Event trends - what’s now and next for events

This is a recap of the panel session at Event Tech Livechlive.com/ London 2022.

To be honest, of all of the sessions on the main stage at Event Tech Live, this is the one I was most intrigued by. As host of the main stage at ETL, I was very fortunate enough to sit in every session and learn from what the expert speakers had to say.

If like me, since Covid burst onto the scene, I've been heavily skeptical of future trends. Why? Well... no one quite predicted the effect that Covid would have on our world, so how could we predict what would be next for events?

This panel, hosted by main stage sponsor Stova's Chad Blaise included Miguel Neves, editor-in-chief of Skift Meetings and Rhys Morgan from JP Morgan, and offered an engaging session on what's next for events.

Obviously, there was discussion about the rise live streaming and virtual events, which can facilitate remote learning and engagement in ways that weren't possible just a few years ago.

But with a lot of conversation in the events industry revolving around "being back" Miguel made a comment that struck a chord with me, "what does being back mean?"

Events are back - but what next?

It's a good question. Is it that being back means we get to do the same old thing again? Deliver the same experiences? I think not... We shouldn't be happy with settling into the same old routine of event delivery, but start to understand "what does better look like, and what role does technology play in this?"

Not wanting to give away all the secret sauce to the session, which you can watch on the ETL catch-up, the panel discussed some of the challenges that are coming up and how we can best meet the needs of our event attendees and drive the business success of events.

One of the toughest challenges to our industry right now, is not trying to get people out of the office as in years gone by, but to get them away from their home where they are comfortable, and have other commitments such as child care, or they just don't want to travel 2-3 hours to your event.

So what does this mean for our events? It means that we need to be more creative in how we engage, and all panelists agreed, focusing on quality content. It's not about just taking your sponsor's money and giving them a stage to speak from, but if you're going to go big, if you want to create real impact and drive an audience to connect at your next event, "create a show". Go really big.

"It's not zoom fatigue, it's bad content fatigue. Bad camera set up, grainy image, terrible audio" Miguel. 

The Value of In Person

With the impending recession and likely budget cuts coming, let's learn from the mistakes we made pre-covid. Be prepared, get your digital toolbox ready so you can run virtual or hybrid events and crucially, do more with the data.

A lot of data has been collected over the last few years, so you should be more prepared to share the value of attending your events with your audiences.

Innovations in Event Tech over the last 12 months

Back to my earlier comment, future trends are hard to predict, but past experience can be learned from. The last 12 months have seen a lot of clever integrations with companies martech firms, getting your event data to talk with exhibitors platforms so that they can continue to be efficient, planned, and highly targeted in the way they engage with leads they collect.

Rhys also commented about businesses building more in-depth RFP processes. Really start to think about your chosen platforms and not just what they can do today, but how they're being developed for the next few years. Think about how these platforms can help you to deliver frictionless experiences.

Plan for the future

Overall, I think this was a great session that really was an honest discussion of the current state of affairs in event tech and what you can do to better plan for the future.

You can check out the ETL on demand for the full session - I highly recommend you do.

Watch the session from Event Tech Live here