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Ctrl + Alt + Event
Ctrl+Alt+Event: Navigating the Future of Events with Practical Insights, and Real Solutions
We're not just talking tech; we're showcasing practical examples and delivering real solutions for the events industry.
Join us live, each week on Tuesdays at 3PM GMT on LinkedIn. Get ready for predictions backed by real-world scenarios, live Q&A solving your challenges, and a visual treat of data insights.
Ctrl + Alt + Event
Great Expectations: A Show for Show Professionals
Industry events should be the golden standard for other events and organizers, but more often, that’s not the case.
Think about it.
If we don’t walk the talk, then how can we expect others to do it? ;)
So, how can we set the bar higher?
In this episode, Bogdan Maran and Merijn van Buuren will dive deeper into:
✅ The importance of having high-quality technology on display at industry events
✅ Considerations for selecting and showcasing tech solutions that are innovative, user-friendly, and capable of enhancing the event experience
✅ Examples of successful tech implementations and their impact on attendee engagement and satisfaction
✅ Bogdan's magic data visualization on LinkedIn content engagement around the #eventprofs and #eventtech (find the visualization here)
And more!
For those who would like to get an assessment of their event technology, we're temporarily offering free consultations to those who watched this episode.
Schedule your free 45-minute consultation here: https://www.bit.ly/eventtechcheck
Last but not least, we announced next week's episode topic: Small Details Matter: Fine-Tuning Your Event with Tech and Behavioral Insights (with our first guest: Ade Allenby!)
We're looking forward to seeing you on the next one!
🗓️ Weekly Rendezvous: Mark your calendar! "Ctrl+Alt+Event" will be live on LinkedIn every Tuesday at 3:00 PM GMT to answer all your burning questions.
🔄 Host Rotation: Bogdan and Merijn will alternate hosting the live event each week, so make sure to follow them both to receive notifications.
🔗 Connect with Us: Bogdan Maran, Merijn van Buuren
👥 Get more involved: reserve your spot here
🎙️ Become a guest on our show: apply here
It's not just a podcast; it's a tech-forward experience you won't want to miss!
See you next Tuesday at 3:00 PM GMT! 🎉✨
Welc ome everyone. We're doing well. I hope everyone who's joining in is also doing well. You're listening to Ctrl+Alt+Event, th e show where we navigate the future of events with practical insights and real solutions. Not just talking tech, but showcasing practical examples and delivering real solutions for the event industry. Today, we'll be diving into the critical role of high- quality, innovative technology in enhancing industry events, whilst also discussing the selection, implementation and impact of advanced tech solutions on event experiences. I'm thrilled to be joined by someone who transitioned from photo journalism to masterful data storyteller, a creator of bespoke platforms, captivating data visualizations and seamless integrations, also known as the driving force behind visual hive and AI- driven marketing engine tailored for marketers and event professionals. And if you're seeking expertise in video and data strategy, personalized solutions or anything related to AI, look no further, because he's the man Bogdan Maran.
Bogdan Maran:Thank you very much for the kind intro and yes, of course, I'm joined by my lovely cohost, who has worked with hundreds of events professionals and hundreds of I think, hundreds of event platforms working around integration, his integrations. He's the founder of Event Mender. If you're looking for any kind of platforms online, that's where you need to go and he is if and, also, if you're looking for somebody to help you with any integrations across your tech stack or how to build your stats tech stack, if you want to start there and make it better because we've talked about that last week Merijn is here and he's your man.
Merijn van Buuren:Absolutely, and I'm excited for today because, as many of you know, tomorrow is this nice industry event called Confex. Actually, Bogdan is going to be there. So from all of you who are joining, let the Bogdan know in the comments. I am fortunate they have to skip this one, but make sure to meet up with Bogdan in person. I'm sure he would love that as well. Yeah, curious to see who is going. But because of that we thought why not dive a bit deeper into industry events and what technology can do for that?
Bogdan Maran:Absolutely, and because it's Confex in this, please reach out either on the Confex app, because they do have an app, so they do have technology, so we can set up a meeting there, or just look for me around there or around the on the show floor or at Fox after the event, technically speaking, because that's the go to gathering of everybody, that is, anybody. And today, as you said, you're going to look at why it's important as a show organizer, why the events are important for us, why do we go there and we should be setting up kind of the platform and where we are going send and what is the standard for event technology. And that's that's what we're going to discuss today. What do? What is the standard for event technology for you, Merijn, and you've been to a few events before, bar Confex.
Merijn van Buuren:Very good question. Just quickly to answer to Robert's question, this will be recorded, robert, and we'll be happy to share you the link. It's both on Spotify, apple podcast, youtube, so wherever, however, you would like to consume our content, we are there for you and also for the others who might be wondering. But if you are sticking around for today, you have the possibility to obviously ask some questions. We highly recommend you to put them in the chat. But yeah, the question you answer.
Merijn van Buuren:You asked, Bogdan, in terms of high quality tech, what is the definition of high quality tech? I like to break it down into different segments. I think a very important part of high quality technology is this user friendliness, and you can think of having an intuitive interface. Accessibility, maybe the fact that it's multilingual, so it includes everyone, but also the reliability. I think that's especially when you talk about high quality. It needs to be something you can rely on as an event professional. The fact that it's scalable. You have support, you have technical support, so even if something seems to be going wrong, there's someone in the background being able to help you to pull it off, because when you're talking about high quality technology, you want to make sure that it allows the audience, but it works. I think that's the most important thing right there. How is that for you, Bogdan?
Bogdan Maran:I don't know exactly what to add to that, because reliability, friendly UX is key For me also something that you don't see, and because I'm a geek, I'm looking for it.
Bogdan Maran:But something that you usually don't see is how well is integrated within the other, within the tech stack, and because that's reflected in how good of an experience I have with that tech.
Bogdan Maran:So take, for example, registration and networking, because those are the first two that you encounter, technically speaking. At any event, from that perspective, If they're not integrated well, that means that the recommendations that I get for networking are not there, and I do have to say that I'm based in London and London is not famous for its best internet in the world and it might go up and down for me, so hopefully it will hold on for half an hour at least. But talking about technology, the other thing is you always need a good internet connection, because people do talk, people do work and people do do all of those things. It's vital to have that, considering my home internet is not that good. But, as you said, high quality means a good experience. That's how it's translated, regardless how you look, how you look, how big the backend is, how big the front end is how friendly the UX is.
Merijn van Buuren:If it's not reliable and it doesn't create me, doesn't give me a good experience and doesn't add value to what I do, then the standards are low, very low, and in line with that, I think my idea behind what we're talking about today is, I think industry events have the possibility to really be, you know, the pinnacle of what is possible within any industry, whether it's the event industry.
Merijn van Buuren:When you talk about event industry events, but also if you organize industry events for other verticals, the industry events are, in my opinion, the place where you can show everything that's possible within your industry for your industry, to really make sure that that also trickles down to the other industries. For us, I think the event industry, in that regards, is the first step, because we have the possibility, through an industry event, to showcase to other event professionals how they could organize their industry events. And there an important part is also the innovation aspect that you try something new, that you experiment in a way where it's still reliable, it still offers quality, but you do something in a new way. And I think that also for me, coming back to the definition, is an important part of that high quality technology, that it has an innovation factor to it.
Bogdan Maran:Absolutely and to segue into our kind of next topic in terms of how do we select the right technology. It's in. I'm just want you to understand that is not about the technology, that is not just about the technology that you find on the show floor, so from the exhibitors, which are absolutely fine, it's about the technology that you use and how you use it, because when you look at the experience you're at and these have, it's not just the experience, it's about the education is all. Because most of us go to there for education and, yes, you have the keynote, absolutely fine. Yes, you have the meetings, yes, you have the workshops around tables and everything that you are there. But enhancing that and showcasing the best possible use cases is fantastic.
Bogdan Maran:Because when you go and I'm going to the selecting the right technology now when you go in selecting the right technology, apart from and I'm sure you I let you go through the user experience and journey and how you map that out, I'm just going to touch upon the idea of partnerships, because at an industry event like Confex, Event Tech Live or IMEX, or anything like that from our perspective, I mean Left out IBTM by accident and I do love Barcelona, but when you go there, you have the chance to prototype, which is something that I haven't really seen in the in any of the shows, maybe the exceptions with of Event Tech Live, which Adam really does a good job about prototyping and taking that selection towards a partnership, having that conversation and having that relationship with your suppliers to the point of how can we best showcase your product, how can we make this unforgettable and educative experience. But that and that is something that you need to talk to them. You need to have a good communications case and you have to understand something that is what do your attendees want? A nd what do you? What do you usually want from from here in terms of how do you select an event technology For if you would host an industry event?
Merijn van Buuren:Well, I actually, just before this got started, posted about kind of the framework I like to to look at in terms of a step by step process, how you can determine which technology you should use. And the first step, as you mentioned, is who are you organizing this? For Innovation is very relative. It can be. You have a very mature audience that may be wowed by a very relatively simplistic approach, compared to a very young audience that has seen everything already on tick tock a billion times. So you need to step out of your comfort zone a bit more in order to wow them and really bring that innovation. So the first step for me is always to start with, who is it for and what do you want to achieve? Look at your event goals, but also specifically look at your attendees, your audience. Where are they at? Because, as we often say, just adding technology for the sake of adding technology is not going to work. It needs to be on purpose and it needs to align with both your attendees, with their wants, their needs, their situation, and also with your event goals, because you want to achieve something, especially in an industry event.
Merijn van Buuren:Me as an attendee.
Merijn van Buuren:When I come to an industry event, I expect the top of the top of the top, the best of the best. Obviously, I'm also a huge tech fan, so that does make me a bit more biased, but still, I think even someone who's not focused on technology or has nothing to do with technology still wants to see what's new. How is the industry innovating? And that is where, especially for industry events, if you start there and you look at what kind of things would they like to see, then you can go to the next step, which is OK. What level of that user friendliness that we just spoke about Does it have to have? And that ties back to the audience what capabilities do they have? How comfortable are they around specific innovations and technologies that you're using in your event and making sure that it's easy to understand? I think it was one of our first episodes where someone mentioned like a big issue is the fact that we have 50 plus people who don't really know what's going on, who don't really know how to use the technology to its fullest potential.
Bogdan Maran:So then, you have to make sure that you understand it. Yes, yes, we are targeting the old people. Technically speaking, I'm old, so I'm getting close to it.
Merijn van Buuren:Ok, I can do that, but age is also relative, just like innovation. So it means you really have to get a better understanding of your audience to see how you can actually adapt the technology that you're using In a way that it's easy, accessible for them and they can actually use it and they feel comfortable using it. And, if it is a bit out of their comfort zone, that you take their hand and help them use that technology. Because that's kind of the next step is the innovation potential. How far can you make it? Next level something out of absolutely something, anything we've ever seen, absolutely.
Bogdan Maran:And the innovation I think it has. It has two, two different ways, you two sides to it Technically speaking, because, as you said, you need to look at your stakeholders and you need to look at your internal stakeholders, because it's a business plan. By the end of the day, this shows need to exist. They need to be financially viable, need to be everything from from a business perspective needs to be correct and, of course, you're going to select partners based on that, based based on your business plan, based on your resources, based on what you have. But that doesn't stop you to on showcasing innovation. That shouldn't stop you on saying, ok, we've got this nailed, I know it's going to work. We've ticked our boxes from the business case to what the users want to, who are the users, agent, so on and so on. But now let's, let's pick up this, let's let's take, take it to the next step. And you have to understand that a technology in events, it's not a simple, it's the same thing, like everybody says. What do you do? I work in events. What do you do? I work in technology. So, what do you do? You do weddings? Do you do AI? What exactly are you there? Are you there for? And, of course, on the show floor. You've always seen that the sexiest and most engaging things are the like, the robot arms who take pictures and all this kind of stuff, which are Take your eye away and it's OK, but that's one type of technology and you showcase, showcase that. So having something like the technology corner doesn't mean that you've covered technology in your show and innovation, because it can be anything. So I would I would personally look at Understanding where the pain points are, what people want to learn and, yes, bring those people, sell the stands and everything else.
Bogdan Maran:But going back to one of the subjects you wanted to cover in terms of how do you showcase innovation Is, for me, it's not just showcasing, is curating. So where are we now? How we're in time, are you know? What are the pain points? What are the technologies that really influence the industry? How do we take advantage of those? How do we educate people on those?
Bogdan Maran:Everything from and also one of the subjects that have been discussed on LinkedIn, for example, quite a lot has been facial recognition, facial detection, those two technologies that can help on anything from the Entrance and scanning people all the way to understanding the sentiment, and you've got a few companies fighting there on what one? At least a few companies fighting there on that realm. And you have Zinnus and I forgot the other name I remember by the end of the show because I really like them who map out Anything from sentiment to what people do on your stand. But that's one thing. The other thing is the robot arms, for example, in the engagement thing. Then you have a talking up now.
Bogdan Maran:So curating that experience rather than showcasing it, and making it a engaging demo, strong arm of your part of your show, I think would be absolutely crucial at this point, because one of my pain points and I'll shut up on that, technically speaking is that you've got like you've got ETL Event Tech Live, for example. It's very much okay, this is technology, and they curate the show so that you can have an experience across all the various verticals within there. But you have startups, you have registration, you have various corners, so it's a curated experience from that perspective, something that you don't see at Confex, where you have two big shows, because it's not just Confex. You've got the production show as well next door, which again should have technology in it, but you have the concept of the show. At least last year was relatively disappointing because you had I know you had Shockl ogic next to the magician guy, which is fantastic, because to see John in a bubble of soap, it was very funny and I would really recommend that if there is a clip anywhere of him doing that.
Bogdan Maran:But from an attendance perspective, I need to know where I'm going, so save me time. I need to go and don't miss anything. I need to go where I am because I'm not interested, for example, with my hat from the Allenby advisory where we work on integrations or what we do together on helping people build tech stacks. I'm not interested in the magician. He's fantastic. When I used to be a photographer I would go and take some pictures of him because it's way nicer than a couple of screens on a stand, but I would like to have a curated experience Absolutely and, in that regards, so many things I want to say about that, but let's boil it down to kind of the basics.
Merijn van Buuren:I think it should be an integral part of your event experience and not just like, hey, this is a small site on where you can experience it, but actually make people experiences as part of the event, where, in this case, where you said like, yeah, I would like to know exactly where I have to go, their event technology can.
Merijn van Buuren:Actually there's quite some solutions that can help you, from AR route through the event where you can actually see, like, oh, walk two steps further and you get to your preferred destination, which then can be matched to a personalized AI suggestion in terms of where you actually should go.
Merijn van Buuren:There are so many ways how you, as an event organizer, can use the technology in a way that enhances the event experience, makes you your event look better, but also for people to experience what's possible and what they could integrate in their events, which then can add a lot of value to the companies, the technologies you are using, which means you could, as you said in the beginning, start with a partnership sponsorship, say like, hey, the fact that you can now easily walk through this boot and find exactly what you need, is brought to you by company XYZ, and that's where you start to create synergies in a way that it enhances not just your return on investment, your attendee satisfaction, but also the relationship you have with different providers of technology, which then will help you in the future when you want to keep expanding and keep coming up with new technologies and innovations.
Bogdan Maran:You're absolutely spot on and I always kind of start on the because we want to move towards how do we implement and how, if we have some examples towards the success stories. And I would always think about it the other way around, maybe because I'm not a trade show organizer and maybe I'm wrong, so hopefully somebody can teach us better if we are wrong. But I would look at I'm always able to look at a trade show and say let's make this fantastic and fantastic experience first, and then you bolt on the business plan on it because you'll always find and you'll find more revenue streams if you look at it from that perspective. And of course our instinct is to go to technology doesn't have to be technology all the time. It can be something else. It can be like a quite corner corner, it can be the pods, because you have problems like and that's kind of technology as well, because internet is technology. So without internet we don't really have good technology.
Bogdan Maran:So do I have a good internet connection at the show? Do I have those lovely pods and people can take meetings? Because it's a two day event, I might have a couple of calls I need to take. I don't want to go outside. The Excel is quite big in this case and usually quite loud as well. So it's I always look at it like from that perspective and I think it opens new avenues. It always opens new avenues, the way I found it.
Merijn van Buuren:Absolutely Well, you said it correctly. Let's move to the actual part of examples of things we've seen in industry events. I know you mentioned Event Tech Live already a little bit, but you have a very good example there as well, so maybe you would like to share it.
Bogdan Maran:Yes.
Merijn van Buuren:Before we dive in, quick question to the audience. If you have had a very good experience of technology, please let us know in the comments. Maybe we can dissect it. Maybe you can share your experience. It's good for other people to know that as well. We'd love to share our experience, but we're not alone and would love to hear your input there as well. With that said please, please, jump in.
Bogdan Maran:Yes, no, as you know, or a bad experience. It doesn't have to be a good experience. We need to learn. There are always mistakes and we need to learn.
Bogdan Maran:And I keep saying about Event Tech Live because it's one of my favorite shows, simply because I'm a geek, because I love the organizers, I love the team there, I love the crowd and it's my thing, so it's normal, because we work in Even Tech, so it's our show. One of the things that I really liked at ETL across the last nine years because I've missed the first year, I think that was the only year I missed, I was just a quick visitor for about half an hour was the fact that Adam and the team have always looked at integrations and bringing new things that you can take with you From Even Tech Live and when they had the awards as well, separately from another venue, where you had the simplest engagement things with taking the pictures and making it with the arm and robot arm and making it a very nice momentum of what's happened. But one of my favorite examples is something that we worked on because, of course, I like the work I do technically speaking when I used to run a photography tech photography company and we had the photographers who retargeted the whole spectrum of stakeholders, from the speakers to the organizer with pictures, and we've managed to wrap up quite some good numbers because they did some good data visualizations on that as well. So that was something that I really liked at Even Tech Live in terms of their openness to integration to a certain degree, so they don't want to put too much pressure on their vendors, but it's that openness to do that, and I've seen that across shows, so it's not just me.
Bogdan Maran:Last year they had a photography company that would take pictures and you can scan your face and you can find your pictures, your photos specifically for speakers and I think there were some of the crowds as well, so you can find your photo as well there. And the other one that I was really thinking of, sorry, was when GES had the whole registration bit and lead capture. They were sponsors for it, so they provided the registration and they've started working with the on-site printing and they were working with all the exhibitors to enhance their and educate and enhance their experience in terms of adding content to their stands and everything, something that their technology did. But it was a very much a partnership where there was a lot of education in place. There was a lot of added value from all sides, which I really, really enjoyed.
Merijn van Buuren:I love that example and Bob Toovey mentioned he's glad to see that Confex app slash website now allows you to sync with calendars. Yes, well, I'm not in the app at the moment, but I know it was quite a hassle every now and then last year. Bogdan, have you already experienced the Confex app?
Bogdan Maran:I did play around with it. I'm very happy to discover I had a little bit of a rant ready that I couldn't actually network with people, specifically if you want to pay for the ticket, but either I missed it or it appeared in the meantime, and if I'm not sure if Grip is supporting this years with networking, it seems to be working quite fine and quite nice. Again, let's do the good and bad things. So I really like the app. You can find the people and you can network with them.
Bogdan Maran:I would really love to see, for example, who the people attending are, because I can send requests as many times as I want but, as you can imagine, a lot of people are not going to show up right.
Bogdan Maran:I don't know which day they're going to show up on the day, apart from the calendars and that can be done through the sync with calendars that Bob said, which I really enjoyed and the other thing that I think needs to be improved is, especially at our industry's events, is the way we look at what people are interested in, what they're doing, because you have a whole list of what you want to do there, in this case, specifically focused on venues, which is absolutely fine because it is a show that is centric to venues to a certain degree, way more than technology from that aspect, and you do have technology there, but it needs to be better filtered because there are lots of questions and people just tick 20 boxes just to go for registration and you want to understand that. So I'm very curious if they look at the data in terms of behavior and understanding afterwards. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it to see again from a geeky perspective to see how good that is.
Merijn van Buuren:Absolutely, and for those of you who have just tuned in actually Bogdan is going to Confex, so make sure to meet him there in person. Still haven't seen any experiences from the attendee or from our visitor viewer point of view in the comments, so if you have had a good or bad experience, please let us know. We would love to dive in and maybe dissect that as well. But yeah, I think those were already some very good examples. I see time is also running out, so for those of you who have, as usual, indeed too much to talk about, but happy to make a follow-up on this one, and for those of you who have a question now, you have still three minutes of our time where we love to answer any questions, whether that's. Where can I find you, bogdan? I would love to meet.
Bogdan Maran:Or you can find me on the app Technology. Yeah, you can definitely find me on the app and if we can network, ping me on LinkedIn or again at the Fox afterwards would be any other the excellent.
Merijn van Buuren:The best place for networking is still the Fox.
Bogdan Maran:I think we've met it because, if I'm not mistaken, the first time when is the IBTM? I think Fox was the first time we've met.
Merijn van Buuren:Ooh, now you're taking me back a while ago. Yes, Anyway, I think it was Event Tech Live, probably at the Fox. The Fox, 99 procent sure. Anyway, yes, let's slowly work. Oh, look awesome. Well, thank you, Jan. Great to see you here as well, are you?
Bogdan Maran:going to Confex yourself.
Merijn van Buuren:Or will it not be the case? I also see a Bob has a question. What can an app do to help visitors get fine exhibitors? Very good question. Would you like me to take this one, or?
Bogdan Maran:you want to Go for it, go for it. I think I won't stop.
Merijn van Buuren:All good. No, I'll keep it short to the point. An app obviously can have just a simple overview of exhibitors, but especially with that quote unquote AI matchmaking more or less just figuring out what you're interested in, who's offering that and making sure you meet that people. A lot of apps also give you suggestions of which exhibitors to find and, if they have most of them, do a nice floor map to go with that and give you a route. Make sure that you can actually make it. Let's say in your agenda you've booked a session that you really want to attend, that you have enough time to go from one side of the floor to the other to actually visit the exhibitor at a suggested time that matches your agenda the right way. That really enhances your experience as an attendee, because you don't feel like, oh sh*t, I'm gonna miss my appointment. You can still do everything you want to do, but you also know that this exhibitor is the right match for what you're specifically looking for. Obviously, you'll have to fill in some additional data fields for that, but it goes when done right.
Merijn van Buuren:It goes a lot further than just showing exhibitors in a list, because I've had experiences where there were about. I think it was the web summit about 5,000 exhibitors or so In terms of startups. Every day you had thousand new startups and you just had a huge list. You had to keep scrolling and scrolling and by the end of the day you still hadn't seen all the exhibitors. It was not very user-friendly. So you have those as well, where it actually makes it more complicated and you just have to kind of hope to run into the right exhibitor at the right time. But you do have apps that actually help in a way where it benefits you as well. Anything to add there?
Bogdan Maran:Two very quick things I've seen so recently. I was really talking to a friend, nadio, and he pointed out the again I'm bad with names a free six experience with a very nice free interactive map that you can interact with before the event so you know where you're going. One of the things I really wanted to add before you said the list story was I would love to see and I've never seen it before in terms of you can have a lovely map of the venue. You have the lovely things that you can see where you are. In some cases where you don't have lists, I would love to see a filter, Literally. I want to see technology just color the technology once in red, in anything. Let me know where we are so I can go there, color the venue once, color the hotel once, or the DMCs or the magicians or anything. From that perspective, that makes my life easier. Have I missed anything? Because I might have gone that way and I might not have time to walk the whole show floor, especially in big cases like Web Summit. From that, I think it has its engagement just to kind of move towards the end because we are hitting the half an hour mark. It does enhance, I think it would enhance engagement because it just helps me manage my time and where I am way quicker, especially if you have. Web Summit is a good example. You've got Mobile World Congress, which is another good example because it's huge and it has satellite events around you. You need to have some kind of interactivity and some kind of filtering on it so you can go there.
Bogdan Maran:On the idea of engagement through innovation and how you enhance that engagement with tech, and because I'm looking also at the time and I keep going on and on without getting to the point, it's, for me, one of the big pain points is the education side and, of course, the video content side and the accessibility side. Accessibility I don't mean if you have wheelchair accessibility or anything like that we should have in there, or if you have subtitles for people who cannot hear, or if you have interpreters or anything like that that are there. Accessibility and sustainability also means giving people access that cannot attend the event. We are working in an industry that is severely understaffed, severely stressed by definition, and we want to bring in new talent. All of these events have, theoretically, a lot of the key people that know what they're talking about on stage.
Bogdan Maran:Talking about it. If you are not lucky enough to live across the street from Excel or can afford to come to Excel and you live somewhere that is unfeasible for you to come, or you're a student and you can't really access it simply because you don't have the time or you're near or you don't have the money for the train to come down from Manchester, you should have access to this afterwards. Technology allows you to do that. Technology can allow you specifically around video and specifically around education and specifically around courses, and sharing that and caring about other people should be crucial to how you plan your event.
Merijn van Buuren:Preaching to the choir here. That is my, my pet peeve, so to speak. Yes, there should always be a possibility for people to access. At least the content doesn't have to be all simultaneously. You can do it asynchronously as long as they have the possibility to access that content.
Bogdan Maran:Absolutely.
Bogdan Maran:You don't have to do the live stream, but at least record it and share it afterwards, even if you want to do a data gathering exercise and grab their emails if they want to see a specific show.
Bogdan Maran:Which kind of leads us into the feedback and adaptation as well, because I'm going to say something annoying to lots of people forms don't work. Feedback forms after the event don't work anymore, because we need another 10 episodes to understand about the behavior of how we share our thoughts now online and how the whole world works. They don't work that accurate. But the data that you capture from the engagement at your event works and that is better feedback that anybody can give you, unless you want to sit down everybody and interview them face to face and talk to them, which is very accurate and very nice feedback their actions at the event, after the event, the way they engage with the on demand content, for example, and who engages if they're on demand content and who scanned who and where they went and how they did it. It's absolutely crucial and it should give you more feedback and more accurate feedback than anything else if you do it correctly, alright awesome.
Merijn van Buuren:Well, I think let's keep it to the point that. Make sure that people can actually prepare also a typo, if, don't worry about it, we know # MakeE ventsA ccessibleF orA ll. That definitely resonates with us, and good to see you here as well, Vanessa. Very, very grateful for everyone joining today. Let's keep it short, straight to the point, because actually next week we're gonna be here again. So for those of you who can't get enough of this conversation, make sure to join in next week as well. We actually have our first guest, which is very exciting. Maybe you would like to give a very short introduction of what's coming.
Bogdan Maran:We're really keen to have our first guest and we're really keen on the first guest as well because it's, apart from being a friend, he's absolutely fantastic individual when it comes to event technology and events in general. Do we say names or just keep it for tomorrow, when we launch the event on something like that?
Bogdan Maran:He won't listen to us because he's on site with crowd connected and a few other just across the street from Excel, I told too. So he's fun and he's his lovely name by, known by Ade, and we'll see him and we'll talk about integrations and it should be very fun and I will need to get ready, because I always flustered when I talk to him and I'm always happy and I'm giggling because I love him to bits and I yes, we do have a data visualization thing that I've prepared, actually for last week when I had to jump off relatively quickly because I was on site and we talked about data and feedback and I don't know if we have time for that, but we should have two minutes just to go very quickly for that, if that's okay.
Merijn van Buuren:Show it real quick, because I think, now that you mentioned it, it is quite important to also showcase, in this case, technology in a way, mainly focus on data how you can add another layer to the data analytics you just mentioned in terms of really understanding what's happening in your event. Getting the data is wanting, but visualizing it and making it actionable is another, and this is a great example in this case about LinkedIn.
Bogdan Maran:But feel free to yes, so we'll keep it relatively short, so I've managed to somehow man get my hands on a lot of the editing I've done. I've looked a little bit of LinkedIn on data and specifically around to hashtags in terms of event profs, event text, event tech, so only all those posts and articles and everything else, and we have five pages here which I'll go through very quickly. But the interesting bit is that this are the engagement bits. So which one? And we're doing a drift LinkedIn, because you're all professionals and we're live on LinkedIn now. So you've got comments here, likes and shares and you'll see it. Actually that it's very nice that actually you have a few comments on the on the article bit, which I really like. You've got quite a lot of likes. Of course, my dog decided to start barking now because why not? And? But when it comes to shares, articles are at top by far. Again, this is looking just at the two hashtags. I'm not looking at any other content and when you start spreading around it's going to probably look differently. But when you talk about event tech and event profs, specifically on this hashtag, this is the case, what you talk about. That see if I, my internet holds on, because it's kind of a more of a live thing. So you'll should see a white page and now it just populated with words. So this is the word cloud when it comes to post content on the left hand side and post titles on the right hand side and, as I said, we'll try to share this so you have access to them afterwards and you can look into it. But it's very nice to see words like experience coming up in a lot and around experience, when. What data allows you. But these things allow you to do is when you click on one of them power bi to show you what's happening around experience, what to do around experience, and all these kind of things, which is quite nice.
Bogdan Maran:Of course, you've got engagement by weekdays, which Wednesday seems to be the biggest one in terms of engagement, not posting just to online. So people are really engaging on Wednesday closer to Thursday and Tuesday. Of course, midweek, because Friday people are off it should be, and but it's always nice to look at. Sorry, let me go back. It's always nice to look at these things from two perspectives. So this is an engagement based on cumulative likes, shares and everything else. So, for example, the Wednesday, you have a lot of comments and you have a lot of shares. But it's always nice to look at it from two perspectives. And this is the same thing engagement in terms of days, and you'll see Tuesday is here with a sorry, you have comments on the bottom and likes here on the top. And you see Tuesday is kind of a nice comments, likes and shares. So the share account is the bubble.
Bogdan Maran:I forgot how I did this. It's got a lot on Tuesday by when, but Wednesday goes very nice because it doesn't have. It's not big but it gets a lot of comments and a lot of likes as well. So, like, for example, sunday, where people do are actually kind of engaged on Sunday, but they are on the other top of the graph. And the last one was engagement by content type, which again very nice to see that actually articles are the most engaged bits of. As we said in the first one, this is more of a cumulative thing around it. So if there are many ways to do data and if I'm trying to do as much as possible, a data visualization once a week so we can talk about this because it's kind of my passions at this point, but I'll shut them. Shut them now and I'll try to share this with you guys after the after the absolutely, we'll put it in the show notes.
Merijn van Buuren:For those of you who already want access, just comment in the section below. Then, I think, bogdan can just share you the link right away. Otherwise, when the recordings will be live, then you can also access it there. Yeah, then we've talked about the episode next week.
Merijn van Buuren:We've done a great show and, yes, a visualization for those of you who would like to have help in terms of understanding which technologies you should use and go through that kind of step-by-step plan, the the one to seven steps that we briefly touched upon in this session. We would love to help you out and we decided that, at least for temporarily, we offer a free consult to those that would like to get additional help with their event technology, which means that you get 45 minutes of our time where we make a personalized consulting session for you. It's not going to be like oh, these are the standard steps, good luck. We actually look at your use case, we see where your problems are, we see where you are as an event professional, what your goals are we were ideal audiences what you would like to achieve and help you go through those steps in those 45 minutes. It's free, it is going to help you. I can guarantee you that much. So take a chance.
Bogdan Maran:Just, it's definitely definitely added value, judging by how far, and definitely not limited to 45 minutes, because, as we do our episodes, it's never kind of finished on time.
Merijn van Buuren:So it's a lot of value added there if we, if we need to go a bit later than them, no problem, but we'll make sure that you get out of it having actionable ideas and a step-by-step plan how you can actually implement technology, where you should look which technology is the right one for you. So make sure to to hit us up. We're more than happy to help you out, and with that I would say that let's wrap it up. Well, yes, please, thank you one more to put in the pocket. Thank you, Evan. He loves your data, just like me, actually. It was a very nice visualization book then, so thank you for sharing that. And yeah, that's. I'm already looking forward to the next one. Again, first guest, so make sure to jump in. It's gonna be all about automation and integration and, with that, looking forward to next week thank you and see you next week happy days.
