AI FOR EVENTS: HOW TO APPLY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE EVENT INDUSTRY

The future is now. The technology that once seemed like a distant myth is here, and it’s here to stay and evolve. Artificial intelligence, in particular, is disrupting the event industry in ways we never imagined until a few years ago. Whether or not you feel like you have a good understanding of AI, it’s clear that it can completely change the event planning process, attendee experience, and the ability to collect post-conference data.

But before we find out how you can incorporate this new technology into your conferences or events, let’s start from the beginning!

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, can seem quite ambiguous. And if this is how it feels, know that you are not alone because according to the various sectors it can also take on different meanings. However, in the event industry, it usually refers to technology or machines that can understand and interact in an environment using words, syntax and intelligent learning. Believe it or not, most of us now use it on a daily basis and with ease: “Alexa, what’s the weather today?”, “Siri, call Mom”.

So how exactly is AI impacting the event industry?

Networking:

AI is significantly improving the ways we can connect our participants. Rather than hoping that casual connections lead to mutually beneficial business relationships, we can now use this technology to more strategically bring together participants who share the same interests, experience the same challenges, and have common goals within an industry.

Chatbots:

Premise: Most chatbots are not to be considered AI, but automations that are part of the so-called conversational marketing.

Chatbots are used to conduct conversations with visitors to a site, with users of event apps or within any communication channel provided for our event and are programmed to best emulate the response of a human being.

They can answer questions, keep in touch with attendees, and provide requested information. Often, chatbots can work through messaging apps that users already have installed on their smartphone. So not only are they easy to deploy across multiple platforms, but by answering frequently asked questions, they also save your staff time and energy, allowing you to focus on other areas of the event planning process.

You are interested? Take a look at Userbot, a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence and helps to always reply to all user messages, in an easy, fast and customizable way even independently.

If you are still not completely convinced about this technology, keep following our blog, we will soon learn more!

Personalized event experience and deeper knowledge of attendees:

We can’t talk about AI without talking about its “deep-learning ” capabilities. Using it in the event industry means deepening the knowledge of the participants on the basis of their specific interests. Whether it’s recommending which sessions to attend, or recommending people to network with, AI can help make your event much more personalized.

Eliminate language barriers:

If there is one thing that AI can do well, it is to elaborate and translate languages: if you are ready to attend an event in any part of the world, or simply to connect people from different cultures, know that it is possible. accurately and instantly translate web pages, contents and any other specific communication.

Now that you know all the ways AI is improving our ability to plan successful events, you may be wondering how to put what you have discovered into practice.

How can I integrate AI into my conference, trade show or event?

The first step is to determine the general objectives and most of the time they focus on at least one of these topics:

Offer better networking opportunities:

According to a 2018 study by the International Association of Exhibitions and Events, 76% of the nearly 9,000 attendees indicated that networking is one of the main factors in deciding whether or not to attend a conference or event.

So how can AI be used to improve networking? For starters, it is able to completely customize directions for one-to-one networking, buyer / seller networking etc.

Let’s think together from the point of view of the participants. For example, let’s say you are a 2,500-person participant in an event. In a traditional networking session, you may find yourself in a room full of strangers at an aperitif or a coffee break, not knowing who to approach, what kind of people are in the room and how to find people who share your interests. It is not ideal.

Anyone who has ever organized an event knows the difficulty of planning a tetris of meetings between participants. An unstructured networking session can be easy to accomplish. But what if we told you that there is a way to increase the quality and quantity of connections to your sessions without having to spend extra time on strategic planning?

Matchmaking software can interpret participant data based on their interests, career experience, geographic location, and any other way you want to categorize participants, all at the push of a button.

In this way, each participant receives a personalized list of people who share the same ideas to network with. Nothing is worse than getting stuck talking to the wrong people.

Improve communication with participants:

As we said, Chatbots are easy to implement, but also extremely effective to use. They can communicate with attendees in real time and answer questions, provide information and share updates without all the complexity of an event app. I am not ruling out that chatbots may replace the need for event applications in the future, especially for smaller ones.

Understand your audience better:

Artificial intelligence can be used to quickly analyze attendee engagement and satisfaction. The best part? You can monitor the data in real time.

Improve the event planning process:

According to Forbes magazine, the Event Coordinator was the fifth most stressful job in America in 2017. There are so many steps to follow in organizing a conference, fair or event, that it is necessary to streamline the process while still keeping it efficient.

Technology like this can help you save hours, if not days, by automating processes and classifying complex data.

Regardless of how intuitive it is and how much you understand its ability to influence the events industry, it’s clear that AI is here to stay. The sooner you can grasp this trend and take advantage of all the ways it can improve your guests’ experience, the better.

As technology continues to change and evolve, we anticipate new trends and tools that all of us will need to continue to create unforgettable experiences for guests and attendees.

If you’ve already incorporated this technology into one of your events, let us know in the comments what your experience was like! We want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly!