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Event planners are in the business of looking ahead and being prepared for whatever comes their way. It’s what they do. But what’s also important is finding the right tools to help make their jobs easier — by keeping track of the latest technology. From hybrid platforms to AI personalization, innovations like these are transforming the industry.

What Qualifies as Event Technology?

Event technology refers to any software, app or other digital tool that helps you plan, run and/or evaluate events, whether they are in-person, virtual or hybrid. Examples include:

• Wearable technology – Devices such as smart badges, wristbands and smartwatches that are designed to provide tech-based functionality
• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags– Electronic devices that use computer chips to track commodities and other things, for use in cashless and paperless payment systems
• Event apps – Includes maps, schedulers, QR codes and livestreams
• All-in-one event software – Tech that can streamline event planning by providing a single platform for registration, ticketing, marketing and communication

Why New Technology Adoption Is Low Among Planners

While many independent planners are early adopters of event technology, barriers can come into play when working in a corporate role, such as security and compatibility issues. Of course, the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality also often explains why planners don’t commit to new technology.

“Historically there’s been a lot of manual processes and tasks that, for whatever reason, have been very slow to embrace technology,” says executive consultant and industry influencer Kevin Iwamoto, GLP, GTP, who is based in San Francisco and has more than 35 years of experience with business travel, meetings and events. “There are some valid reasons, but there are also some real legacy reasons as to why are you still doing things like that when you don’t have to. So, it’s really a matter of event planners and event companies trying to learn to be a lot more efficient with their resources and their budget allocation.”

AI, of course, is at the forefront of most of the newest event technology, and for many independent and corporate planners, it’s the most intimidating aspect. It’s also the biggest adoption risk.

“The larger the company, the more risk-averse they are, for very understandable reasons,” Iwamoto says. “I totally get it, because security is so important and so many of them who have had rigorous security checks and processes in place have been hacked. So, they understand the value of it; they understand it can make life easier.” But, he says, they don’t feel like it’s worth the huge security risks.

Why It’s Important to Adopt the Newest Event Technology

It’s vital to stay up to date on the latest event planning tools. As the old saying goes: “Adapt or be left behind.”

According to Johanna Walsh, vice president of event production at Encore Global in Schiller, IL, utilizing the latest technology isn’t just for the planner’s benefit — event and conference attendees are demanding it as well. But they’re not just looking for more efficiency. They’re seeking more exciting and interactive presentations, better graphics and video capabilities and other visual and audio upgrades.

Encore is an event planning and management company that is at the forefront of the industry, offering event creative, production and technology solutions to more than 2,100 venues worldwide.

“We’ve got a lot of different factors that I think are colliding at once,” Walsh says. “During Covid, in the virtual event environment, we introduced really gorgeous onscreen graphics, getting used to things like wipes, lower thirds — more complex things that happen onscreen that planners invested in. When we came out of the virtual environment, there was still such an appetite to figure out how to make sure that was brought to life in the real-world environment.”

Comparing it to a music festival, she goes on to say that there’s a level of competition for attention when people gather in person now, due to shorter attention spans from social media and other online activities. There’s a need for more dynamic shows and general sessions. Plus, Walsh says that the ROI is an important factor for planners when it comes to learning development and attendee engagement, so creating a more immersive environment is important.

The Latest Tools for Increasing Engagement 

For those who are willing to brave the waters of AI and other new event technology tools, the pros often outweigh the cons, as they give planners a more streamlined workflow, improved user experience and increased audience engagement, among other benefits.

Nick Borelli is the director of marketing at Zenus, a video-based, facial-analysis solutions company in Austin, TX. His firm captures impressions, demographics, dwell time and positive sentiment in physical and virtual environments, all without invading attendees’ privacy. Borelli says it’s a pivot away from facial recognition as it doesn’t identify people’s faces — it simply measures and analyzes facial expressions within a crowd simultaneously based on AI training, recording and timestamping any shifts in emotion at any given moment during a presentation.

“We can watch a presentation and we can watch energy levels of audiences crest and fall,” Borelli says. “The major use case is in exhibitor booths for reporting. So the organizer can give reports to exhibitors saying how many impressions their booth got, the average dwell rates and the averages of sentiment. And then demographics as well.”

Borelli says that the data can be accessed in real time or post-event, and it can be used for A/B testing. “You could be able to see that we’ve got a bad line over here, people are not having a good time, and address that accordingly,” he says. Or you could make adjustments in the post-conference meetings.

Borelli emphasizes that this all occurs without collecting personal information — no video, no photos.

He also notes there are other technologies that help with attendee engagement. The Singapore-based company Gevme offers a number of solutions through its platform, including its Livestream — an onsite, in-person digital screen that displays event content such as speakers, the agenda, exhibitors and more, all integrated with the organizer’s content. The company also provides other tools. For example, it offers an array of “mobile mini-experiences,” such as an AI concierge to answer FAQ, as well as games including Treasure Hunt and Spin the Wheel.

 The Rise of LED Technology

While AI is all the rage, other technologies are also helping to improve attendee engagement. LED, for example, saw a surge in popularity during the pandemic. However, while it’s incredibly customizable, LED also requires a lot more time to assemble, which necessitates more investment in the backend systems, according to Jason Satterfield, vice president of asset management and warehouse operations at Encore. It’s a technology that’s been around for decades but is now being used in new, subtle ways within the event planning space. For example, changing content on LED banners is now a much quicker, more flexible process, giving planners ways to upload a more diverse variety of messaging, video and graphics.

“These are all things that every meeting planner has always wanted, but it’s gone on hyperdrive as a result of the pandemic,” says Satterfield. “People got comfortable interacting with technology in a way they were not comfortable with pre-Covid. That comfort is now permeating into the meeting planning world, where they’re more comfortable with technology and they want to see what they see at home. They want to see it in the meeting room. So, I think trying to meet that vision and bring consumer-grade technologies into commercial-grade applications is a big part of that journey.”

The Latest Tools for Improving Workflow

“One of the big time-consuming areas that they [planners] have is sourcing,” says Iwamoto. “Having an AI-enabled sourcing tool is going to be very helpful … because it can take the research time that they would normally take to check online or make phone calls to gauge the legitimacy of venues and have pictures and images and information at their fingertips. So AI can really help expedite the process.”

Bizly — the company Iwamoto recently retired from as chief customer officer — is an all-in-one platform that can do all of that and more. A popular tool within the industry, it uses AI for venue booking, registration management, invitation design and meeting analytics.

Iwamoto says he sees AI helping planners with logistics support — creating agendas, sourcing speakers and programming, all in under a minute, rather than taking hours — and also assisting in capturing relevant information from sessions, creating a live digital archive. In addition, planners are seeing growth in the capability of AI for translation services.

How AI Can Help With Networking

Networking is another area that is greatly benefiting from the growth of AI development, which has led to something called AI matchmaking. This technology provides a number of benefits including:

• Enhanced attendee experience by providing more personalized networking opportunities
• Increased efficiency by identifying high-quality connections relevant to attendees’ needs
• Improved lead generation by facilitating connections between potential business partners and customers
• Data-driven insights that generate valuable information event planners can use for future events

Borelli says AI matchmaking is the biggest value AI can offer event attendees. He adds that a lot of the event apps for multiple-day conferences are used over the course of that gathering and then typically deleted afterward. The problem is that there isn’t a lot of valuable, evergreen information attendees need to keep after the fact. One of the most important values people take away from conferences is the networking aspect. What if your networking could be more like the LinkedIn experience with the connections being made online?

Swap Card is a technology platform that uses AI matchmaking to do exactly that. “The promise of AI matchmaking for attendees is that you show up to an event, you open up your app, and the five people that would make the biggest difference in your life are going to be highlighted for you,” Borelli says. “That would increase fivefold every attendee’s ROI at every event they attend.”

The challenge, he says, is that the data, at least in this moment, is sparse. Many events would have to utilize this particular platform, and attendees would have to be active within the app.

Personalization and Flexibility Are Key

Integrating the latest event technology means making the attendee experience as dynamic and immersive as possible to better promote engagement. Better engagement leads to better ROI for planners, so having the latest technology is no longer optional. Whether it’s virtual meetings or in-person events, attendees are demanding more from planners.

Satterfield is seeing high demand for ways to engage remote and onsite attendees simultaneously. While this was largely a special request pre-Covid, it’s now expected and an essential part of planning.

“If you think about webcasting and all the tools we had available to us, [Microsoft] Teams didn’t exist,” says Satterfield. “There was no unifying factor of that technology. Coming out of the pandemic, some people were more comfortable traveling [and] others were a little bit more hesitant, but they still wanted to participate. Well, that stuck. That is an expectation now more consistent with all of our meetings.”

Walsh says that thanks to the apps we use in our everyday lives, immersion and a demand for personalization are driving this new technology in the event planning space. It’s about suspending disbelief so people can focus and be present.

“It’s the on-demand nature, but I think that we also have an expectation now as individuals on how personalization comes into play with that,” Walsh says. “So that requires different internet systems. It requires different servers, and then all of those other machinery pieces and people and expertise that then bring this to life. So it becomes a lot more dynamic because the consumer expectation has become so much more dynamic.”   I&FMM