NETWORKED NATION
What challenges do you face in the day-to -day management of your events ?
What OnAIR features do you use the most ?
Franck Grosset-Janin , head of PCO and Innovation Hubs – Europe for Kuoni Congress , tells CN how OnAIR by EventsAIR put their needs first to keep their event schedule on track
The real challenge we have faced during the pandemic is that of moving all of our meetings to an online environment . We are now dependant on technology , and this is one of the real challenges . We are not an on-site congress where we can monitor our suppliers , where we are confident with them because we can see them . It ’ s a different world , you depend on the internet connection , the technology . There is a lot about security and data privacy which are completely different compared to what we were using before .
We are using every single tool OnAIR offers . I wouldn ’ t say one of them in particular , we use all of them and we even add a few more on top of what is proposed . We customise the tool to offer even more . They are moving quickly on development and trying to meet clients ’ wishes .
Can you name a specific outcome that has improved since using OnAIR ?
Do you offer any extra features to your clients or delegates ?
Can you tell us about a complex event which OnAIR has made easier to manage ?
37 Case study
It has improved a lot of things . Sometimes it ’ s more about the system itself . For me , it ’ s about the stability of the platform , which really made a difference from the beginning to the end . When you develop a software at the beginning , and at short notice , it may have bugs . You cannot expect a platform to run smoothly . The OnAIR team have been really quick understanding all of our customer needs and listen to us reporting the bugs and now the platform is really stable .
To summarise the functionalities which are useful in virtual meetings , I would say anything related to networking and interaction with attendees ’ tops everything . You would expect a platform like OnAIR to allow you to join all the meetings on the same platform , but what is important is how you get connected to the other attendees .
This is where they are working constantly to improve this experience . You have the networking functions , you have the social event in a different way , of course you ’ re not face-to-face . Interactivity is the key online : how to attract sponsors in the industry . For me the interactivity is something we need to push , and we always put this on the table for our clients .
In June we ran an event with 2,000 attendees and 900 speakers . All of them were on the OnAIR platform and we had 170 sessions over five days , so this was massive .
Even though it would have been onsite , it would have been a lot of work . As you can imagine , after two months of development from the OnAIR platform , we were able to run the event virtually with a lot of content . At the end , OnAIR was the perfect tool to manage that . We could have parallel sessions taking place at the same time and every delegate could jump from one session to another . www . conference-news . co . uk