Last week, November 20 & 21 2024 we were proud exhibitors at Event Tech Live, London. This was an event of many firsts for us, our first time exhibiting at the show, our first time speaking, and our first time doing any public marketing. For us, Event Tech Live was in some ways our launch event into the events industry, and it didn’t disappoint.
Being a small and youthful company we arrived with much excitement about the possibilities but also at the same time a humbling experience, being in the same room as all our competition who have been in the event tech industry for many years.
Our objective for the event was to have as many conversations with people as possible. If we came away with one good conversation that would’ve been enough validation for us to know we have a product and proposition the industry needs.
To our surprise, our stand was more popular than we could’ve imagined. It took a bit for the first conversation, but after that, our stand was so busy both days that when the event ended, people were told they had to leave!
AI Took Center Stage – Transforming The Event Industry
As if you needed to guess! It seemed every tech vendor came to the event with an AI story. There was a lot of focus on how AI could be used to improve the attendee experience.
To us, it seemed like every tech vendor had reached for the low hanging fruit when it came to implementing AI into their product. We saw vendors with AI assisted chat bots that can answer event related questions, something we’ve been doing months.
Others were live transcribing sessions and video which is a bit cooler, but as 85% of event sessions aren’t recorded, will this make an impact on the event industry as a whole? Probably not.
A handful of vendors were taking a bigger leap and live translating audio into native languages, but again, unless you’re recording / live streaming an event, this is both expensive and low impact, in our opinion.
It seems the event tech vendors have missed the most important elements of where AI can be of genuine assistance to event organizers across multiple event types. Great news for us, because we know exactly where our AI journey is focused.
As we turn into the new year, our focus is going to be on implementing meaningful and impactful AI into our platform in the following areas:
- Multi-lingual Content Submissions – We’re going to be releasing an update soon that will allow prospective speakers to submit their session proposals through our call for content in their native language and then automatically detect their language and translate it into the language of the conference organizer. This will allow the Speaker to pitch their session more confidently and concisely and the organizer to evaluate submissions with fairer judgement.
- AI Powered Hosted Buyer Matchmaking – Soon you’ll no longer need to trawl through lines of Excel data to match attendee profiles to suitable exhibitors as part of your matchmaking service. With our upcoming release in 2025, our AI matchmaking service will analyze your attendee profiles against your exhibitor product and service offerings and create matched profiles you can use to set up your hosted buyer meetings.
- AI Automated Meeting Bookings – We’re working on our own meeting booking service where attendees can pre-book meetings with exhibitors. When released, attendees will be able to automatically book meetings with their matched exhibitors using our AI matchmaking service that will guarantee your exhibitors footfall ahead of your event.
Customer Service Is What Customers Wanted More Than Tech
Sharing an event with so many competitors who generally offer similar solutions (albeit not as good in our opinion :)) one question was asked of us time and time again, “What is your USP compared to all the others?”
It’s a fair question. Many who asked that seemed to brace themselves to be mansplained on some uber niche technical detail about how we register attendees vs the other vendors. But we simply said “Us”.
You could see the resistance and pessimism leave their shoulders, almost a relief that we valued our own value as a differentiator rather than technical semantics.
We explained our company ethos is about providing customers with value for money first and technical capability second. We explained that we wanted to be their event partner they can trust and rely on to help them through their event. Whether that is by providing 1st and 2nd line support to their attendees on their behalf, taking on organizing tasks to support their team, or just being someone to pick up the phone to let off steam at the end of a stressful day.
This came across as a relief and we ended up having 20-30 minute conversations with event organizers about our platform, capabilities as a company, and our values.
Many told us they were upset with the way large event tech companies are delivering poor value for money by either referring customers post sale to off shore support or left to read technical documentation to find answers to their problems.
With Just Attend we take a human first approach and we’re with you whenever you need us, any time of day.
We came away from the event beaming knowing our customer first approach to the market was the one the industry is really looking for.
A Smorgasbord Of Ideas & Possibilites
Talking with event organizers from various event sizes from charities, corporate, and trade shows was a great learning opportunity for us as well.
Sometimes we can find ourselves quite insular to our own needs and ideas which left unchecked can lead towards developing features nobody needs.
Talking with other event organizers we were able to understand what features we have that really can make impact on how other events are run and where we could improve as a platform to appeal to a wider event style.
It was awesome to have the interaction with fellow event organizers who offered their unconditional feedback which has set our minds racing with ideas on how to improve the system.
Such A Nice User Interface That’s Simple To Understand
As we mentioned, event tech live was our first public trade show and our first real opportunity to find out what others thought of the platform.
The feedback was overwhelming. Event organizers loved the user interface for attendees, speakers, and exhibitors likening it to familiar social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook.
By offering a familiar interface people can navigate their way through your event and stay engaged in your event longer and organizers could really see that and the attention to detail we’ve given to each part of the system.
From an event administration perspective we were complimented countless times on how easy it is to manage an event and the level of detail in the reporting capabilities offered by the platform.
Watching their smiles beam from ear to ear as we went through each report was nothing short of amazing to witness.
Industry Recognition
To end the show on a high note, we were surprised and delighted to announce we’ve been officially recognized in the industry flagship event tech awards. We won in the category of “The Best Technology Startup” for 2024!
That’s not all! We also entered a competition for startups and new products to the event tech industry where we were competing with 8 other tech vendors. After a round of voting we got through to the final and pitched live on stage to a judging panel.
We’re pleased to announce that we were awarded bronze place in the launchpad event, narrowly missing out on silver. Congratulations to the winner Visual Hive who provide AI assisted chat bot services to events.
As we start to come down from all the excitement of last week and take stock of the conversations we’ve had and the feedback from the event as a whole, we’re extremely excited about what’s in store for us in the future.
We’re still a young company and the path in front of us is long and we’re sure will have many turns. However, we will always look back at this moment with fondness of where it all began.
Thank you to everyone who voted for us, supported us, and stopped by our stand and we look forward to support you and your event in the future, whenever that may be.
