Digital voting debuts at Loeries
The Loerie Awards this year set a world-first by becoming the first awards to use an innovative digital writing system during its voting process. The digital or 'magic' pens (as they were referred to by the judges) were used to collate all of the voting criteria during the intensive week-long judging process. The writing system - which was developed by local printing solution specialists Lithotech and looks to revolutionise a number of local industries, including health and insurance - was also making its South African data capturing debut.
This year, instead of the traditional pen and paper, judges in the prestigious creative excellence awards were armed with digital versions, tailored for instant downloads and allowing for real-time vote counting.
Loeries judge and Creative Circle chairman, Alistair King, said, "Using the digital pen streamlined the voting process by shortening the waiting time for results between rounds, cutting out the irritation factor. It's also reassuring to know the results will be more accurate due to the elimination of human error. It just made the whole judging process very slick."
Andrew Human, MD of The Loerie Awards, said, "This is a real global first in an awards voting process. The advantage of the digital writing solution goes beyond the data capturing service, extending to a digital paper trail for auditing purposes which made the system infinitely more reliable. We're looking forward to establishing a long relationship with Lithotech and evolving the voting system in the coming years."
Developed in Sweden four years ago, digital writing has been widely adopted in Europe and the rest of the world. Since then digital writing technology has evolved quickly, with cellular and Bluetooth technology enabling the direct capture of data from remote locations with no more than a digital pen, a cellphone and digital paper.
"Having participated as a regular sponsor of the awards, we're proud to be playing an integral part this year by facilitating the voting process for the 2006 finalists. The Loeries provided us with the opportunity of facilitating the counting of thousands of entries, all needing to be viewed by specialist panels of over 80 judges - a demanding logistics-intensive test run before introducing our service nationally," said Lithotech Group marketing manager, David Macfarlane.
So how does the technology actually work?
Using a digital pen, digital writing technology automatically converts handwriting into digital format, verifies it and makes it available to backend systems such as customer relationship management (CRM).
The secret to the data capturing is in the digital forms, which Lithotech has the exclusive licence to produce locally. "Each page has a unique pattern which is embedded in the form, just like DNA or a fingerprint. When a digital pen moves across a form it analyses the pattern, verifying exactly where it is on the page and which unique page is being used. Using optical character recognition (OCR) software, the handwriting is then interpreted and transferred to the backend system," said Macfarlane.
The pens have a rechargeable battery and can store 1MB of data, tailored for approximately 47 pages. This technology is not to be confused with digital writing equipment currently available to consumers at computer stores which has no intelligence behind it.
