The event industry is currently undergoing a massive upheaval. Digital technologies are pushing their way into the market and, thanks to new hardware and software, offer almost limitless possibilities for optimizing an event. Such innovations promise, for example, to digitize attendee management or access control or generate new event formats such as webinars or virtual conferences.
In order to find answers to current trends, our German partner XING Events, a market leader in attendee management and event marketing in the German-speaking countries, invited a panel of experts to Hamburg in mid-September. Katrin-Cécile Ziegler (Presenter), Philipp Westermeyer (OMR), Prof. Dr. Cai-Nicolas Ziegler (XING Events), Christoph Sedlmeir (doo), Alexander Franke (botconnect) and Richard Caelius (Eventbase) discussed the influence new technologies including Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence will have on events.
Six current trends in the events industry
The expert panel discussed the impact of automation through AI and Machine Learning and how this will affect the way events are planned and organised. With Big Data there’s a consensus that it will be driven by platform providers who have access to much larger datasets, spanning across many events. The amount of data collected will allow for better insights by leveraging machine learning and AI. Personalisation and the individualised event experience are key trends for the future. Many organisers are still content with using low tech segmentation and manual campaigns which are available now. The promise of massive improvements from AI and ML tools and assistants, has still to come into their own. Chatbots are currently time consuming and complex to setup and get right. However, nobody doubts that they will become an integral part of the attendee engagement and interactions. The experts also agree that some form of digital event format will emerge, the details and the type of event best suited for this new digital experience is still hotly debated. Finally, the fear of misstepping around GDPR is leading to an industry paralysis, this is going to ease in the near future.
