CONFERENCING TECHNOLOGY FAIR IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

Introduction This RFI is intended to identify twenty-five (25) suppliers who would be able to demonstrate the latest conferencing technologies within the below areas of interest at UNOG's Conferencing Technology Fair in the Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland. Vendors responding to this RFI are requested to provide answers to the below questionnaire. Based on the received responses, UNOG will select twenty-five (25) suppliers who will be invited to showcase their goods and/or services during the Fair. Background The UNOG Division of Conference Management is organizing a one-day Conferencing Technology Fair. The Fair will be held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland on 16 January 2020 in parallel with a broader event on the future of conferencing in international organizations, to be attended by officials of the United Nations (UN), representatives of different international organizations in Geneva and beyond, as well as members of permanent missions to the UN. Purpose The purpose of the Fair is to inform the conference organizers, representatives of international organizations and delegates of the innovations in the sector by showcasing the latest products and solutions that support multi-stakeholder conferencing processes. Booths A maximum of twenty-five (25) exhibition booths will be made available for interested vendors to showcase their goods or services during the Fair. Exhibitors will be encouraged to set up their booths with interactive demonstrations showcasing their fields of expertise. Areas of interest for the Conferencing Technology Fair at UNOG: • Conferencing systems, remote participation solutions, interpretation platforms, including remote interpretation: platforms/systems for interactive conferencing events involving large numbers of participants, that support, including but not limited to, remote participation, videoconferencing, web-conferencing, interpreter-mediated communication (including remote interpretation), remote participants' collaboration, members’ voting, ability to identify the participants, simultaneous sound broadcast for multiple zones/rooms, screen projection of a speaker, integration with videoconferencing systems, recording, sharing documents and content, display of voting results as diagrams and documents on the general screen, embedded registration and identification of participants, recognition of participants in the automatic mode, less paper intensive/paperless work modes etc. • Speech recognition, live captioning, transcribing: tools/applications for automatic speech recognition that can convert speech to text for live captioning during a meeting or provide post-meeting transcripts. The tool/application needs to be speaker independent, allow adaptation for additional languages, be able to handle noise, unique pronunciations, non-native English accents. Of equal interest are such services as auto-summarization, audio-description, text-to-speech, captioning etc. (see also the section on accessibility solutions below). • Accessibility technologies for visual and hearing impairments: assistive and adaptive technologies for inclusive conferencing such as, for example, voice recognition software, braille tablets, refreshable braille displays, braille translation software, captioning/real-time transcription/speech-to-text systems (see also the section above), text-to-speech solutions, applications for converting speech into avatar sign language and vice versa, ideally supporting all the six official languages of the UN. • Machine translation systems: neural machine translation system supporting all the six or most of the languages of the UN, which can be adapted to specific domains dealt with by the UN by using training data from the same domain, and further improved by refining and adding to the domain-specific corpora. Such features as adaptability (to specific user style, and terminology of a specific domain) and interactivity (predicting alternative outputs based on the translator's input) would be an advantage. Ideally, the proposed environment would also support the revision of machine translation output, i.e. offer possibilities of bulk edits, concordance function etc. • VR, AR and immersive technologies: virtual, augmented and mixed reality solutions that can enable remote participation in meetings with a large number of participants in dispersed locations, simulate the interactive qualities of physical meetings and require minimal specialist hardware and low bandwidth; solutions to create immersive and interactive experiences for impactful storytelling, thematic presentations, digital artworks, venue replicas etc. to support advocacy and increase attendees' engagement. • Conferencing, networking, audience engagement apps: platforms/solutions to (re)create flexible and customizable multilingual apps/conference microsites for conferences and other meetings, offering, among other, such functionalities as participant registration and networking, event schedule, accessing lists of speakers and meeting documents, getting directions to meeting rooms, making changes to draft documents in real time, personalized meeting schedules, push notifications for changes, ad hoc events, alerts etc., news feeds, user polling, static maps, seating plans, collecting event analytics, integration with event website etc. Questionnaire Vendors responding to this RFI are kindly requested to answer the following questions (please ensure that questions 4, 5 (a), 6 (a), 7 (a) contain numberical answer only; for questions 2 and 3 please use additional pages to respond): 1. Please specify which of the six categories below your product/service relates to. Respondents should specify no more than one product or service in each of the six categories. a) ☐ Conferencing platforms/systems for interactive conferencing events involving large numbers of participants including remote participation solutions, interpretation platforms and remote interpretation. If you selected this category, please specify the name of the product/service in the field below and indicate which functionalities are applicable. Specify Product/ Service Name: _______________________________________ ☐ remote participation ☐ videoconferencing ☐ web-conferencing ☐ registration and identification of participants ☐ screen projection of speakers ☐ sharing documents and content with participants ☐ participant voting ☐ display live voting/polls results as diagrams on general screen ☐ video and sound recording ☐ supports simultaneous interpreter-mediated communication between participants ☐ remote interpretation ☐ sound and image quality as specified in ISO 20109:2016 and ISO 20108:2017 b) ☐ Speech recognition, live captioning, transcribing: tools/applications for automatic speech recognition that can convert speech to text for live captioning during a meeting or provide post-meeting transcripts If you selected this category, please specify the name of the product/service in the field below and indicate which functionalities are applicable. Specify Product/ Service Name:_______________________________________ ☐ speech to text for live captioning/ real-time transcription ☐ post meeting transcripts ☐ tool/application is speaker independent ☐ allows adaptation for additional languages ☐ adapts to background noise, unique pronunciations and non-native English accents ☐ auto-summarization ☐ audio-description ☐ text-to-speech Supports official languages of the UN: ☐ Arabic ☐ Chinese ☐ English ☐ French ☐ Russian ☐ Spanish c) ☐ Accessibility technologies for visual and hearing impairments: assistive and adaptive technologies for inclusive conferencing If you selected this category, please specify the name of the product/service in the field below and indicate which functionalities are applicable. Specify Product/ Service Name: _______________________________________ ☐ voice recognition ☐ braille tablets ☐ refreshable braille displays ☐ braille translation ☐ converting speech into avatar sign language ☐ converting avatar sign language into speech Supports official languages of the UN: ☐ Arabic ☐ Chinese ☐ English ☐ French ☐ Russian ☐ Spanish Other accessibility functionalities (please describe briefly below) d) ☐ Machine translation systems: neural machine translation system supporting all the six or most of the languages of the UN (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish) If you selected this category, please specify the name of the product/service in the field below and indicate which functionalities are applicable. Specify Product/ Service Name: _______________________________________ ☐ adaptable to specific domains by using training data from same domain ☐ adaptability (to specific user style and terminology of a specific domain) ☐ interactivity (predicting alternative outputs based on the translator's input) ☐ supports revision of machine translation output ☐ possibility of bulk edits ☐ concordance function Supports official languages of the UN: ☐ Arabic ☐ Chinese ☐ English ☐ French ☐ Russian ☐ Spanish e) ☐ VR, AR and immersive technologies: virtual and augmented reality solutions that can enable remote participation in meetings with a large number of participants If you selected this category, please specify the name of the product/service in the field below and indicate which functionalities are applicable. Specify Product/ Service Name: _______________________________________ ☐ provides participants with a real-time virtual/augmented reality meeting experience ☐ supports simultaneous virtual participation of participants in more than 50 locations ☐ supports simultaneous interpreter-mediated communication between participants ☐ supports equal participation and lateral interaction between all participants (rather than traditional presspecify-audience formats) ☐ requires minimal or no specialist hardware ☐ runs on low bandwidth ☐ supports immersive and interactive experiences for impactful storytelling f) ☐ Conferencing, networking, audience engagement apps: platforms/solutions to create flexible and customizable multilingual apps/conference microsites for conferences If you selected this category, please specify the name of the product/service in the field below and indicate which functionalities are applicable. Specify Product/ Service Name: _______________________________________ ☐ event schedule/ personalised schedule ☐ lists of speakers ☐ participant networking ☐ document sharing ☐ document editing ☐ push notifications for changes ☐ live polling ☐ seating plans ☐ interactive navigation ☐ multilingual user interface ☐ event analytics ☐ integration with event website ☐ supports one-way API (outward) ☐ supports two-way API (outward and inward) 2. What is unique about the product/service you are proposing to demo? What new approaches and technologies does it use? How does it represent a 'cutting edge' development in this field? (Max. 800 words) 3. Please describe the most impactful qualities of the product/ service you are proposing to demo. How has it improved the user experience of conferencing? How applicable is it to the multi-stakeholder conferencing processes in international organisations? (Max. 800 Words) 4. How many years has your organisation been providing products/services in this area? 5. a) How many client organisations are actively using the product/service you are proposing to demonstrate? b) Please list names of the client organisations that are actively using it 6. What % of annual revenue comes from products/services that are less than four years old? a) Has your organisation filed patents related to the products/services listed for demonstration? If yes, how many patents have been filed in total for the products/services listed? b) Please name the patent office and application for each patent filed. 7. Has your organisation won any innovation related awards? If so, please specify: a) The number of awards b) Name of the award(s) and name of the awarding body(ies) 8. Please provide electronic brochure/ video link to the product/ service you are proposing to demonstrate