Artificial intelligence

How The Event Tech Industry Is Embracing AI – And How You Should Too

As one of the hottest buzzwords amongst event professionals, the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the events industry continues to be a prevalent topic, creating a wave of new opportunities for event technology platforms to fill in the gaps and make event organising more efficient and alleviating the workload for event profs to provide improved event experiences with the frequent release of new technology and a wide range of available tools, many of which are free. 

The rise of AI is only one of the key rising trends within the events industry that does not seem to be abating anytime soon. In fact, according to the 2023 edition of the Skift Meetings Event Technology Made Simple Report, 61% of event tech vendors offer at least one AI-powered feature, with the most common use being matchmaking as almost 40% of vendors use AI to provide personalised connections suggestions to attendees and a third using it to power content suggestions. 

According to Veemal Gungadin, CEO and founder of event technology platform GEVME, “Artificial Intelligence is finally living up to its long-held promises. The key here is that the technology is now available to the masses, making many opportunities possible.” 

This article explores the current use of AI within events and the opportunities available for event professionals to build and deliver highly impactful event experiences by leveraging AI. 

An artificial hand for event organisers

AI is revolutionising how event organisers create, market, and manage events. One of the main ways AI is helping to streamline this process is through its ability to allow for automated tasks, enabling event organisers to focus on higher-value activities instead of mundane administrative duties. Event marketers can also leverage AI to reduce the manual tasks of finding the right audience, sponsors and exhibitors by leveraging the right data set to target the right audience.

Additionally, the rise of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, has made it undoubtedly easier for organisers to generate event content, including session titles and descriptions, welcome speeches and can even churn out a full agenda–all with just a few prompts, as observed in a Skift experiment, thus greatly reducing the workload for event marketers.

Personalise the overall event experience

Personalised customer experiences are incredibly important in today’s world, where people expect it more than ever before. By tailoring the attendee experience through personalisation, events can deliver targeted content, offers, and networking opportunities that cater to the individual preferences of each attendee. This can make all the difference between a standard event and an unforgettable experience.

Due to technological advancements, implementing personalisation within events is now easier than ever, thanks partly to AI technology. These can range from having personalised recommendations about sessions to attend based on an attendee’s data that may have been gathered during the registration process to the increasing use of AI for networking and matchmaking at events, fuelling networking opportunities — as people with similar interests get to connect.

Through analysis of attendee information and past behaviour (particularly in the case of returning attendees), AI has the ability to facilitate connections between attendees and other event stakeholders, leading to improved networking opportunities. Event technology platforms, such as GEVME, utilise AI to power recommendation engines that suggest sessions for attendees to join and connect them with other participants and exhibitors.

One exciting aspect of personalisation is the emergence of AI-powered interpretation and translation. These tools have greatly improved in quality and offer undeniable cost and ease-of-use benefits compared to human interpretation. Interprefy recently announced its AI event translation tool, with Interprefy Aivia being touted as the world’s first advanced automated speech translation service for online and live events. By leveraging AI to provide simultaneous interpretation, event organisers are able to easily cater to a much wider audience while effectively engaging them in their preferred languages. 

Harness the power of AI to optimise data-driven insights

The use of AI also enables events to become more data-driven, providing event organisers with valuable insights that can be leveraged for future event planning. By gathering data from event attendees, organisers can gain unparalleled insight into the needs and preferences of their target audience. In the case of virtual and hybrid events, every click is trackable, offering very precise analytics and a goldmine of insights into attendee behaviours and trends. 

Data-driven insights can also be used to optimise the event experience with AI-powered automation. By understanding what works and what doesn’t, event organisers can use AI to automate processes such as registration, ticketing, and session management, in order to create a more streamlined and user-friendly event experience. Automation allows for efficient workflows that reduce manual labour while providing attendees with an optimised attendee experience. 

Replacing the role of event planners? Highly unlikely

The use of artificial Intelligence within the events industry is unlikely to subside anytime soon. In fact, it’ll more than likely increase, with more event professionals adopting it within their workflows, processes and events. With the growing pervasiveness of AI, a growing concern is whether AI is replacing the jobs of event professionals.

Although AI has reduced the expenses related to hiring external resources for event management and has helped streamline the process, certain aspects still require a human touch. Being an event planner involves several responsibilities, such as assigning duties to team members, making crucial decisions, and finding innovative solutions to problems. With the help of AI, event planners can accomplish these tasks more efficiently. However, to provide a personalized and human touch to the event experience, event planners will remain crucial and hold a stronger position than AI, at least for the foreseeable future.

The dawn of a new era

The dawn of a new era is upon us. With the advent of AI, event planners can now streamline and optimize their workflows to create more efficient, data-driven processes. AI has opened up previously unimaginable possibilities, from personalising attendee experiences to providing automated interpretation and translation services to generating quality content that organisers can easily edit, copy and paste to gathering valuable insights about attendee behaviour. As technology progresses and AI becomes more sophisticated, event planners should embrace the opportunities that come with it and use it to their advantage.

Comments
To Top

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This