To app or not to app? To use VR or AR? To employ a chatbot or a robot? With technology advancing at warp speeds, it’s no easy task for meeting planners to keep up with it all, let alone make sense of how it can best add value to their events and, most importantly nowadays, drive engagement.
Stepping out of their comfort zones and conquering their fear of the unknown is key for planners to understand how event tech can work to their advantage, according to Tahira Endean, event producer for #BCTECH Summit in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“Planners everywhere are losing their fear and embracing digital, mobile, cloud-based solutions across every area of both planning and meeting, creating more interaction, connection and engagement with the tools now available to us,” Endean said. “It means we have to understand the possibilities from our basic planning tools and the reams of data they can produce for us, to facial recognition and biometric tech and how this is impacting access and security, and the fun we have available to us with everything from mixed reality to gaming to robot bartenders and of course, the data coming from the devices everyone carries. Then we need to understand that data available to create even stronger, more personalized events.”
Endean was prominently present during IMEX America 2017 in Las Vegas, which offered an Event Tech Track for attendees that delved into nearly every trend, fad, slick new tool and crystal ball of the event tech of the future. Endean led several “Event Tech and a Tour” sessions at IMEX, escorting 15 planners to companies that are blazing new tech trails.
“Each of the companies we visited had something new,” she said. “Groups360 has a very interesting model for sourcing hotel rooms and rates. Evenium has great new visualization methodology that is audience-controlled. Expo Logic and the partners in their booth have very interesting facial recognition technology for tradeshows and conferences. Attendify has a new way to integrate and analyze data from their platform and others the events are using in one place with easy visualizations.”
Evenium, an event technology company that is utilized worldwide, did an IMEX presentation entitled “New Technology for Impactful and Decisive Meetings.” Current best technology under the presentation included visual collaboration products, for which the company offers Evenium Net, an event registration and promotion system, integrated with its highly intuitive mobile app, ConnexMe, which has unique features around networking and visual collaboration.
Evenium predicts the future of event tech holds everything from artificial intelligence (AI) to augmented reality to data that informs event experiences from wearables and cameras that detect emotions and body language.
There’s a Bot for That
“In 2018, AI-powered conversational interfaces will be a big trend, and we will bring that to the market,” said Eric Amram, CEO of Evenium. “You know chatbots are the hottest thing on the market in terms of AI—you have things like Amazon Echo and Siri. The idea is to transfer that capability into meetings, so for example, with ConnexMe, you can ask, ‘What did Paul say at the conference about driverless cars the other day?’”
Meanwhile, Endean was one of the judges for #IMEXpitch, in which five tech startups competed. A messaging platform company named Sciens.io won, particularly for its Event Bot, which offers event app messaging features in a text messaging experience.
“There were five startups competing—a networking technology, an influencer marketing technology and others like Sciens.io,” she said. “Everything presented was excellent, but if you look at the things that are going to be implemented rapidly now, I think the next big things are the integrators—integrating our data on a platform we can analyze—and Freeman and Attendify have come out with new ones, and chatbots. Look at South by Southwest. Last year they said they answered 56,000 attendee questions by chatbot rather than via a human.”
Meanwhile, Endean says nearly everything planners do is now based in the cloud.
“We’ll save hundreds of hours just by utilizing one cloud-based platform,” she added, citing Attendease as one example.
PageBreakNewer cloud-based companies making an “event tech deck” and integration easier is also one of the 2018 tech trend predictions by Corbin Ball, who was a panelist on Meetings Today’s IMEX America On Location webinar: From Wow! to Need Now! Cutting-Edge Event Trends. Ball recently published the article, “Eight Meetings Tech Trends to Watch for 2018.”
“Consortiums of newer cloud-based event technology companies are working together to share data and work as if they are a single platform,” he said, citing examples such as Event Tech Tribe, a consortium of five companies: Swoogo (event registration); Hubb (abstract collection/exhibitor management/scheduling/task management); Glisser (audience polling and engagement); TRC (on-site event technology); Event OPS (event logistics); and InsightXM (data analytics and marketing).
The (Augmented) Real Thing
Ball also envisions the popularity of chatbots in a text-based format continuing into 2018 as well as augmented reality (AR) as a wayfinding tool during events. Augmented reality superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, typically through a mobile phone camera but eventually will become available in updated versions of AR glasses, according to Ball, who added that Apple’s iOS11 and the iPhone X will have substantial advances in AR.
Hector Venegas, managing director of Engaging Meetings, with offices in Germany and Denmark, presented a session on AR at IMEX America. He believes AR is one of the hottest trends around and one of the best ways to enrich the experience for attendees—beyond just wayfinding.
“With any event, you have to make sure the technology you use isn’t a gimmick and that it adds to the value and the experience for all of the stakeholders, including the attendee,” Venegas said, explaining that one of his most successful implementations of augmented reality was during a recent pharmaceutical conference in Vienna with 350 attendees who were experts in the field of diabetes.
“We presented the attendees with devices, in this case iPads, and for example, we had an insulin pen. They could put the device over the insulin pen and scan it so three different AR parts popped up to teach them about how it is built and its unique features,” he said. “We also had presentations where they could use their devices in real time to comment via AR, and during breaks there were stations where they could scan a leaf, for example, and a question would pop up as part of a quiz so they could get points for their team if they answered correctly. It was a great way to utilize AR and enhance the learning aspect of the event to achieve the end goal.”
Engaging Meetings partnered with ConsensusOnline for the AR product.
Reaching New Heights
Meanwhile, employing drones at events has been a trend for a few years now, but companies are always creating unique new ways to make them part of the attendee engagement process.
John Chen, CEO and The Big Kid at Geoteaming in Seattle, as well as a panelist for our On Location webinar at IMEX America, began using drones in the company’s programs one year ago with great success.
It’s not only a matter of capturing and documenting the event from an aerial perspective (often with tremendous views), but aiming to tell a story about the event and actively involve attendees as part of “the performance.” Chen said that starts with getting them excited to be filmed by a drone and encouraging them to react, for example, by saying the company’s name or the name of the event in unison as the drone ascends over the crowd and the venue.
“It’s a ‘dronie’ instead of a selfie, and attendees love it,” Chen said. “When we produce a video and utilize those drone shots, it becomes much more interesting and shareable on social.”
Chen has also been brainstorming new ways to use drones through teambuilding. One idea is to create small teams to complete as many tasks as possible using a drone, possibly incorporating GPS tracking.
“The key thing is that you have to work together—someone is the map person, someone is the tactical person, etc.—but you’re all concentrating on the drone,” he said. “Another idea would be to have a team produce a 90-second video using a drone that would likely go viral internally and become part of the company culture. There are so many possibilities.”
