Upping Your Tech Game

by Grace Dearing

Person scanning a QR code with their phone

Year after year, incorporating new technologies is stressed within the event industry, but after the virtual conferences of the pandemic, meeting planners and attendees are more receptive to these elevated technical enhancements. We have conquered the virtual conference, and live streaming is a given, but how else can you bring tech into your in-person events?

Tech solutions fall into a few different categories that serve different objectives.

Conference Navigation and Information is perhaps the easiest to address and most essential to the event experience for attendees. This category includes accessible and user-friendly approaches to conference schedules, venue maps, registration badges and check-in processes. Digital convention apps are easy to download and hold all information you could need right in your hand. Send attendees a link to download the app in their registration confirmation email and post QR codes to download around your venue. With features to customize your own agenda, GPS navigation around large venues, and interactive options with attendees for networking, a digital app is not a tool to pass up! Another way to address navigation and information needs is through touchscreen digital info boards that provide the conference app information but on a large screen stationed around your venue like shopping mall directories. These can also include a help hub with chat bots who can answer questions from attendees. Digital check-in processes through the app or otherwise can allow check-in through a scan-and-go at a kiosk, location sharing to check-in the attendee when they enter the building, or self-check-in buttons. These contactless check-in options prevent long lines and crowded rooms.

After boosting the navigational experience for attendees, the next focus is on Elevated Content Showcasing. Whether this is sponsorship opportunities or part of your main programming. Video walls to be placed throughout your venue can showcase a mashup of content, whether that is promoting a special event at the conference or highlighting premium sponsors. Think outside of the 16:9 format: asymmetrical or curved screens can be more visually intriguing. Think big with holograms! Add holograms into your scenic for the mainstage or place them at high-traffic areas in your venues where attendees can get up close and personal with the futuristic technology. Immersive VR headsets or AR integrations with your smart phone camera can transport attendees into a new space and can include an educational component to advocate for a cause or showcase a new product. Use drones to fly through the crowds at your event and capture video that can be played back in a highlight video or streamed live onto a video wall or presented at a general session.

Robots with a futuristic blue background

Increase engagement and attendance at sessions using Gamification. Wearable technology like smartwatches, RFID bracelets, or smart badges can track attendees’ movements and award points for attendance at the sessions or interactions within the exhibit halls. Create a QR code scavenger hunt throughout the venue to direct attendees between activations and spaces to experience the entirety of your convention. Project live Twitter walls or other interactive polling systems in your event space to allow attendees to publish their thoughts and feel part of a community at an event. Some platforms also publish top Twitter profiles that have tweeted the most with your event hashtag, encouraging healthy competition and adding visibility for your event online. Custom digital activations where attendees are encouraged to click a button or pull a lever to win a prize can be used by sponsors to promote a new product.

Finally, Connection and Marketing tech tools will help your attendees network and keep your audience outside of your attendees engaged through social media pushes. Physical business cards are out, instead attendees are sharing digital business cards with QR codes that lead scanners to their LinkedIn pages or personal websites. Without worrying about forgetting your business cards or printing new ones after every promotion, show a lot more off with this digital solution. Photobooths go beyond just being an engaging activation. Make sure yours is set up to automatically allow attendees to tweet out their images. Allow attendees to choose between capturing a photo, a gif, or a boomerang video and be sure everything is branded with a filter that showcases your event. Elevate your photobooth further with a robot camera arm or a 360 camera to take unique shots like the GlamBOT at red carpet award shows.