Choosing the Right Event Technology For Your Audience

Event technology

The event industry has well and truly embraced digital technology. All events now contain event technology and digital aspects, even with the return of in-person.

While event technology continues to rapidly evolve and push the boundaries of what is possible on a virtual stage, keeping audiences engaged and creating memorable experiences is still the foundation to get right.

So what Event tech do you need to know about to deliver world-class online events? Here’s a handy guide to choosing the right event technology to make sure the 5-star reviews roll in.

Top-quality live streaming

First things first: quality live streaming is an absolute necessity for a successful online or hybrid event. People expect smooth, flawless, and continuous streaming services and have little patience for error.

To ensure that your speeches, presentations, Q&A sessions, and even breakout sessions run without a hitch, look for platforms or apps that enable seamless integration with world-leading video streaming platforms, such as Vimeo or YouTube.

There’s a lot to consider with Live Streaming, so check out our blog ‘5 Event Live Streaming Mistakes to Avoid’ for more details on this key component of a successful event.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already revolutionising lots of sectors across businesses worldwide, and after events were forced to move online with the pandemic, AI has become a steadfast piece of tech within the events industry.

For example, features like speech-to-text transcription, live translation, and chatbots can help boost engagement, but also and importantly, they enable you to deliver an inclusive event and serve a diverse global audience.

Chatbots can help your ‘human’ team by supporting their customer-facing activities and interactions. These can be especially helpful when you have large audiences.

Powered by AI and machine learning technologies, chatbots will be able to boost your customers’ online experience, answer questions quickly, and provide your event organisers with more autonomy, time, and resources to do a great job.

Take a virtual break

Creating a virtual breakout session for your guests is essential if you want to avoid those hard-won engagement rates plummeting mid-way through your event.

A virtual breakout session allows people to connect and interact over topics of mutual interest but in a more laid-back, informal fashion.

In the virtual event landscape, simply assign each guest with their own specific breakout room, and ensure that they are sent there a few times during the event for short periods of time.

Internet of Things (IoT) for virtual events

Whether you’re running an entirely virtual event or a hybrid one, you could consider incorporating some IoT products.

Think about wearable tech that can offer an enhanced online experience to your guests, whilst at the same time enabling you to uncover powerful insights into the habits of your attendees.

And if “wearable tech” only brings to mind stuff like smartwatches and fitness trackers, this is not the full story. For virtual events, the best type of wearable technology comes in the form of a “smart badge”.

As the name suggests, these are digital name tags containing an RFID chip. These types of chips can be programmed to track your guest’s actions, movements, and habits across the virtual event space.

The cherry on top? You can analyse all this data at a later stage, which helps you to better understand your audience and helps inform your next event.

It’s all about Augmented Reality (AR) now

This exciting event technology is rapidly developing and may slowly replace virtual reality.

With augmented reality, your guests will be able to enjoy computer-generated features and attractions that are added to the real environment.

Through AR, you can grab your attendees’ attention and boost their engagement and motivation, which in turn helps them to interact with your event in a more effective and lucrative way.

And if you want to take a step further, visual reality is a new type of tech that allows your event participants to enter a 3D world that’s been entirely computer-generated.

Visual reality allows your guests to explore this environment and interact with its objects and features while letting you promote and showcase specific aspects, products, or services of your brand.

Holograms and projections

Projection mapping is part of the augmented reality world and involves creating holograms and projections that offer a more in-depth, tangible understanding of your content.

With extra dimensions, optical illusions, and other visual effects, projection mapping is one of the best ways to boost your branding through engaging and unique personalisation and storytelling techniques.

But holograms and projections are not just limited to inanimate objects. Another great way to use projection mapping is by creating holograms that show remote speakers who can be located literally anywhere in the world.

This can help you (and them) save a lot of time and expenses and offers a more sustainable approach to having an international speaker list.

Gamification

Gamification is a big event technology trend and keeps your audience entertained and engaged, or can offer a nice break between meetings.

Through online gamification, your attendees will have the opportunity to directly interact with one another as well as with any vendors, speakers, sponsors, or other stakeholders that they might be interested in.

Instead of the usual post-event surveys, polls, and questionnaires, you could encourage your guests to take part in fun games and challenges. You could incentivise their activity with a prize that loops back to your brand or services too!

Mobile and desktop apps

Your attendees can download either a mobile or desktop version of your chosen event app, create a unique profile, and interact with each other. Some of these apps also include customisable avatar creation, video chat, direct messaging, and can connect to the live stream of the virtual event.

Avatars are a fun and effective way for your guests to explore your virtual venue, visit individual booths and stands, and network with other participants. If the virtual event can be streamed into the app, your attendees can share, like, and comment on related posts as well as interact in real-time with speakers, sponsors, and vendors.

If you are looking to integrate your virtual event with the most popular social media platforms, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, then these apps are a great tool to achieve it in a smooth, seamless, and convenient way.