirements of data protection.

Your business matching platform should:

1. Show attendees that are present at the event over a private platform that can only be accessed by registered attendees
2. Show attendees’ profiles without revealing private information
3. Have an opt out option in cases where attendees choose not to participate in business matching

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