Connecting In-Person Again

Event tech has made a step change in how we connect at physical events. How many more steps will there be?

From streamlined attendee discovery to having a convenient app in your pocket, we’ve come a long way since pre-2020 days when it comes to trade shows and conferences.

New technology and digital experiences finally came into their own. At the same time, we all yearned to be able to get back together again. Now that’s possible, with the return of trade shows, conferences and even parties. It’s fabulous!

This article takes a look at some of the shifts we’ve experienced with digital event tech platforms since 2020, and takes a view on how these platforms will continue to serve trade show and major events going forward.

2020 - the year of webinars … and the next big thing

Webinars ramped up and came fully into their own in 2020. We also got excited about things like Clubhouse that year. By the time October 2020 came along, there were more than 130 webinars for the media and entertainment industry in a single month - a rate which was impossible to sustain both in terms of effort and audience attendance. It was this same month that Broadcast Projects launched Media Meet & Greet, with its early first steps as a series of one-off networking events.

2021 - the year of event tech experimentation

Experiments boomed in 2021. Users faced many platforms and learning curves. We all got tired. “Zoom fatigue” entered the lexicon. Event tech platforms like Hubilo, Intelligo, Remo, all entered the mix. Bigger players choose WebEx, On24, Cvent or Map My Show with essentially the same functionality designed to support a bigger audience, with extra bells and whistles, catering to specific needs, with hefty price tags.

Similarly, Media Meet & Greet also morphed, mainly by adding a content program of expert panels and interactive conversations with featured guests, while always retaining the live networking function, and beginning build a community.

2022 - the year of consolidation and re-thinking

Zoom stands out as the video conference platform of choice. Despite its limitations. many people still prefer it for its ease of use and familiarity. They are used to it. For event tech platforms with more functionality, those who are more adept navigating different interfaces, will always more quickly pick-up the features and intuitively “get it”. But then, any new platform or software really just requires a modicum of patience, to look at the screen, try to understand it, and have a poke around.

And though we’ve remained consistent with Media Meet & Greet, and our platform Partner, Deal Room Events, we note that many trade shows and associations wish to retain their own walled garden. The proliferation of platforms is out there, causing fragmentation in terms of the regular use of any of them. Even LinkedIn is under pressure, as its utility is clouded by ads, sponsored posts, and irrelevant data. The reality is that building an audience from scratch is tough, whether it is a social media post, a live event, hybrid or virtual. Anyone producing an event knows that we are all repeating this process every time.

As for re-thinking trade shows, April 2022 saw a unique collaboration between Media Meet & Greet and NAB Show. This month long series of events drove attendance to, and fired interest in the physical show, as well as providing a valuable networking function and a compelling opportunity to come together and interact through conversation with key NAB Show team members.

It is a model that points to the future.

Event tech in context

Remember Clubhouse? For a few weeks back in 2020, we all got very excited! And then we quickly wondered what all the fuss was about. And the event tech platform, Hopin? Similar story. It rode the pandemic pretty well. By August 2021 it had secured $450m to accelerate its platform expansion, with a marketing valuation of $7.75 billion and a spending spree that included the acquisition of five companies. Six months later it froze hiring, cut its marketing spend, and less than a year later, it had laid off 29% of its employees and saw a 41% drop of its share price on the secondary market. 

Discovering a new tech platform is like having a new toy.

However, evaluating event tech platforms, deploying them successfully, and learning how to produce live virtual events is a new skill for marketers. You also have to factor in the time and patience you are asking of your audience in terms of on-boarding them and having them learn a new platform.

Producing those events, too, is a learning curve not to be underestimated. Anyone who tells you it’s very easy to set up, very likely has not explored and deployed all its many features. There are many platforms out there. It is easy to choose a platform because it is offered for free. Maybe it’s not the best idea though.

Media Meet & Greet grew tremendously over the past two years, with a consistent rhythm, on a consistent platform, and the beginnings of a critical mass in terms of community. What started out as a series of one-off online networking events, has now turned into a 365 platform supporting the media and entertainment community all year long. Platformed by Deal Room since the beginning, we´re still learning and deploying many of its features, like support for live streaming events, live networking at physical events, badge and ticketing control, white label apps, and much more.

However, the argument for using event tech to underpin physical events is still not yet very well understood. Typically, most users still understand that when they on-board, they can at best hope for a hassle-free virtual experience. This poses another learning curve for marketers. How to bring physical, virtual and hybrid events together?

We are still educating our audience about the strength of our platform. Deal Room is used increasingly by event organizers in the media and entertainment industry community, including recruitment and start-up events. At least 15 other such events can be accessed with a single login to your account on Dealroom, which keeps all your connections and chats in one place, no matter which event you are attending.

Convenience, familiarity and portability are key.

Deal Room was selected precisely because of its origins and experience with physical events, with networking and matchmaking that underpins the in-person experience. See it live and in-action here. 

We predict…

People learned a lot since 2020. Those digital learning curves and new habits will have a lasting effect. People changed their work habits. Conversation about the climate emergency exploded. Remote working became a norm. Work life balance shifted. In some ways, we will never go back. In other ways, we will gleefully circulate again without masks, hug and greet again. We’ll get boosted and vaccinated, and be kinder to the planet, too.

Travel won't and should not cease, but for those who cannot or will not travel, for whatever reasons, we’ll find that event tech platforms offer alternatives, especially when they are appropriately configured to offer more curated experiences.

Unfortunately, event tech platforms are sold all wrong. There are many and they all truly do hope for your business. It is tempting to hop from one to another, shopping for the best deal. It’s not the about the platform though. It’s about what you do with it, and how you can deploy it effectively to serve a community of interests to bring people closer together.

Effectively, it boils down to: which one do you want to invest your time in learning? Because to get the best out of any platform, it has to be well understood and deployed well. Also, let’s not forget: users have to want to use it.

Hopin now finds itself challenged to be anything more than a tool that rode the surging pandemic demand for virtual collaboration and meetings. Clubhouse is now planning to split its business into pieces, with the creation of many “clubhouses”. They are even polling users for input. Some of the challenges it faced were time zones, and relevant discovery, things that Media Meet & Greet had baked in from the start, with metadata-driven profile data designed by Broadcast Projects, and the built in AI-matching tool provided by Deal Room Events (www.dealroomevents.com). In this way users can mostly build their own, more useful, connections.

Curated experiences are emerging as the new norm.

Those experiences can usefully happen in closed user communities that are managed like a carefully tended garden. Discovering the right event support tools that work for you takes time. It truly takes an investment in time. Ultimately, the right event tech tools will help you to connect, meet the relevant people, do business and share new ideas.

These tools and the development of such platforms and experiences, on a platform consistently used, will continue to change us and our experiences with trade shows one step at a time. We remain just at the very beginning of this journey.

Stay tuned!

Janet Greco, August 2022