Achieving event success: insights from season two

Speaker A: Over the last few years, event professionals have seen a lot of changes and challenges that are going to have a lasting effect on the industry. Welcome to Event Horizons, where we go behind the scenes with event professionals to keep our finger on the pulse of the exciting and ever changing events industry. I'm Nolan Ether.

Speaker B: And I'm Olivia Van Kuren. Today we're discussing our key takeaways from season two of Event Horizons.

Speaker A: Been an awesome season. Season two of Event Horizons, uh, I think the first season was really about kind of coming back from the pandemic, um, and some of the changes, you know, since, since the pandemic and then season two, uh, was a continued evolution, you know, kind of first full season back, uh, post pandemic with, without that being something that we're kind of talking about at, you know, at the forefront, there's still some, some major themes. Things like doing more with less with, uh, the economy and things like that. Still some uncertainty, um, and then the continued kind of rise and integration of event technology into event programs. Didn't, um, know if you wanted to. You want to kick it off? Do you have any specific topics you want to talk about first?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, um, a common theme this season was, uh, just this idea of doing more with less. Um, we've seen budget cuts across the board and event professionals really having to get creative with, um, how they're launching their event programs and specifically event programs that are highly focused on in person events. Um, and when I say budget cuts, we, you know, we heard from our guest, budget cuts on the planner on the business side, but also the attendee side of not having the budget to maybe attend as many in person events as past years. Uh, so there's kind of that pull on both sides of the planner side to really uplevel the event experience while doing more with less, with fewer resources to really incentivize and um, make it worthwhile for attendees. And on the attendee side, um, there's this higher expectation, this need to see content that's really personalized and relevant. And we really touched on this idea of repurposing content with our episode that featured Caitlin last, um, episode, episode. And um, I like what Caitlin said about, you know, taking stock of what you currently have. I think that it can be overwhelming to think about repurposing and where to start with that, but just taking stock of what you have across blogs and resources and templates and guides and you know, maybe looking at, for example, a blog topic and thinking about how could you turn that into a template or A tool and that could be leveraged as uh, like a post event resource. You probably have more than you think you do. Um, and I think that that's going to continue to be an opportunity for event organizers to really lean into, as you know, in person, events continue to be kind of the focus for event formats. And as you know, we continue to try to provide attendees with as much, um, relevant and personalized content as possible. So I think it was interesting to kind of hear how, um, our guests are seeing that mentality, the doing more with less play out in the industry. Um, and I think that that repurposing component is such an important part of that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think when it comes to content, I mean when it comes to, you know, doing more with less, you have, you know, you can spend less money, but then there's also, you know, efficiencies and things like that that you have to look into. And um, I think for most event professionals there's probably an be to improve the way that you do content by, you know, getting closer to your marketing team, getting closer to your content team if you have one. Um, and kind of, you know, handing resources kind of back and forth and making sure you're synced up on themes and messages. Like we talked about in the last episode, it might be a little bit painful at first to try and get some of those ducks in a row, but once you do it just creates kind of a consistent messaging and a good flywheel of content. Um, and if you, you know, we talked about, you know, focusing on themes and having kind of a core document that everybody kind of refers to and getting buy in from, uh, customer success teams and sales teams and things like that. If you have that and then you take stock of what you currently have. Um, and you know, that's a really good starting point to begin to be more efficient in your content production and to make sure that when you are getting in front of your prospects or audiences that you are nailing those same themes and core messages over and over again and not kind of splitting hairs and trying to, to do too much with, with your limited resources. So yeah, great point. I also thought, um, it was interesting. I remember Miguel in, in the very first episode kicking us off of season two, talking about how some of the sort of mid sized events, um, were probably, you know, not going to come back. And so we're talking about 100 capacity, but that there's folks who um, you know, may not come back at all. And then I remember Mahogany, I believe it was talking about, you know, Potentially partnering like some of these smaller events and things like that. Partnering together to do things like a road show, an in person roadshow and not you know, um, not having to have a space all by yourself or you know, whatever to team up with other folks that might have similar prospects or similar attendees. Um, and you know, that's another way to potentially do more with less. I thought that was a great idea that they called out.

Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. I think it was called, I think she called it co locating, um, so kind of buddying up with a similar organization. Miguela mentioned that too of just space being less available for in person events. So yeah, that's a great way to kind of partner with uh, an organization and co locate at a venue. So you're cutting costs and uh, just reducing some of that complexity and it works really well if you can partner with an organization that shares similar value and mission as your own.

Speaker A: Yeah. I also thought it was interesting that when we're talking about doing more with less, that happens to be the state of uh, the economy and kind of the world right as we're seeing the rise of generative AI. Um, and so tools like Descript, I think you mentioned in the last uh, episode and obviously ChatGPT and Jasper and things like that, um, you know there's tools out there that are free or relatively low cost. Descript is fantastic if you're recording your sessions and you want to be able to cut those down into smaller bite sized um, videos for social media or for email or for your website or to pull the audio out for a podcast like this one or something like that. A tool like descript is really helpful. And then I'm willing to bet also that uh, you know we've already seen on our field team some efficiencies to be gained from leveraging, you know, chatgpt for some of the planning aspects. And there's some stuff that can kind of uh, be templatized or created relatively simply and it could save uh, you a lot of time and energy and potentially budget if you leverage some of these new tools and if you're doing it early enough then you're getting kind of a jump on the competition who may not be uh, fully aware or fully uh, you know, immersed in those new tools yet.

Speaker B: So yeah, especially great for smaller teams who don't have a ton of bandwidth and resources if you can tap into those AI tools to kind of get you started or um, like you said, provide some sort of template that just frees up so much of your time. Your mental load to focus on other um, aspects which we know there are many aspects of event planning and event organizing. So any chance you can get to ease that load, easier bandwidth as AI tools are really helpful.

Speaker A: Yeah. And Liv, you mentioned the um, you know, people having to be selective about the events that they attend. Um, selective with their time and their budgets and things like that. Uh, this is obviously the first uh, full season of kind of in person or expecting full 100% attendance like we talked about or had been expecting. Now we're coming to the kind of the end of the, of the event season and we've seen, we've definitely seen some packed uh, events this season. Can you talk a little bit about in person events and some of the trends and things that we heard this season around kind of raising the bar for in person?

Speaker B: Yeah, that was a big topic of discussion this season. This idea of like I was saying earlier, um, making your event experience worth your attendees time and money. And one thing that came up um, a lot over the past season was personalization and we talked about this even in the last episode with Caitlin of really tapping into your registration data, your survey data, um, paying attention to even your social media analytics, really understanding what is resonating with your attendees. And you can do that as really as registration, um, adding in questions that are asking attendees kind of what their challenges are, what their interests are and then taking that to capture, um, really taking that to create personalized sessions and content. And one thing that I love about um, the WebEx events app is this idea of being able to, or this functionality of being able to put attendees into groups. Within the app you can add attendees into groups. You could have for example like a VIP group or a group that's focused on data analytics and you can show them specific content um, that no one else will see. And so that's a really great way to personalize the experience and make it feel very tailored to your attendees interests um, and that is applicable to in person events right within it with an event app, um, you're able to really um, hone in on um, who that attendee is, their pain points and you know, make sure that you're delivering an experience that feels thoughtful and you know like you're, you're truly understanding who your, who your audience is. Um, and one example of kind of leveling up in person events that I liked from Mahogany was regarding sponsorships. We talk a lot about the attendee experience. We have to think about kind of your whole, all of your stakeholders in an event and Your sponsors are obviously a really big piece of that. So she talked about at an in person event, instead of offering for your sponsor to put their logo on a napkin or a sign and call it a day, invite your sponsor to your event. If you're having some sort of like reception or dinner, um, ask your sponsor to come and sit at the table, enjoy a nice dinner, um, and even you know, you can work with them to influence the content and really have a say in what kind of messaging you're sharing with your attendees. And having them on site at the experience allows them to network with your attendees. Um, and you know, ideally your um, securing sponsors who their business has a similar mission to your attendees, there's that synergy there. And just getting them on site and providing this really immersive experience provides a more valuable opportunity for your sponsors and for your attendees to be able to kind of humanize your sponsors and really bring them into the experience. So those were two that kind of stuck out to me from um, the season. What about you? Anything uh, about in person events?

Speaker A: Yeah, we had the, the episode about the kind of micro targeted niche events. I thought that was really, you know, something that I think we had heard. Like that used to be bigger and it's kind of coming back into vogue. Uh, the idea of kind of these just smaller, some call them road shows or just smaller events that are more targeted, that are more personal and intimate and you know, kind of can sit down and get to know somebody at a table or um, have workshops, things like that. And I think that those you know, are definitely becoming more popular again, uh, especially as people are making a decision to go travel or uh, you know, if that's becoming difficult, then by doing a roadshow and smaller events like that, then you can have people, you know, potentially meet them in their own backyard. Like we got to go a couple months ago back to, or a month ago back to Chicago where we have a great really cool Cisco office, um, and had a customer event there as well as an all hands, all on the same day. So we were able to kind of book this space. Um, it was using our own space. Like if you have the opportunity to do that, that's obviously great. If you have an office, regional office, something like that, um, book our space and um, and have both the, the all hands, uh, kind of company wide meeting on the same day as a customer event. Um, and we just had like, I don't 20 or 30 customers and partners come through and chat and have hors d' oeuvres and we did um, some cool activities and uh, had our CEO go up there speaking and things like that. So it was really cool. And I think that was just a really good example of the types of events that you can do. And I heard great feedback. I had some great conversations with folks who you know, didn't know uh, the details around WebEx events or didn't fully understand it until they kind of sat down um, with everybody and was able to hear it directly from us and the light bulb went off. And so there's definitely opportunities there. When you get face to face with somebody, you know, you know you're always uh, in a better position. So by keeping it small, keeping it niche and intimate and, and having a kind of a focused agenda, not trying to kind of catch everybody in some huge conference where they have to take multiple days, you can do it in an evening after work or something like that, um, makes it more kind of tangible and easier for people to fit into their schedules and their budgets. So I thought that was really good.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Something I've heard about recently, and I just talked to a customer about this as well, is this idea of like leisure, like combining business and leisure. And if you are going to have a larger scale event, like part of marketing that to your audience could be kind of this idea of like, you know, you can come to the event but you could potentially also bring your family and extend your trip and maybe have like a long weekend. Um, it's something that I just talked to a customer yesterday about how they kind of choose their um, event locations, um, very specifically so they can kind of market it to their audience that way. And I hear of a lot of attendees and professionals kind of liking that idea of being able to um, if it's like over the summer, adding it to their family schedule as well. Um, so they kind of get to uh, experience like the business, the professional side of it and then maybe extend their trip for an in person um, or a vacation with their family. So that's just kind of a fun thing I've heard about recently. I'd never heard of the word leisure, but I think it's becoming, becoming more common. And um, I think it's a good way especially when we're talking about like people having to make the investment to go to an experience if they, if you can kind of position that as like, well like you know, it's on a, ah, maybe Wednesday to Tuesday to Thursday, like bring the family and hang out for the weekend and might resonate a bit more with um, your attendees.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. I think the key word you said there was position it the way that you position it. Like it doesn't, you don't have to rent out the top five, uh, you know, rows of a baseball park somewhere and how, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't have to be a big thing that you like, host and sponsor and pay for and whatever. Like you can just leverage the cool city that you set up and just tell people what's nearby and just kind of encourage them to bring their families and things like that. That is really no additional cost to you. It's just about kind of your awareness as an event planner that you are asking for them to take time away, um, and that you understand that they have a larger life than just whatever it is that they're doing professionally and that they might want to see the city or they might want to spend time with their family. And I think even just that positioning alone could potentially make, you know, your event more enticing than someone who doesn't do that. While we're talking about in person too, uh, you know, Miguel talked about kind of, we had a really interesting conversation about like the digitalization, uh, or you know, technology enabled events and kind of this, you know, continued push and pull and kind of conflict around the word hybrid. Um, but I think the key takeaway was that, you know, you definitely want a technology component, uh, to your in person events as well. And that that's kind of becoming, uh, just part of, you know, I think we predicted this at the end of last season in this exact episode, you know, the wrap up episode, that uh, people are going to have more of a hybrid type of experience. Whether they called it in person or hybrid or whatever, the technology was there and is there to stay. And so curious what you think about that and kind of the uh, continued push and pull around, um, the word hybrid.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's something I'm still kind of mulling over and I feel like this season challenged a lot of definitions or ideas I had about the event industry. And I think it was interesting to hear Miguel say, like, I'm not really sure if hybrid is the right word for that. We were talking about these in person events that are kind of, like you said, tech enabled. But um, I think the word hybrid has a lot of connotations and a little bit of baggage, I think. So unlike you, I'm still holding onto this idea that a true hybrid experience can exist and can be successful. But I understand we heard from Michelle, um, who said maybe in a hybrid Scenario, your, your virtual and your in person experience don't need to be happening at the same time. And I think that is a sticking point in this discussion of hybrid, where some people are like, you know, it has to be happening at the same time. And I think the reality of that is that it can be really, it can be challenging to execute something, you know, simultaneously. I think my takeaway from this and listening to Michelle and Miguel, um, is that it's evolving so much and the definition is so, so varied. And you know, Michelle had said too, like, the in person, the virtual experience don't have to be the exact same, they just need to be equitable. You need to make sure that your virtual attendees don't feel left behind and an afterthought. Um, so I think that to me is my biggest takeaway is all the other things. You know, we're, we're maybe never all going to agree on a definition. Maybe hybrid won't be a word that we use often in the next few years. It'll kind of fade out and maybe a new world, new word will come into play and we'll change that, uh, industry term. But I think at the end of the day, it's about creating equitable experiences, whether they're happening at the same time, whether they're happening asynchronously. We want our remote, our virtual attendees to feel like they're in an immersive experience that was worth their time and worth their energy.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. When we were talking to, uh, actually it wasn't in the interview with Kara. I actually spoke to Kara while we were in Chicago. But, um, Kara was a guest this season on the podcast talking, um, about WebEx events from a customer standpoint. Um, but she was up on stage during the customer event and talked a little bit about how she defined hybrid. And a light bulb went off for me, um, because I think I remember I could be wrong, but I feel like it was similarly defined, uh, by Miguel in episode one. The idea that hybrid, at least to folks who have been in this industry for a long time, I think the sticking point is that to be a hybrid event, they kind of think of it as the in person and the virtual audience interacting with each other in some way. That's the part that we continue to get pushback on as just like not finding necessarily a great or consistent way to do that. Um, and that, that's more like, you know, people were putting, hoping that that would happen. But whether it actually does or not, you know, or how frequently it does remains to be Seen. And so I think, you know what I really like, again, I think we need a new word for it. Because if that's what hybrid is in some people's mind, if Kara and Miguel say that's hybrid, um, or that's how they think of hybrid, then I would trust that those two have a pretty good finger on the pulse of what event professionals think. Um, the idea though needs to now move into what you were saying, which is there's so many opportunities, especially with the rise of event technology, to provide equitable, uh, experiences with the same content or similar content or whatever. They might be asynchronous, they might be on demand, whatever the case, but it just, it's making less and less sense to put a bunch of time and effort into creating content in a big, you know, um, in person event and then to not capture some of that and create some type of on demand or virtual experience that can then be, be experienced by an additional audience. Whether it's ongoing and on demand or whether it's one time or whatever, um, it just allows you to reach more people and it allows you to um, stay in front of your customers year round and gives you marketing content and all these different things. So I think that's kind of where it goes like these technology enabled experiences and kind of no matter looking more holistically at the attendee experience, that no matter where they are, whether they're attending a virtual event, whether attending an in person event, whether it's been sitting six months or two weeks since they've been there, that they're kind of in this same ecosystem. And so that kind of brings us to the idea around all in one, uh, event tech platforms or event technology, platform of record, event management platform of record, um, which is something that I think we just thought we kind of came into as the season was beginning, realizing that there was a huge shakeup a couple years ago. A lot of folks and companies are rushed into the virtual space during the pandemic and as the pandemic was waning, um, and there's been a shakeout over the last couple of years where we've seen a lot of acquisitions and mergers and um, even you know, massive layoffs and closing down of organizations. Um, and now it's starting to get to the point where we're seeing a few kind of key players rising to the top and most of them are at least making some kind of play for this sort of all in one, in person, virtual hybrid, year round community, kind of the whole thing. Um, rather than picking and choosing Your point? Solutions. So I was just curious, what are your current thoughts after this season on uh, event technology platforms and having kind of an all in one platform for your organization and your event, uh, program?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think everyone we talked to said all in one, all in one, all in one. It's so important. And I think we're at a point, um, we're talking about expectations from an attendee perspective, sponsor perspective, and a planner perspective as well. That ease of use is so important and being able to have all of your event tools under one roof and you know, not forcing attendees to download six different apps or your sponsors having to download six different um, apps on their phone, um, to just get onboarded into the app, into registration, into lead retrieval. Having that all housed under one roof just makes the experience much more seamless from, from every standpoint. And it's something that we talked a lot about with Michelle. She had talked about going to an event, um, that she was working on and you know, the uh, sponsors having to download a bunch of different applications and it's just really complicated. Also from like a data point of view, trying to get clean data, trying to get your solutions to work together, um, it just creates a ton of complexity and it's just adds a lot of burden to the planner of having to keep track of all these different solutions, disparate solutions and onboarding attendees, sponsors, um, it just becomes kind of a mess. And so this idea of an all in one solution just streamlines all of that. And we've talked about too, as planners plan multiple events a year, um, annual events, this idea of being able to clone an event to use one provider, um, for your annual event that uses a mobile app, um, for your community that you host throughout the year, um, for lead retrieval that you use at maybe all of your events, your external events, having the same provider for each of those use cases, um, it just makes the process much easier. Um, from a data perspective, from a user perspective, you know, your, your stakeholders become familiar with your tools and um, it's just a better experience for them too. As you know, they don't have to learn a whole new platform every single time. Um, they get familiar and you know, hopefully the um, you know, the Solution, um, like WebEx events, it's, it's very easy to use. So it's a seamless process of getting your stakeholders onboarded. And then after the fact, when you're sharing data with your sponsors and you know, you're cloning for next year, all of that can be done just in one place. And as we've been saying, event organizers just have so much to think about. And when it comes to technology, um, it should be working for the event planner. It shouldn't be adding more complexity to their plates.

Speaker A: Exactly. Uh, as you know, I have two kids at home and there's like this meme that changes every time, but there's this meme that goes around about like, don't forget to check the, the who's a what's it in the whatchamacallit app in the blah blah, blah. And there's like seven different, like random names about like the different places you have to go to check the grades and then talk to the teacher and then talk to this and then find out about field trips and they're all completely different. And that's, that's kind of the place that we were landing in events for a while where we had all these, you know, best in class point solutions. But as you were mentioning, like, not only is, you know, it's great, you know, you got the best, you got the best of all these different things, but then you've got to integrate them all together. You've got to manage all those different vendors, you've got to manage all those different contracts, um, you have to get all of those different things, all those different solutions vetted by your IT department. Potentially, if you're an enterprise or a larger organization that values security and privacy, you know, all of that is a ton of work. Not to mention then, you know, another event comes and then you choose to, to change it or do something else like now you've got to do it all over again. And so, you know, talk about efficiency and getting more with, you know, with, with less. Just the efficiencies that can be gained by having an event platform of record or event management platform of record that you can use consistently and that really captures or it's as close to kind of a, you know, a CRM or a marketing automation system for events, um, as there is and over time as things get, you know, um, better and more evolved, they're just going to integrate more and more seamlessly and how you're going to be really thankful, uh, that you have all of that data in one place that you can get kind of a 365 degree view of your customer, of their preferences. We talked about dynamic registration forms. Like you probably don't need to, over time you won't need to ask the same questions every single time. Uh, you could ask like, has your dietary restrictions changed? Because you've got that stuff in your profile or whatever the case. Um, you're going to get to know your customers and prospects and attendees better. You're going to be able to give them better, more personalized experiences and you're going to be able to stay in front of them year round. So, uh, yeah, absolutely. There's, there's just so much to be gained from kind of an all in one platform and, and going through that vetting process is worth it. And then getting people on board, you know, you can use those. You want to try and find a platform that you can use for everything from your large marketing events to your small, you know, internal sales kickoffs to HR function to whatever, um, virtual hybrid, you know, kind of as flexible as possible. So, yeah, that, I think that was a key takeaway. Well, we're getting to the end here of season two. We hope that you guys found value in it. Um, we hope that you have some key takeaways. We hope your, your spring event season went incredibly well and that you're excited to hopefully take a breather a little bit for a few months, enjoy some sunshine and some vacation this summer before you have to jump right back into it. Um, hopefully there's some great takeaways that you can implement into your programs next season and beyond. Um, and so, yeah, we just want to thank you guys for listening to season two. Olivia, any, any closing remarks?

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you so much. It's been so fun this season. Um, we appreciate everyone listening and yeah, I hope that you gained some insights and yeah, are ready to kind of jump back into things, um, in the fall. Um, but if you're, you're wrapping up your, your events, um, for the spring, kudos to you. You're doing a great job. And you know the events industry, if we've learned anything from this podcast, is that it's always changing and there's always flux and, you know, new opportunities and new challenges. So, um, just big round of applause to event planners.

Speaker A: Superheroes.

Speaker B: Amazing superheroes.

Speaker A: I've learned so much about events over the past couple years and it's just been a real pleasure. So, yeah, amazing. Thank you guys all for listening and have a great summer.

Speaker B: Have a great summer.

Speaker A: That's a wrap on season two of Event Horizons. We have tons of free resources for event professionals on on our website. Visit Socio Events Resources to check them out. I'm Nolan Ether.

Speaker B: And I'm Olivia Van Kuren. This podcast is brought to you by Webex Events, formerly Socio. Thank you for listening.