ROUNDTABLE: During-event Engagement Strategies

Thank to the one who came for sharing and I hope the ones who couldn’t make it, we see you next year, 2016 Calendar is coming shortly!

We had a big discussion around the topic of Content Crowdsourcing and how events are being more democratised and how technologies such as SharedXP (coming Spring 2016) and CrowdSourcing can help us to engage attendees to build the whole or just part of the event agenda and support the event marketing campaign plus generating content from attendees and partners.

The key to succeed using event technology to engage attendees is to really have a clear communications plan to all event stakeholders, mainly attendees and speakers without forgetting sponsors and exhibitors, as they can be the best champions to raise engagement. But the key is the venue WiFi, with this regards, there is still a big room of improvement but it’s definitely improving and venues need to realise that it can be a USP for them and it will eventually become a ‘must’ for them.

Here are some conclusions and providers worth looking using a list of potential technologies to use for your events:

Audience response systems: Sli.do was the highly recommended.

Slidesharing: Recommending Glisser and Sli.do.

Social walls: Very common technology to use for almost any type of events.

Photobooths: Useful option for corporate events and exhibitions.

Microphones: Mics4u and CrowdMics.

Event apps: Many suppliers, the key here is to really identify (as the rest of the technologies), what is really the goal to achieve with them and then choose the right provider for that purpose.

Augmented reality: Mainly used in Automative events, more is coming if becomes more affordable!

Collaborative tools: This is currently made in a traditional way but touchscreens with some software can be the way.

NFC, RFID and Beacons: Audio beacons are the solution for attendees no need to turn on their bluetooth to made them work, and it’s not really an expensive solution, we can buy our own beacons and easily install them. ForgeSP and B-connect can be good providers. Definitely something we are going to see more and more at any type of events.

Hybrid events and remote audiences: No mentioned today ?

Gamification and multi-player gaming: A quiz is a very simple and very effective way to engage attendees early on at the event and after breaks.

Attendee livestreaming tools: No mentioned today ? but we agreed that video is a positive trend to engage attendees and generate powerful content.

Drones: Cool way to combina with social walls, needs to be in consideration health & safety rules and probably an insurance.

Any other thoughts and ideas?
Reply

I found some interesting content you could read before tomorrow discussion:

This is a post about how to gather more behavior delegate data: http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/monitor-attendee-behavior?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eo_email_attendees


You can download here a free ebook about Event Engagement techniques: http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/?s=engagement&cat=&post_type%5B%5D=post%2Cpages

Nevertheless, we have our event tech expert coming, James Morgan, and we are preparing some more content to share (apart from the actual sharing of our knowledge and experience) so you all take some good ideas to bring to your events.

See you tomorrow,

Jose Reply