Sitting on the counter in my kitchen is a sleek metal cylinder that reminds me of upcoming events, helps me spend money, keeps me entertained, and keeps my endless supply of dad jokes on fleek (you’re welcome). My Amazon Echo has become such a member of my family that my two-year-old son talks to “her” almost as much as I do (yeah, I’m trying to nerd ‘em young). Now, I’ve been a LONG time Star Trek The Next Generation fan, and every time I talk to “Alexa”, I feel like I’m in the 2364 world that Rodenberry created, with a computer that responds to my every whim and delivers to me what I want, in the moment that it’s desired. That’s the world we’re living in right now- the stuff of story becoming a real part of our lives.
One of the things I’ve found to be most interesting over the course of the past year was just how monumentally different 2015 was for the incorporation of technology into our daily life, and how that purportedly made us more efficient. If you had said to me at the end of 2014 that things like hoverboards, 360° video, or in-home robots would be relatively commonplace, I’d have laughed at you. (Well, maybe not, because I’m secretly pushing for an Orwelian world where everything is watched and connected, which will usher in a visit from other-worldly travelers- but you get what I mean). Technology is becoming less something that only the super-nerdy have, and more something that we find it difficult to live without in our daily routine. With the advent and acceptance of tech into our home lives, it’s only natural that we would look at what tech will look like when incorporated into our event lives. So, here are some things I’m seeing for 2016.
Audience Engagement
Event attendees are bored. They’re tired of going to the same event/conference/trade show/meeting time and time again with different faces on stage. Kevin White of XPL said that events have fundamentally not changed in, well, forever. “All events have the same five fundamental things: Space (venue), People (attendees), Entertainment (speakers), Food, Drink (booze).” We move those parts around, have bigger budgets on occasion, and can have varying levels of cool and pretty incorporated, but ultimately, we’re recreating the same format each time we open up the doors to the event space.
A recent study shows that people check their phones an average of 150 times per day, and any public speaker knows that, if you’re not careful, that can be distracting. Mary Baird-Wilcock of The Simplifiers recently introduced me to Glisser, a mobile platform that connects presenters and their attendees by putting the presentation directly in their hands. By simply pointing their browser to a mobile website, attendees can follow along with the presenter’s slides, ask questions, participate in polls and generally be more engaged than if they were just sitting passively taking in the information being shared.
You’ve heard me prattle on previously about my love for beacons, but I’ll again reiterate how powerful I think they are for engaging an audience. By encouraging people to connect their social profiles, or by having them fill out relevant information prior to their arrival, their engagement while sitting in a session can be much richer, because the content delivered to them will be content designed for them. There is no reason that a C-level executive and a junior staffer sitting at the same event should be getting the same messages, and companies like Estimote, Quickmobile, KloudNation, and ITM Mobile are making that diversity possible.
Instant Social Media
Social media is constantly evolving, and new platforms come out almost daily. In fact, I tried to find out exactly how many social media sites there currently were, and stopped counting after about 150. There’s a social networking site for anything and everything you could possibly be into. But, even with the fact that people share just about everything on their favorite social platforms, event organizers still tend to not use those platforms as anything more than a cursory way to connect with attendees.
The power of social platforms like Facebook and Twitter extend far past their ability to share your upcoming event info. These sites aren’t new, but depending on who your target demographic is, there are any number of ways to use them to connect people with the event, and with each other at the event, and to keep that connection well after they leave. When you throw in newer apps like Snapchat (my current obsession), you can create an almost real time point of connection with attendees. Snapchat is WAY more than just a site for sending pics of you in your skivvies and companies like Everlane, Mashable, and Heineken are using the platform very well. Yes, the Snapchat demographic tends to skew younger (like 16-23…and me), but any student of culture knows that it is typically the younger demographics that define later mainstream trends. A smart event producer (especially one with events where millennials are in attendance) would look at ways to incorporate this platform into their event. Some quick ways to use it at an event include offering deals and special experiences only to people who follow you on Snapchat (like Heineken did), or giving Snappers a behind the scenes experience of the set up or execution of the event (like Everlane or Mashable)
The Third Dimension
Augmented reality is continuing to become more and more mainstream, and companies like Hyundai are trying to make them a part of people’s daily life. Event attendees are already used to downloading event apps, but the added layer of engagement provided by AR makes it possible for attendees to find out things about an event that they might otherwise have missed. Silent auctions become more engaging when guests can actually see what the beaches of Aruba look like before they bid, and conferences become less intimidating when guests can hold up their mobile device and see who in the room they should connect with based on their pre determined factors.
Vanishing Act
I recently attended Cedia, a home automation tradeshow, and the biggest repeat trend I saw was in making the technology disappear until the moment it was needed. TVs descended into footboards, media players disappeared into walls, and mirrors doubled as monitors, but when someone needed to use them, they hit a button and magically, it just worked. This same thing will be expected of event tech. We have computers on our wrists that tell us our next appointment and give us directions, and devices in our hands that tell us what song is playing, and they do so while not asking us to reinvent the way we go about our daily lives.
With all of this new tech, the biggest thing I see for tech in 2016 is people refusing to accept tech that feels clunky and wanting that technology to just work without them having to do a whole lot. So, whether you’re hanging beacons, talking to people on social, pushing out mobile apps, or creating whole virtual worlds inside of your tradeshow, make sure that you’re doing so in a way that people don’t have to actually work for it. I mean, we’re all a little lazy after all.
The 2016 barrier to accepting event technology is much lower than it ever has been because we’ve accepted so much technology into every other aspect of our lives. Event producers should feel more comfortable than ever with taking some of these once outlandish tech ideas to their clients, and use examples from those clients’ regular lives to make this acceptance even easier. Above all, have a reason and a strategy for using these tools, and allow your guests to experience new dimensions to their event experiences.
About Our Guest:
@Damany of @The Event Nerd is an award-winning event producer with a love for integrating amazing technology into engaging experiences. His love for #eventtech is matched only by his prowess on the dance floor and passion for great brews and scintillating conversations.
The post Event Technology Strategy for 2016 appeared first on The Social Tables Blog.