My first day in Event Technology- What would I tell myself?
I was in Las Vegas this week with one of our new clients who is leveraging our new Saas Product. While in Las Vegas, I wanted to be efficient with my time so I set aside time to network with Senior Event Industry. I met a Senior Industry Leader who graciously agreed to sit down with me and give me his thoughts on the event industry in general and later more specifically about the technology landscape both present and future.
He lamented that he feels the current state of event technology we are currently experiencing is a lull and that nothing noteworthy has come onto the market since beacons hit the market less than ten years ago.
He was gracious enough to indulge me as I rapid fired questions at him some easy and some more targeted. He answered many and was smart to pass on a few. Ultimately we ended up talking about his longevity and changes he has seen in technology throughout the years. He mentioned again the fact there is not a lot of new technology that he feels is worth the burden of the vast amount of red tape that surrounds getting approval in today’s security and privacy driven environment. As we conversed, we settled on a conversation about what insight would you give yourself if you were just getting started in Event Technology.
Here are his responses as I understood them to be:
1. Know your audience. It all starts in knowing the attendee, the number of attendees at your event, industry and any other pertinent info. It all starts with knowing what their interests, ability, and knowledge
1a. If all else fails revert to #1. He went back to this item several times.
2. Understanding your event’s attendees can help you gain greater clarity as you go through the process of choosing the right technology platforms. Ask questions: What are you trying to accomplish? What are your critical deliverables to attendees that can lead you into a better view of technology utilization?
3. Keep it as simple as possible. If you want to implement technology set up a 5-year plan if the plan is to have these events on an annual basis. Year one may be the basics and each year you have setup improved technology to add to the conference/meeting.
4. Make it fun! Make it enjoyable for people.
5. Think outside of the box. Come up with crazy ideas and see what sticks. You may surprise yourself on what gets accepted. Nothing ventured nothing gained.
6. Don’t worry about being so different from other events. There are a lot of constraints such as a budget. If you can change or improve, then go ahead but do not get caught up in having to be different, just for the sake of being different.
7. Make sure you look back after you have gone through these items to ensure they align to the event goal you initially set out to accomplish.
8. Make sure you