Mixpool, Inc.

www.mixpool.com

1. A brief overview / description of what your product or service is.

Info Genie is an automated question answering system that uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to instantly answer questions that attendees typically have about an event. It does this without any human assistance. Unlike search engine technology, Info Genie produces answers rather than a list of documents. Because it produces answers to event-related questions based on data supplied by event organizers the answers can be expected to be reliable.

Because it is available on all the leading mobile platforms, we regard it as putting an information booth in the palm of event attendees.

How Info Genie works: It creates a syntactic and semantic analysis of the question and, based on this analysis, creates a database query on the fly, executes the query on relevant databases, and produces an answer in English based on the results returned by the database.

Thus, Info Genie can answer questions it has never encountered before.
 

Attendees have many ways to browse information including websites, show guides, and mobile apps. Attendees have to search for answers to their questions in these repositories. However, the process of searching for answers in these sources is cumbersome, especially when navigating the show floor. As a consequence, many questions are either not asked or do not get answered.

An automated question answering system on the other hand produces information in response to a request and is custom-prepared for that request. It is designed for solving specific problems. With Info Genie users don’t have to search or browse for answers.

When attendees have questions, Info Genie responds with just the information they need.
Give attendees a question answering system and you are bound to get a lot more questions.
This has the added advantage of giving event organizers insight into the concerns and interests of attendees.
 

Info Genie is truly unique. First, it provides answers to questions, unlike search engines which produce a list of documents. Second, it can provide answers to questions it has never encountered before, unlike programs that return answers from FAQ lists. It can do this because it has the intelligence to “understand” questions and figure out just where to seek the information to answer a question.

Third, users can ask it questions in ordinary English just the way one human would ask the question to another human, unlike programs that use forms (with pre-selected categories) to create questions. Info Genie does its magic by creating an understanding of a question to a precise enough degree to generate the correct database (SQL) query. It allows ANY user to get the sort of answers from data that currently only database experts can. It thus truly empowers the user.

The goal of Info Genie is to provide event participants with the information they need to fulfill their event-related goals more effectively. Thus, the impact we aim to have on the event industry is to create a more satisfying experience for all event participants. Info Genie makes it easier for event participants to get the information to determine which connections, exhibits, activities, etc., are the “right” ones for them. We believe that Info Genie will change the way people retrieve information at events.

Info Genie can generate various types of reports based on the questions asked. Event organizers can use this feedback to get a very accurate gauge of the interests and concerns of their attendees. This feedback can be used by event organizers to improve their events. This is another way in which Info Genie can help the event industry.

We have implemented a fully functioning demo of Info Genie that answers questions about a sample trade show we have created. This version of Info Genie can also answer questions about restaurants and bars in the neighborhoods surrounding the Jacob Javits Center and Times Square in New York City.

Our tests on this version of Info Genie shows that it is highly successful in correctly interpreting the questions posed to it and correctly answering the questions when it has access to the relevant information. When Info Genie is uncertain about its interpretation of a question and has to guess the interpretation it always informs the user about this. We are very pleased with the performance of Info Genie. Unfortunately, we have not had the opportunity thus far to deploy Info Genie in a real show.

We offer Info Genie as SaaS (software as a service). There is an initial fee for integration with a specific event. This can range from US $5000 to US $10,000 depending on how many different types information are to be included in an implementation of Info Genie and the complexities involved in making this information accessible to Info Genie .

Additionally, we charge a small fee (US $0.05, most likely) for each question posed to Info Genie. Thus, the expense involved in deploying Info Genie for an event is directly proportional to how much it has been used (and how useful it has been found to be) at that event.

Info Genie provides a unique sponsorship opportunity. Indeed, it is possible to have each Info Genie answer sponsored by a company. Thus, we expect the cost of deploying it will be more than offset by sponsorship revenues.

Over the past two years, we have attended several meeting and events to gain insight into the sorts of questions attendees are likely to ask and how they try to find answers to these questions. Additionally, we have spoken with many industry insiders who have been involved in different areas of the events industry to get their reactions to Info Genie.

Their enthusiastic response and our own observations have convinced us that there is a great need for a product like Info Genie. Everyone has been able to agree that attendees have many questions at the show and don't always have someone at hand to provide an answer. Furthermore, everyone has been able to relate to our stories about how difficult it is to search for information in a printed show guide while navigating the show floor.

A question answering system by its very nature can always be enhanced. We plan the following enhancements to Info Genie in the coming years: Cover more types of questions (conditional, compound, negative questions); Allow for follow-up questions which can include pronouns; Cover more types of information (more entertainment possibilities, shopping, transportation, hotels, etc.); integration with outside sources of information such as CRM systems and information services such as Dun and Bradstreet.

Thus, in the near future Info Genie will be able to answer a question such as, “Which companies from China in the electronics industry with ISO certification are going to be at this event and what have our
interactions been with any of them in the past.” We think this will be really, really cool.

We invite the judges to try a demo of Info Genie, which can be accessed at http://mrs.dev.mixpool.com/info_genie_demo/

The demo answers questions about a sample show we have created, which can be accessed at http://mrs.dev.mixpool.com