Developments in meetings technology, everything from mobile event apps to beacons and live streaming, are revolutionizing the way planners are surmounting physical barriers and delivering personalized and interactive experiences at conferences and tradeshows.
“I’ve been watching meetings technology for 19 years now and I’ve never seen a more exciting time,” said meetings tech consultant Corbin Ball of Corbin Ball Associates. “The sky’s the limit on how you can use it to make improvements to your meeting even while it’s in progress.”
Through such tools as beacon technology and mobile event apps, planners are gaining real-time access to attendee behavior and preferences, information that can be used to make on-the-spot changes to programs and help attendees at even the largest events find the content and networking opportunities most relevant to their needs, according to Ball.
“Meetings were once the black hole of data management—there were surveys afterward, but we were flying blind while the meeting was taking place,” he said. “Now every touch on a mobile event app can be tracked, scored and rated.”
South by Southwest
As a prime example of how planners are using technology to improve the attendee experience, Ball pointed to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference, a 10-day annual event in Austin, Texas, that showcases the newest products and strategies in music, film and interactive technology. For organizers, a key challenge is enabling the 100,000-plus attendees to navigate their way through the 6,000 or so events taking place in more than 500 locations throughout the city, said Scott Wilcox, SXSW’s director of technology.
“Our goal is to leverage the best in mobile technology and data to help people get the most relevant and personalized experiences possible,” Wilcox said. “During peak times we may have 116 events on 24 topics happening simultaneously, plus dozens of artists performing on different stages. We look at how we can make those choices easier. It’s about creating a tech-enabled and seamless experience.”
To achieve this during the 2016 conference last March, Wilcox and his team worked with its mobile app provider, Eventbase, to develop SXSW Recommends, a feature in the app that suggests specific events for people to attend. The recommendations are based on criteria from the attendee’s profile, such as industry, interests and sessions they have favored in the past. It also takes note of the attendee’s real-time location and behavior based on GPS tracking and beacons placed around the venue.
The organizers also worked with technology provider RightRound to deploy 1,000 beacons, Bluetooth-enabled transmitters that connect with mobile devices, throughout the city. Through a combination of the beacons and the event app, SXSW was able to send 167,000 recommendations, some in advance and others as push notifications, when the app detected free time in an attendee’s schedule.
To ensure that attendees would have quick Internet access wherever they went, SXSW also had RightRound install some 11 miles of Ethernet cable and supply additional bandwidth in all the venues.
“Mobile carriers don’t always cover everything, so we had to bring in extra Wi-Fi support for all the venues,” Wilcox said. “People are now living in the physical and digital world simultaneously.”
For next year, SXSW organizers are looking at adding more data sources to the attendee profiles and enhancing the technology further to “create truly individualized and tailored experiences,” Wilcox said. “It’s about giving people the right information so they can make the right choices when they are ready to.”
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Experient’s eventBit
Terrence Donnelly, vice president of the meetings and tradeshow management firm Experient, is equally enthused about how mobile event apps and beacon technology are enabling organizers to track and gather behavioral data in real-time and use it to create better experiences for attendees at conferences and tradeshows.
“In the past, we were making assumptions about attendee preferences based on their demographics and survey questions, but now technology is showing us that their actual behavior can be quite different from those assumptions,” he said. “Now our clients can look at what sessions people are going to, what products and services they are actually interested in.”
Among the services Experient provides for tradeshows is its own beacon-embedded badge called eventBit, which pushes behavioral data to a cloud-based system for reporting and analysis. The data is used to provide attendees with information on products and sessions that match their interests, while giving exhibitors and show organizers data that is useful for tailoring interaction and content.
“In some cases, we’ve done pop-up events based on the data we’re collecting,” Donnelly said. “For example, if we see that one pavilion is drawing a lot of people, we can spin off a small event related to that product and invite those people to it. This is important because people now really want things that are tailored specifically for them.”
Going Hybrid
Hybrid meetings involving the use of virtual and streaming technologies are increasingly seen as a way to extend the reach of a face-to-face event both during and after the conference. Among planners finding this invaluable is Cynthia Bullock, director of meetings and events for Integrated Solutions and Services, a meeting planning and travel management company with clients in education and government sectors.
“With virtual technology you can open up a meeting to a wider audience and bring in speakers and presenters who otherwise couldn’t be there,” she said. “In one case, we were able to feature an exceptional keynote speaker who made his presentation from Costa Rica, using the location as an effective background.”
In another case, Bullock turned to virtual technology to stream sessions out to people who could not travel to a vital meeting because of a snowstorm. It also came in handy when a sought-after professor was unable to get to a meeting to lead an education session.
“We were able to show his presentation, and the participants got the credits they needed,” she said.
With interest in hybrid meetings on the rise, planners will find no shortage of virtual meetings technology vendors to partner with. Bullock advises doing some investigative work before choosing one.
“Some vendors can do everything they claim and more—and some cannot,” she said. “Find out what their experience is, get references and ask to see presentations of what they have already done. Your hotel may be able to suggest a good provider, and you can ask for recommendations from other planners.”
Equally important is to select a venue capable of handling the meeting’s virtual requirements.
“I always ask the venue for examples of what they have done,” Bullock said. “Will they allow you to bring in a third party that is an expert in the technology? If you need to stream things in from multiple classrooms, can they handle that?”
Planning an effective “virtual agenda” takes just as much thought as the face-to-face portion of the meeting, according to Ball.
“You can’t just put a camera in the back of the room and let it go,” he said. “You must provide specific content for the remote attendees. You should also have an MC who directs the information out to them and, if there is a live question and answer session, facilitate it to include them.”
Some companies have gone so far as to create several specific presentations for attendees in various locations. Ball noted that Cisco has reached global audiences in the tens of thousands by tailoring content to different “pods” of attendees.
“While the pods are also linked to the main meeting, Cisco provides facilitators to personalize the content for them and make sure they can get their questions asked,” he said.
