Liz King, founder and owner of Liz King Events in New York City, knows a thing or two about keeping people engaged. At TechsyTalk Live, an annual event-technology conference that King hosts in Manhattan, she scheduled Trevor Lynn, chief marketing officer at Social Tables, to speak in the final slot — which happened to be after 4 p.m. on a recent sunny Friday afternoon.
Lynn and his presentation — predictions about what changes to expect in the industry over the next 15 years — rose to the occasion, keeping attendees in their seats, scribbling notes and tweeting, until the finish line. You can find Lynn’s entire presentation on Slideshare.
1. Event technology will be free and integrated. Event tech companies tend either to have full-on end-to-end solutions, or to do one thing really, really well, Lynn said. As technology improves, he said, products will integrate. “We’ll start to see free products being able to work with free products, and we’ll be able to put all this together online and create the perfect software for each event.”
2. Events will be personalized to each attendee. “How would you change your event if you could pinpoint every attendee, and just serve them what they were there to see?” Lynn asked participants. Technology like iBeacons are making that a reality by transmitting personalized information to attendees’ smart phones and devices.
3. There will be a subscription model for events. Subscription models are popping up everywhere, from monthly software contracts to fitness-class subscriptions that allow users to go to as many classes as they want anywhere in a city. “From an event organizer’s standpoint, how does that model affect which events you want to host and who you want to target?” Lynn asked. “And what would a subscription of X number of events look like?”
4. Content will be crowdsourced. Attendees already can make speaker suggestions and submit content and topic ideas. Some registration companies currently are set up so that attendees pre-select the talks that they want to go to, and if sessions don’t attract enough attendees, they’re dropped from the agenda. “That’s level one,” Lynn said. “Level two is total audience engagement, with the audience creating the event for us.”
5. Events will be crowdfunded. “Crowdfunding an entire event, that’s the ultimate commitment by an attendee,” Lynn said. “That’s how you can take an attendee from being a
Association Corner
12 Ways to Think About the Future of Events
Trevor Lynn, CMO of Social Tables, predicts how meetings and events will change over the next 15 years.
by Barbara Palmer