We have recently concluded our first 3X30 Live Talks Series with event expert guests. In our last conversation, we discussed hybrid event agenda design with guest Mahoganey Jones, CEO & Founder at Event Specialists. Mahoganey shared some insightful ideas around agenda design and debunked some myths around hybrid event budget and content delivery. Read the key takeaways below. 

“Hybrid events have been around for a long time, they were here pre-pandemic. Since the pandemic has hit though, we have changed how we approach our event agendas. We were first in panic mode to pivot in-person events to virtual formats. And without thinking, or allowing us to rethink what the goal of that event really is, we didn’t question if the agenda needed to be matched ‘one for one“. Read below some considerations from Mahoganey pertaining to hybrid events. 

We’ve been using the pandemic as a crutch or as a limitation. We keep hearing “we can’t do” or “we can’t accomplish”, versus how we can still accomplish our goals within limitations. We can use the limitations as a positive VIP level experience in-person, ultra VIP online… and look through a different perspective. 

Technology was never meant to limit how we design events. It was meant to enhance what we’re doing while allowing us to hit our goals and objectives. We’re looking at the technology first, and then designing our agendas to match the bells and whistles of a platform versus seeing what our agenda needs to accomplish, and then finding the technology that is best suited to deliver that message. We’re putting the cart before the horse. 

In this process, I feel like we forgot about the goals and what we’re actually looking to accomplish. Not every platform is meant for every type of event. We’re literally just building based on what the platform can do.

I truly believe that a hybrid event is one customer journey that you’re taking your attendees through, whether they’re attending in-person or online. I feel like the intersection is important, and we design elements to ensure each audience gets exactly what they need. But we also need to understand that they’re an audience as a whole. 

There’s no one true experience. We don’t need to deliver every session for the in-person audience and for the virtual audience. When we talk about the intersectionality between the two audiences, let’s think of how we can ensure that both audiences are getting the experience you’re looking for them to have. 

If you think of the analogy of a hockey game: the in-person audience is watching the game happen live, listening to the announcers, etc. The audience who’s watching from home is not going to catch everything being thrown in the in-person audience. Does it make them feel like they’re not part of the same experience though? Absolutely not. 

It’s about being mindful of how you’re ensuring your audiences are getting what they need from the event so that you’re not leaving anyone out. You don’t need to 100% translate the entire agenda between in-person and virtual. Virtual audiences don’t necessarily have to ask questions for every session if that may not be the goal of each session. We also don’t have to broadcast every single session.

We can be selective on the content that’s best delivered to each group. For example, entertainment can be great for both audiences, but it’s not always great to share workshops with two audiences. 

When you’re planning your event agenda, create a spreadsheet to see how the flow is going to happen. See where you can put those intersectionalities together. And that the in-person audience and the online audience is getting a feel for that experience that you’re looking to deliver. 

One thing the pandemic has also been great and afforded us as event producers is the ability to shorten content. TEDx talks are short, concise, and 10-20 minutes long for a reason. I don’t know when all of a sudden, we decided that we needed 90-minute keynote sessions. But the pandemic has allowed us to shorten a lot of things. We can now shorten that five-day conference. Still deliver the same bang for your buck, but in two to three days versus five.

For medical conferences and other conferences where there are CEUs or credits associated with the content, the sessions would have to be a certain amount of time to meet those criteria. Though there is no hard and fast rule that says all of those sessions have to happen on one day, four or five days consecutively. 

We should have a look at how to best deliver the content. Spreading your content out doesn’t mean you’re diluting your content. It means you’re also opening your mindset and your audience’s ability to attend different sessions at work for them. With cross time zones, there’s now a hidden virtual audience that we didn’t know existed. We’ve opened up these opportunities to reach larger audiences, we’re truly global in the content that we’re delivering. So how can we best maximize that for our organizations? 

Let’s debunk the myth that says you need two or three times more budget to produce a hybrid event. Pre-pandemic, we would normally have a pretty complete in-person agenda and then the virtual was always that afterthought. When you’re looking at your agenda, your event content should help determine what you can actually deliver online. 

I was always a firm believer in lighting and sound. Without lighting and sound in any conference, it falls flat. For a hybrid experience, we have to ensure that the sound and the lighting of the in-person audience can be translated to the virtual audience. So using that to your advantage means you can use it as a design element for the in-person audience, it also creates a beautiful feed for the virtual audience so that they’re able to see and hear the speakers with clarity. 

For example: have your presenters and audience Q&A using a microphone, so that the audio can be captured for the virtual audience. Or, alternatively, train your speakers to make sure that they repeat the question that was asked from the in-person audience to allow the virtual audience to hear it as well. Lighting is one of those things that almost always becomes an afterthought. 

Personally, I always work with the AV company, see what you already have in the room, see what you’ve already paid for, and see how you can allocate that to make sure that it’s meeting the needs of both the in-person and the virtual audience.

Plus, reconsider the venues that you’re working with. The pandemic has allowed venues to redesign their own spaces so that it can work for you. Look at what is already built-in. Do they have the technology to support it? Do you need that massive room or can you go into a smaller room? We’re seeing the rise of these virtual studios that you can go to that have space and be able to accommodate what you’re looking to accommodate.

One thing I like to start with is an exercise called the SSK Method: Start – Stop – Keep. It’s a tool that is valid when re-imagining what your event could look like. So you ask your team:

And within that exercise we can actually make decisions and that you are hitting the mark from an internal perspective. You can pick up on some of those cues to see what you can start doing, what you can keep and see what you can stop.

The one-page Event Business Plan (download free here) is how I like to drive what happens in the event overall. I also use it as a tool to drill down what is actually going to land on the agenda and what is going to happen. The one-page business plan takes all of the different elements that you are going to cover in the event, drill down to one page so that you understand the mission, the target audience, the goals, and the KPIs you’re looking to meet. With that being listed front and center, and very concise, it’s a lot easier to understand your goals and to support your agenda decisions.

The pandemic is allowing us the opportunity to redesign and rethink what the in-person X virtual experience can look like. It’s allowing us to redesign what the event experience can look like, and to drill down to the core of what our agenda should and could look like. 

This is a good time to step back and think about your event goals first, and then find the best technology, the best attendee journey, the best content format, etc. to support those goals. We don’t need to provide the exact same experiences to both audiences, but the same outcomes. You can watch the full conversation with Mahoganey here.

We recently spoke to Lindsay Martin-Bilbrey, CEO at Nifty Method, about the concept of all-in-one event management platform. We talked about why this concept is flawed and what approach tech providers and event planners can take. Here are some key takeaways from the conversation with Lindsay where she debunks the myth of all-in-one event tech. 

Technology has become more and more part of the event planning landscape, whether to manage registration, event agenda, abstract, AV team, food and beverage, and more… While event planners are eager to find a tech solution that can do everything under one roof, the reality is much different. There has never been a platform that could truly fit all of these moving pieces together. 

As Lindsay shared, event tech platforms begin by creating one really great piece of software that solves one really big problem. If they can do that really well and without bugs, they can then help solve another problem. 

So, building a solution that can navigate from procurement to abstract management, food and beverage, registration, and more is something hard to come by. Lindsay even questions if that’s ever going to happen. 

In our recent LinkedIn Live, Lindsay shared three main influencers in the drive for all-in-one solutions:

Price

Planners are often solving for price. It’s easier to buy in volume with everything under one roof because then you can negotiate. You can check 15 things off your checklist, and that’s going to lead to money savings. 

Procurement

When you look at it from the enterprise perspective, those brands are managing a lot of moving pieces: procurement wants it to be simple. They’ve already signed and had the security teams jump through a lot of hoops. So that price and procurement run hand in hand. 

Simplicity

It is not uncommon for things to go completely wrong on the day of the event. If you only use one platform on a virtual or hybrid event and that platform breaks, that’s scary. But it’s also just one vendor to deal with.

It always comes down to the event goals. What are you trying to do and solve for your attendees, exhibitors, sponsors? At Nifty Method, the event’s team uses what they call the Event Tech Maturity Sheet (you can download yours free here). 

In this requirements gathering document, you are able to break down the different elements of actually managing the event so that you have the answers to what you need before talking to a vendor and so that the vendor can understand what your desired tech stack looks like. 

Questions you may add to your requirements gathering phase:

In this process, you need to think about all stakeholders (including attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, leadership, and others), the goals for each of them, and how you intend to achieve those goals. 

Just as you would plan with an in-person event, going from one room into another and having space and time to interact with people in the hallway, you need to have that same approach in a virtual scenario. What specific things would you like to happen to achieve those goals? You can add that to your requirements gathering document also.

The event management platform is really just one of the things in the grand scheme of planning the actual event. The platform you choose will depend largely on the type of event you manage and its specific requirements, be it a large trade show, an incentive trip, a traditional annual conference or user conference, etc. 

When shopping for that foundational solution, I think I would turn some of that question back around and challenge the sales teams at the event platforms to reverse engineer. As planners, we don’t know what we need, we know what our needs are, and those things don’t necessarily translate well.

So the baseline lies in the vendor’s sandbox to develop and build a one-sheet or a capability deck that those of us doing research can go and check. That’s why the Event Tech Bible is so great for event apps. Then we can go to the peer network to learn more about those vendors – Do we like these people? Are they good? Will they be kind to us? Are they affordable? 

I think it would be a user conference we did last fall. We’ve chosen a platform that did probably 98% of everything we needed. And then the platform went dark for our livestream audience. 

The issue was coming from the vendor’s servers. It’s like Marriot was open, but no one could get in the doors and you had everything inside. We have decided to almost build the entire first day in Vimeo, and to tell the 9,000 attendees online that we had to move from one platform to another. 

This is a great example of putting all of our eggs in one basket, all of our networking was there, together with sponsorship, partnership agreements, the actual presentations with the exception of this small audience we had at the program site. 

That is the single scariest example of how it’s been over the last year, not having a backup, because even when you test it, it can still go wrong. I wish many of the tech platforms could allow us to copy and paste the event into one of our instances and move it into a backup platform in case it goes awry.

As an agency response to that, when we work with a client to set an event up, we build a second backup on a second platform entirely, so we’re not dependent on somebody else’s servers. 

I’m not the only one with this kind of story. There are lots of people who’ve had that on a number of different platforms. This is not platform-specific, sometimes the internet goes down. Sometimes it’s raining really hard. Sometimes there’s a hurricane. And just like you would have a backup plan when there’s the hurricane in Miami and you need to go north to Tampa, you should be able to do the same for a virtual experience.

To dive deeper into the discovery process Lindsay uses with her clients at Nifty Method, she showed us how she uses the event Tech Maturity Sheet and the requirements gathering. Watch the clip below to hear from Lindsay. Video player

Rather than seeking the mythical all-in-one event management platform, the way to go instead is to choose foundational tech platforms that can cover 60-70% of the needs of your event portfolio, and then seek out additional event management tools to complement it. You can use these dedicated tools to cover more specific aspects of your event like networking and audience response. 

And to future-proof your events, it’s crucial that you take a few steps back. Evaluate your event goals and the experience you’re looking to deliver to your guests before committing to event management platform. In other words, you need to think from a design-first perspective. Here’s another article to dive deeper into this concept and to help you choose the best event management platform for your needs. You can watch the full conversation with Lindsay here.

Out of sight, out of mind. That’s what they say. And while you’re out tending to your attendees in person, your virtual attendees are out of sight, but don’t for a second keep them out of mind! 

Attracting and engaging virtual attendees is one of the biggest challenges for the modern event planner. Here is some humble advice software for hybrid events to get you ahead of the pack. 

The no-show rate for virtual events is 35%. That is a damning indictment of the respect these events are given. However, it’s still early days for hybrid events. As planners continue to improve them through technology and experience, these events will surely see the no-show rate fall. 

And even after getting them to log on, the battle for hearts and minds isn’t over. Attendees in person are not likely to get their phone and headphones out in front of you because that’s rude. But your virtual guests, for all you know, could have their Play Station on in the background. They could be romping through entire seasons of their show on Netflix. 

So you get the point, your virtual attendees need to be wooed and enthused. In this article, you’re going to get 10 direct and actionable tips that can increase your engagement and connection with them at your next hybrid event. 

For in-person events, you put a lot of effort into making your venue look professional, exciting, and you treat it as a reflection of your business as a whole because that’s how your guests will see it. 

The same reasoning has to stand for the virtual realm. If your attendees log into an uninspiring zoom call to see people having fun in real life, they’re going to be disheartened and feel like second-string guests. For your guests logging in, they need to feel like they’re attending a special occasion. 

Laughter is like magic when it comes to breaking the tension between newly acquainted strangers. Speaking to Spacehuntr CEO Dietrich Moens, he said, “my team loves ice-breakers, especially for our brainstorming sessions. It changes the whole dynamic of the session. Traditionally, these games are quite generic and cringey, but with a bit of creativity, they’re really fun.”

To experience a bit of the magic yourself, check out the Spacehuntr teams favourite Creative ice breakers for conference networking here. As well as being great for setting a great tone for your events, they’re delightful! 

It’s easy to get poetic and philosophical about things, but to be as concise as possible, gamification works because it’s fun. 

It doesn’t hurt to dangle a carrot to your guests every so often either; the promise of a prize draws focus like nothing else.  

This seems like common sense because it is. You should always strive to produce quality content. But considering the new challenges faced with the nature of this event, the stakes are higher than ever. 

The future of quality event content should follow the timeless maxim that less is more. So cut the fluff, kill your darlings, as they say. Focus on shorter sessions packed with value. 

The chance to network is a major part of the allure of corporate events. That allure has been lost in hybrid events. You can address that right now by investing in quality software for hybrid events. 

And business is booming in the event technology industry too. There are new apps all the time, and with stiff competition, you can guarantee there will be quality and innovation out there. 

For instance, we’re very proud of our new virtual networking platform. Users will build an attendee profile with their photo, job title, company, social media profiles, and email address. Of course, this feature is optional, so you can pick and choose how to build your profile to your taste – or not at all if you prefer privacy. So get in touch with us to arrange a free demo for our all-in-one event planning platform. 

Real-time information on how your attendees feel is great. It gives you a warrant to be adaptable as your event rolls on. It’s also a mechanism that requires attendees to be in the moment and focus on what’s going on. What’s more, it’s also great for collecting invaluable data. 

The strength of your Q&A is largely dependent on the quality of your content. If your attendees are bored, they’re not going to have questions. So, in short, a live Q&A is a way of sustaining an already existing engagement. 

Getting in entertainers for your event isn’t essential. But it really does make a difference. Imagine your event is french fries. Everyone loves french fries. But you know what makes them so much better? Sauce. Think of entertainment as the sauce to your event. 

A big name can be a big part of your marketing too as for what kind of guest, that’s an exciting question. It could be a well-known figure in your field to deliver a keynote speech; it could be a comedian, musician, or influencer; it could even be a magician. 

Virtual event bags can be physical swag bags sent to attendees’ homes before an event or electronic ones. Both are always appreciated because everyone loves a freebie. An attendee is less likely to no-show if you butter them up with a goodie bag. 

Branded merch, event programmes, event-related activities, you can be creative here. Here are some ideas you can use. 

With an electronic event bag, you can include things like gift vouchers, discount codes, free trials, and so on. 

It’s tragic to see hard work going to waste. It’s all well and good to engage your virtual attendees, but don’t lose them in the breaks. 

You can do this with three simple tricks:

And there you have it, 10 ways planners can engage and connect with virtual attendees during hybrid events. As noted before, the no show rate to these events might be daunting, especially considering the wide consensus that hybrid events aren’t going anywhere. 

But take this article and the small fact that you’re reading it to the end as proof that event planners are determined to figure this thing out. And if you happen to have some genius ideas of your own, we’d love to hear from you!

PS: Looking for software for hybrid events to support both your in-person and virtual event needs? Check out Attendease’s hybrid capabilities and talk to our team to see it in action!

With COVID-19 and the event industry pivoting from in-person to virtual formats, we saw a big shift from a pricing standpoint. Many events and conferences that used to have a high ticket value were now being offered in a virtual format for free (or for a fraction of the price of its in-person version). This change in pricing mentality brought yet another challenge to the industry.

But the uncertainty around event pricing models isn’t new. In our latest Live Talk with expert guest Anthony Vade, Director, North America at Event Design Collective, we discussed how to get to strategic price design so that event planners can better monetize their events. Here are five key takeaways from this conversation.

There’s always a balance between what is the price versus the perceived value, or the actual value that is received. If people can find value, they’re more likely to open their wallets. We must consider that people will make decisions based on who they align with, who they buy from, and which event they get involved in. 

At Event Design Collective, Anthony and his team have been doing a lot of study into this over the last 10-15 years to try and understand how do events specifically provide value and how to articulate that value so that the stakeholders associated with the events are more willing to make the investments they are asking them to make. 

Sending information down a camera to the remote participant is not enough for them to get the value they want. Because the internet is full of information, we can source it from anywhere, for free, at any time. So if we, as event professionals, are just doing that – we’re competing not only against other events and in-person event experiences, we are competing against the internet itself, which is impossible to beat because there is far more information available for free. 

But we’re seeing some shifts already happening. For example, Fast Company has made its keynote sessions with some big names free to watch. But if you want to get in-depth information, participate in hands-on workshops, or network and connect with peers, then you must pay a premium at various different scales for that. That’s because we recognized early on in the pandemic, that the value comes from that form of engagement, not just in engaging with the content. 

TED Talks had a really interesting event pricing model pre-pandemic, where they had an absolute premium price to attend in person – I think the tickets were from $5,000 to $7,000. They also had a live stream that you could subscribe to at a much lower price or you could choose to watch the recordings on-demand, free of charge. 

That’s a really interesting approach pre-pandemic but, unfortunately, it did fall into a model where the in-person had higher value because of its high-touch and high-intimacy level.

We, as an industry, need to be willing to experiment and prototype on the kinds of experiences we can deliver and how we can attribute value to those experiences until we find the sweet spot that justifies the additional expense (for virtual experiences). And while we figure out this framework, we still need to think about creating free content to keep our audiences engaged with our community. It’s a big challenge for the entire industry.

The first key that every event professional should take on board is mapping the stakes:

At Event Design Collective, we go through steps to map high-impact stakeholders, including sponsors, attendee participants, event owners, etc. We get our entire team to collaborate and bring their perspectives into understanding those stakeholders so we can then validate what we think that stakeholder wants. Go to them directly and say: Hey, stakeholder, we think this will provide value to you. And this is what we think you’re willing to pay for it. Did we get it right?.

So often, we ask the stakeholders what they want, and they come back to us with what they think we want them to want, because we’re here to please each other. So doing the inverse, and starting from you and your team, can make the difference. 

Once you validade the stakeholders’ goals, you can then analyze if and how your event can help to achieve those outcomes. This is how you get to provide value and to justify the expense that all the stakeholders are putting into it, whether they’re buying a ticket or sponsoring a tradeshow booth. 

In order to plan the event pricing strategy and the value delivered at the event, Anthony uses the Event Canvas Tool and its associated design Methodology with his team and clients (you can download yours free here). Watch the clip below where Anthony walks us through this process. Video Player

If you’d like to dive deeper into the Event Canvas and how to use it, we’d like to invite you to join an Event Canvas Taster Session for free (normally a $60 value). The event will happen on October 26 2021 and you can register here to get the promo code and join free. 

In our Live Talk, Anthony shared that we tend to look back at the pre-pandemic past with rose-colored glasses when we are actually quickly falling into the trap that behavioral psychologists call hindsight bias. We are biased to think that things in the past were better when it may not be the case. Monetization and pricing model challenges were always there.

In order to find the right price for your event, it all comes down to event design. Truly understanding your stakeholders and what they’d like to achieve with your event so you can deliver the value they expect and find the right price for that experience to happen. You can watch the recording of the full conversation here.

With many changes happening to the meetings and events space, you might be on the hunt for event planning software. A good event planning software can help you adapt to new demands while you create and manage multi events.  

These tools not only help you manage the moving pieces of planning an event, but also avoid manual processes. They cut down on website and marketing tool subscriptions, eliminate the time lags and expenses associated with event website development, and drive down the cost of hosting your events.

If you’re a corporate event planner who manages a large portfolio of meetings and events in a typical year, then you need to be sure that the event planning tool you invest in can support the complete needs of your events be they large or small, public or private, free or paid, virtual, in-person, or hybrid.

Instead of searching for all-in-one event management software, we invite you to consider choosing a strong foundational tool that’s versatile enough to adapt to multiple event formats. From there, it’s simple to plug in additional event planning tools as needed to achieve an event’s more specific objectives like audience participation. 

Knowing what you need out of these foundational tools is the first step to choosing the right event management software. In this post, we’ll cover 5 features to look for when evaluating event management software for a varied events portfolio. 

The best event management software makes your event planning easy from the very start of your attendee journey. That begins with event registration. Be on the hunt for an event management platform that supports flexible and easy online registration for your events. This can look like:

Whether your event is customer-facing or for internal audiences, if you’re looking to have complete control over your brand, then you’ll need a solution that allows you to publish fully white-labeled event websites. Rather than being bound to a template you can make minimal edits to, or having your vendor’s logos plastered everywhere. This will give you full creative control over how your website will look. You’ll be able to customize all your event websites to incorporate design elements like your brand’s fonts and colours. It keeps your look consistent. 

Some of the best event management software vendors help you reduce your reliance on marketing teams, agencies, and website developers. They give you the freedom to build, manage, and update your event website yourself. 

Features you should consider when looking for an event platform includes the ability to  access a library of pre-built website templates, such as templates for webinars or conferences, and the ability to create a fully customizable website yourself. This will allow you to quickly spin new event websites and to keep control over your brand. 

Better yet, what makes some of the best event management software stand out is the fact that they help you pull from data sources to minimize errors. We can’t speak for all event management software. But what EventUp Planner (formerly Attendease) does is help you save time by pulling information from your back end to populate your website. The beauty of this feature is that it removes the need for manual updating in more than one place. Did a speaker or a session change? So long as you update your information in the back-end, you’ll be able to see it on the event website. Massive time saver! 

Intuitive event planning software also makes cloning your event websites easier. With a click of a button so you don’t have to spend time rebuilding similar pages for different events. This also helps you keep a consistent look and feel across all your events.

Just like with event websites, top event management software vendors should help you create fully branded marketing emails through the use of templates and customization options. Ideally, your software will also allow you to clone your email messages easily so that you only need to create your email templates once, and make simple edits for subsequent meetings and events. 

From there, you’ll need your tool to support marketing email automation so that the platform can automatically send out event registration confirmation emails, event-related news and reminders leading up to the event, post-event survey emails, and more. This will help you save loads of time. All you need to do is set up your timelines in the dashboard and let the tool do its thing. 

If you already use a tech stack of more robust marketing software like Hubspot or Marketo for email segmentation, then you’ll want to go with event management software that integrates well with these tools to help transfer data from one tool to the other in real-time.  

What sets apart the best event planning tools from others are powerful scheduling tools that can handle complex schedules for large events. If you’re hosting a multi-day event, in multiple locations, or in multiple rooms, then you’ll need your event management solution to offer a robust session slotter tool.

By pulling data points like your session names, speakers, and attendees from the back-end of your platform, agenda management tools can help you:

Tip: some event management software only allows your attendees to sign up for one event at a time. For a complex event running multiple sessions, you’ll want to be sure your software lets your guests sign up to whatever interests them without limitations. 

Some event management software will limit the number of events you can publish depending on your plan. Others might charge you a fee per attendee. But if you expect to host a large portfolio of corporate meetings and events, then your goal will be to manage more events with less cost, less effort, and no hidden-costs. 

It’s worthwhile to go with event management software that supports an unlimited number of events, and one that can support events of all types and sizes, be they in-person events, hybrid events, or virtual events. 

The best event management software:

Powerful event management software is built around a set of features that seamlessly ties together all the moving pieces of your event portfolio. By consolidating all event planning processes in one platform that integrates well with your existing tools, your team can save tremendous time and money while delivering a consistent experience across all your corporate meetings and events.