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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
Small Details Matter: Fine-Tuning Your Events, Tech and Behavioral Insights (with Ade Allenby)
When it comes to integration and automation in your events, 1 wrong decision can break everything.
😈 After all, the event devil is in the (small) details…
And the “small” mistakes are typically the result of not looking at the bigger picture.
To help you zoom out, fine-tune, and set your events up for success, Bogdan Maran and Merijn van Buuren have invited their first guest to Ctrl Alt Event: Ade Allenby 🥳
Ade is an expert on event technology, integration, and behavioral insights.
In this week’s episode, he’ll be sharing his experience and knowledge on:
🔥 Real-life examples of the impact of the little things
🔥 Behavioral Insights Through Tech Tools
🔥 Automation for Enhanced Experiences
🔥 and more…
If you’re organizing events and you want to ensure you know exactly what to do when you want to improve your event experience
Make sure to listen to this episode.
🗓️ 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! 🎉✨
Welcome to Ctrl-Alt-Event, the show where we focus on real insights, technical solutions, and everything event tech. Really, we are so excited for today because special guest you probably have seen the post, but we will keep you waiting for a few seconds because, before we get started, let me introduce you to my favorite co-host, Bogdan Maran, the man who loves integrations, data visualization, a real data storyteller, founder of Visual Hive and AI content for event platform. Definitely check them out as well, Bogdan. It's so good to see you. Welcome back.
Bogdan Maran:Absolutely great. It's so fun to be here every Tuesday. It gives me a scope in life to get past Monday and get to the fun bit. Thank you very much for your kind words. Let me introduce my very kind co-host. Merijn is a guru of integrations. He's the founder of Event Mender as well, but he has been working with hundreds of event organizers and with event technology providers, so he's been on both sides. When it comes to integrations and using anything from the API or to multiple other code-based functions, he's the guy to go to. But I would go to him when it comes to strategy because I really like how he's thinking about everything. I think, without further ado, today is very special because we are going to have with us very good friend of mine and a man I really really, really like and adore, which we have here now on the screen. Welcome Ade. Welcome to Ctrl-Alt-Event.
Ade Allenby:Hello.
Bogdan Maran:Thank you very much for joining us. For those who don't know Ade: Ade helps event organizers assess, deploy and maximize the benefits of event technology to increase revenue and NPS. I think his background is in digital product management, having worked for 10 years in telecoms industry although he's only 25 now and he's managing to deliver transformation in sales, marketing and service functions. Ade joined the event industry in 2015, so about just a bit after I came to London working specifically for Reed-exhibitions, now RX Global, as global head of digital innovation.
Bogdan Maran:That's how I've met Ade somewhere at Fox, after an ETL or a conference. It was actually in shortage at ETL, I think that we first met, Tested, Tested to link. Definitely. I've been very keen to work with him and to work with him because he helped dozens of products, of products through testing and implementation with the best scaling globally. He now works as a freelance for organizers and vendors under the hat of Allenby Advisory, where I'm very fortunate to join him for some of the projects and then know him from time to time, and he's helping bring products and customer experiences to get there successfully. So welcome Ade, and I'll do the little transition here, because you have the white, the beard show now, as Ade said earlier, when we had the chat.
Ade Allenby:Yeah, Thank you. Thank you Merijn, Thank you Bogdan. It's brilliant to be here with two legends of Event Tech. Thank you for having me.
Bogdan Maran:Oh, I've missed our absolute special.
Merijn van Buuren:No worries, I think we're all Anyone's getting dizzy yeah it's always my fault.
Bogdan Maran:Look, I've been married for 10 years. It's always my fault. Regardless of what happens, It's always my fault.
Merijn van Buuren:Well, we are on the right place. We have the right third lower third underneath us, so you can all see who's who and what is what. And we couldn't be more excited to have Ade with so much experience in the industry, but also a lot of experience when it comes to fine-tuning your events tech and behavioral insights and that's what it's all about. Today, I think we're kicking it off with integration stories. We're going to dive a bit more into the vision of Ade. Behind integration, the big picture, which is what everyone has been joining for, we'll dive into the little things. We have some automation there. We'll give you some real life examples and much more. So stick to the end to make sure you get all the information you need to run an effective event. And without or with that, I would say Ade. The floor is all yours. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more how you think about integrations from the inside out rather than the outside in.
Ade Allenby:Yeah, I thought it'd be useful to kind of start off Really, first of all, understanding why integrations are so important. When I started at Reed Exhibitions trying to bring new event tech in new tools in, it was kind of a means to an end. But I think as my career has progressed in event technology, it's just become so important to get integrations right. And I think people should remember that integration doesn't always mean automation. It's a planned planning to have data move from one place to another, which can be a spreadsheet, which can be an export and an import, as long as you've planned that process, because what you don't want is to have to do that on the fly. But obviously, what we are really recommending and what we're trying to champion is automated integrations and to plan those integrations in terms of your customer journey and what the projects I've done with Bogdan. We've really tried to provide value for organizers by saying look, let's take a step back and walk through what you're actually trying to do. And people know when you take a step back, realize teams realize that actually all these bits should fit together in. Sometimes data's in different places, but you need to ask yourself where's the data coming from, where do you want it to get to, and what new event features would you like to add that are going to then need that data in order to work properly? So I'm thinking the main needs those from large organizers. You're usually talking about bigger integrations between the Reg Platforms, CRMs, and then kind of the event platforms like the meetings platforms, the event success platform, and what those really need to focus on is a lot of platforms these days already have integrations. They have existing integrations and then you don't have to do that work bespoke because you're using, you want to have advanced user as an organization in CRM. Then you're going to have lots of custom objects and specific ways of doing things that are typical to events that you want to be able to integrate those quickly.
Ade Allenby:The more challenging situation, I think it is, you know from from our exit that, Bogdan and I worked with a few you know organizers small to mid-sized organizers where they don't you know the their tech stack is really just kind of what they've inherited as they've as they've gone along. You know which platforms of the adopted, which you know what was the most cost effective at a certain time, which would hold a specific type of data. So you know data can be holding, held in different places and be laborious to get data from one place to another and Therefore it's really important to kind of walk through that process and try and map out how you can automate that as much as possible.
Ade Allenby:And of course, you know these days there are there are a lot of tools. Not only our Event tech vendors really savvy you know there's some really savvy vendors out there about integrations but there's other tools to help with that, like like Zapier, etc. And I did want to call out that if you haven't seen the Grip article on the ultimate event tech stack, it's well worth a read if you want to just Google that ultimate event text, that really nice article helping you know event professionals just understand what what that text that could look like should look like and the way different way the data could be integrating.
Bogdan Maran:I think, just following up on on what you said, it's it's been very interesting to dive into some this midge, small and mid level organizers because you have that experience from from RX, which is huge. It's this there in the top five, if not second. I don't think they have bit informed my yet, but there one. When we went in to find out their challenges and after we did some of the, the initial research, one of the things that bumped into a but always bumped up or always popped up, was the point of truth. Where does that data lie? Can you tell us more about it? A little bit more about that.
Ade Allenby:Yes, I think you know we can think of multiple examples where there's not one place, where where all the data is being held and you know that may not seem important as well as everybody's getting their ticket, or everybody's getting registered, or from an, you know, exhibitor, sponsor perspective. But actually when you start to thin, try and add things to, that becomes very difficult. And so the first port of call is is to have your CRM as your point of truth, because that's where your sales and marketing data has to be the best data you've got, because you want to retain existing customers and you want to people to come year on year. But it's, it's.
Ade Allenby:It's surprising how you know so with some events it's basically starting from zero every year. You're not actually building on saying, well, I already know that about this group of people, so now as well, I know that if I market to them in a certain way, that there's a good chance that they'll attend, and I think you know We'll talk about it later on. But you know, how do you gather that data? How do you gather that? Intelligence is really important.
Bogdan Maran:And it's.
Bogdan Maran:For one of the lessons that we've learned and it was fascinating for me was the fact that it's not just about the technology. Integration and Having the point of truth, which is vital because it helps you answer questions down the line when you really want questions we really want to ask questions and you really want to have a deep dive into what you're doing was the integration between teams, because every team would have a certain goal, a KPI or priority from that perspective, and we found that If they they are not aligned and they if they don't move that data correctly or they communicate about that data correctly, then at the end you don't have that integrations. And where I think it's becoming interesting, especially which tools like, for example, event manager, when it's that, when you have that point of truth, you can go then and switch platforms depending on what you need at that point, or rather for that specific event, or because you might run multiple events and some events might be more focused on content, some events might be more focused on networking, although you might have your core.
Ade Allenby:You can discover that change can be good because it fits cultural differences, social differences, depending on where and how you you you run that, yeah, I think, think, something we come up against again and again is that the, the platform or the tech stack that you choose, it has to work for the team almost before it can work for the customer, and and so you know, teams running off using different parts of a stack but not actually using it as a joined up process Is is not going to scale and it's it's not going to, you know, it's gonna drive inefficiency absolutely I Think the word.
Bogdan Maran:I don't know if, if you or Merijn came came up with the moment of truth in terms of receiving something at the point of the journey, are most likely to act on it, regardless if it's pre event or post event, but I really liked it and that's one of Merijn went on and on about this two episodes ago, which was very fun to listen to because the behavior triggers are quite important there.
Ade Allenby:Yeah, that's. You know. If you, even if you just think about you, know when are you most likely to Favourite something in a schedule or download the app, is that it's at the moment when you you're researching and you figuring how do I get the most value out of this and how can I? How can I then I've already seen these things that I really like about the event how do I make sure that I get the value out of it, that I've got the floor plan ready to go, that I've got something? I've started off looking at things, at the few things that I've favorited? If it's an easy step into that process, people will do it. I remember a few years ago, rx was experimenting with a floor plan where it would lead you from the Reg process into a floor plan which you could actually then favor it things without having to log in. It would use cookies to do that in a browser. I thought that was a really elegant solution because it was then giving you a reason to go back and create a login.
Bogdan Maran:You mentioned, I think, going back to what we try to do every Tuesday. To give some practical examples from that, you're looking, especially with Allenby advisory. You're looking across everything from actual point of sale to end event and the whole feedback loop afterwards. In our initial conversations you mentioned about the calendar, booking and social advocacy and I know we've talked a lot about that. It's one of your favorite pain points, to put it like that.
Ade Allenby:I think there's different levels of automation. There's a you've got to build these into, not only your event but your ways of working. For instance, at a task level, you're just having calendar booking that works seamlessly, like whether it's Calendly or Doodle or whatever you use, so that you're not spending a lot of time going back and forth on emails or ranging meetings. Everybody should be doing that, but everybody isn't. Hopefully, some of the more of the native tools are getting better at that.
Ade Allenby:These days, using social media to then allow your audience to promote your event is just a no-brainer. So it's putting the work into making sure that that's a properly segmented campaign between speakers, exhibitors, influencers, etc. Then there's tools that automate processes within the event. Now there's lots of tools which make things simpler, like meetings platforms designed to make it easier to plan meetings, to schedule meetings for your participants. But an example of an automated process is where the platforms use the preferences from the different attendees to then automate the matching process and then come up with a schedule for all of the attendees. That really does a heck of a lot of heavy lifting for an event team. Then I think the overarching layer is this automating between processes. So you know that, because you've registered, you want then somebody to update their CRM record. You want to all going to make sure that they're in the event platform, the meeting schedule, so the meeting platform, so that you're not then having to do that. Depending on the route they've come in, they'll have a route through your process and that will be automated.
Merijn van Buuren:And I think there it's also very important to have that one point of truth where you know you want to store that data, especially if you want to if you're talking about gathering information about attendees and you mentioned the networking if you want to switch tools that you're not going to lose all that data when you get a switching the tools, but you actually have that in store.
Merijn van Buuren:As you mentioned, crm is the perfect place to have that one source of truth. And another thing that also plays a big role is those small details along the way and having that overview. I would like to go back to the point that we had on the agenda a little bit earlier, but I think now is a good segue In terms of the small details that matters. You had some very good examples in terms of not naming names, not blaming anyone, but just to give people an idea in terms of what a complete overview can do compared to going blindly into something, and often you have to just experience that to realize the points you missed. But because amongst us we have a lot of experience and you in particular, you can educate people in terms of giving them an idea of what those small details, how much they impact the whole process.
Ade Allenby:And a lot of these small details only come through making mistakes, only come through realizing something in the moment, when things, in one respect, things are doing quite well. But once you add volume and traffic to things, that's when they start to get stress tested. And the two examples that I wanted to discuss were both around connectivity, because we're still seeing in 2024, still seeing connectivity issues in venues. We've got rid of the challenges with oh, will you download an app? Well, it takes 10 seconds on the train on the way in, like, you've got an unlimited gigabyte allowance, why wouldn't you do it? Those barriers have gone and now it's the barrier of actually being able to use the tools in the new space and the advantage.
Ade Allenby:There's a kind of Pro and Con app cases out there web apps, progressive web apps or native apps. Well, obviously, one of the key advantages of native apps is you can download everything before the event. Obviously, there's progressive web apps to do that to some extent, but the idea is that you've got native features of the app as well as the ability to download. And the example that I wanted to give was when having a floor plan integrated with a native app, but actually integrating a web view rather than an embedded view of the app. So there was the opportunity to have the app so that everybody that had downloaded it before they entered the venue could open it, open it up and open the floor plan. The situation we found ourselves in was that, because it was a web view, it had to reload every time that the user wanted to view the map, which is once in venues with poor connectivity.
Ade Allenby:You start looking at the spinning wheel and there's only so much time you're going to give it. And that brings me on to the second point, which is I've done a lot of work over the years in lead capture and one of the surefire ways to capture lead with no barriers is that it's a little handheld device with the barcode scanner on it. But that's a handheld device. It could get lost, but it fulfills a good value proposition for most exhibitors because they can pass it around, they know that the leads are on there. They don't need connectivity, whereas event platforms and specific vendors are providing apps for lead scanning.
Ade Allenby:But obviously, when that connectivity, when the connectivity is poor, you start to see the spinning wheel. As you scan a lead and use, the wheel spins and it's not pulling the data in from the lead. Now you can have an offline capability for an app, but the question is and the detail part is, when does the app know that it's not connected? Because as long as it's spinning the wheel, it thinks there is a bit of connectivity there. So you have to make sure that your user experience is so that if there's some you know a timeout or a recognition that it's in a kind of low connectivity state rather than a no connectivity state, because as soon as you start to get that spinning wheel and some high volume users of scanning apps, they are making the way to the organizers office to complain very, very quickly.
Merijn van Buuren:And I love those examples of small details that matter. Now, in terms of strategic tech choices, you have worked with many different varieties of having people make those strategic tech choices In terms of a tech mix that grows as the event grows. Can you give us some examples in terms of where to start? Small events versus big events, the size in that regard?
Ade Allenby:Yeah, I think that each event is on a bit of a journey in terms of the way that the event is structured to provide value for the attendee and for the exhibitor, and so therefore, you know there's one dimension of that is the physical size of the event, and then you know is it, does it have a high amount of content at the event? And also then there's a dimension of how much tech are people used to, because you know it's the case that if you have a tool that people find useful and you haven't got it the following year, then you know, then there's disappointments. But you have to build that over time and it is a year on year thing and it's classic. You know, question over the. You know how do you engage year on year when there's so much time between each? But I think for newer, smaller events, you've got to start where your customers start and they're just discovering the event. There's more going to be more. You know, first time users, first time visitors, and so the discovery phase is key. You need to make sure that you've got an easy to use exhibitor list, attendee list, depending. You know it could be a conference, but you want to know who is there and having the guide whether that's the schedule of content or a floor plan is so important to make sure that people can easily see where to start their day and how to get the most value out of the day. And then, as an event grows, there's going to be more need for tech to support that.
Ade Allenby:You know a smaller show. You can get around the show in a matter of you know minutes, you can see from one end of the hall to the other. But as the show grows, you want to be able to. You know there's a lot of people there and a lot of things to see. So booking meetings is more important matchmaking, scheduling meetings, even then growing to meeting concierge, dedicated meeting areas and things like that as it grows.
Ade Allenby:But this is all about thinking as it can.
Ade Allenby:You know what's the minimum the customer needs, what's the minimum the user needs to actually get value out of show, because that's probably all that they're going to use.
Ade Allenby:You're always going to get some super users who kind of want more out of it, but you've got to cater for that majority. So, you know, we recommend thinking in the horizons of where you want to get to in terms of the event tools and something that I'm really you know, I'm really passionate about is don't advertise your tools as some kind of like now you register for the event, there's some tools we've got. I think the tools should be part of how people get value out of the event. So come through our then, because this, will you know, our tools will enable you to get to deliver on on its promise. You know, to deliver on what you want, and I think you know people try and, you know, put a lot of effort into creating brands for their events. But I think making the tools part of that brand make you know the brand promise and the value is critical to getting adoption and success.
Merijn van Buuren:I really like the point on the one oh yeah, because I think it's also a very good example of a different way of integration, where it's not just tech integration but strategy integration, in terms of your tools, integrating them into your strategy, but both then.
Bogdan Maran:Oh no, no, it's why I really liked it is because I'm more geeky. So I'm very much when you go to a client and we go and do those mirror boards and then Adam, who hopefully join us on the show as well, does all his lucid art, data flows and charts and everything else and it looked like 10 steps ahead and then it comes very calm. Let's look in horizons and he's absolutely right, because we are geeky and we are used to working with, with technology and we are looking from that perspective, which is a fantastic point of view because we really enjoy it. But you need to get both the clients and the more importantly, as we said at the beginning the teams inside the events to use it, because if we would, you would spit out everything and put everything in front of them. They wouldn't even know where the value is, and that's why I really like the horizon approach.
Ade Allenby:You need to take a breath as a team, say, look, we've got enough. Now let's iterate on that a few times. The classic example with one of our current clients is they're going to get to use the tool set we've given them for the next few events during this year, and then they'll know what to add next. But you can foreshadow that by saying this is the next thing.
Bogdan Maran:that is really possible that we, looking at the way you serve your customers, would help talking about moving forward and I've my will of death has stopped spinning, so I actually have my sticky notes and it's. It's nice, because it is very much a sticky note guy as far as I've learned today.
Bogdan Maran:So, that has no wheel of death. But talking about technology and talking about looking forward, we can talk about emerging technologies because we there are some good players, some established players, especially in the, in the lead and retrieval, in the registration part. But where does, where do you get excited about technology, looking forward?
Ade Allenby:Well, you know, for a number of years now I've been interested in those technologies which, you know, kind of ignite the insights and data that we've got from the show floor. You know, I remember a model from years ago about, you know, a B2B model. You're trying to get in a B2B marketing sense. You're trying to get people interested in big pieces of content so you can imply what their needs are. But really, you know, like you imagine, how many times you read an article in a normal, you know, in a normal walk of life, maybe once every week if you're lucky, but maybe less than every few weeks. So how often do these signals really come up? Whereas once you get in an event environment, you're going to see, you know, three seminars in a row and then you visit another one because you've seen something and it's inspired you and you've gone to the next one. So you're generating all this data and then you visit the products and get the demos associated with those ideas. So there's a rich source of data about what people are interested in, where the journey is going to go next. So you know engagement tech. You know the tech to enable visitors to capture information easily, you know, and the various formats out there, be it NFC, be it QR code, be it app driven that then the exhibitor can showcase what they've got on offer and the visitor can take that, rather than it being, you know, a lead which may or may not get followed up by the exhibitor. I think you know those technologies. There's some great camera technologies, some great, you know, visual AI technologies out there as well, as you know. Then, the matching technologies, which are only going to get better when you think about what the likes of chat GPT can do with content to feed into it. So you know, that's been the core of my interest. But I also, you know, I've seen some other nice pieces of tech coming about which provides some new opportunities. You know, like just last week saw Expo 360 is a great way, you know, visualize your event and then use it as a way to market and sell your event afterwards and provide more lead opportunity by showing what goes on on your show floor.
Ade Allenby:I think shout out social is a really good tool to help curate video. Everybody's got too much video. This helps, you know, clip and push those videos out super quickly. And also Get Pica. I would have the pleasure of hosting a talk with Claudia from Get Pica the other week, where you are. You've got lots of photographs from your events but this allows people to take a selfie and then see all of the photos that they featured on. Obviously really great with influencers and speakers to help them push out your content. So you know some nice, some nice little tools out there that are really adding value.
Bogdan Maran:It's very nice because I like that you went to the video, which is kind of my favorite subject, and video and photos because of my previous one previous experience and it's and I'm going to go more towards floor planning rather than that because, yes, there are. It's nice that we have the technology now to get more of the content and curate the content better. I think I like I liked there are two more companies like Capcat Pictury and they do very good jobs from that perspective. But I was fascinated last week of our conversation of how we talking about integrations, about the floor planning, especially around FFair and Iventis and Crowd Connected, about how those three can work together and that's from a data visualization point of view. It's absolutely fantastic.
Ade Allenby:Yeah, I think you know FFair has really, I think, filled the space and added value where in this exhibitor, the exhibitor onboarding space and, and you know, my advice to pretty much any event team, any any organizer, is try and get some mystery shopping on your exhibit experience because you know they are notoriously challenging to make into a seamless process and then to provide value like data on you know the outcomes and stuff like that. So you know, if you can start to understand where some of the gaps are in your process, then you're going to be able to retain exhibitors a lot better. And I think FFair is with two F's is FFair.
Bogdan Maran:Which means I found out last week that it means expo in Welsh, which I really liked because I didn't know how to James was kindly to, kind enough to help me but it's, I think, FFair is one of those tools which is not nice to have. It's a must have as a specific, not necessarily just them, but the principle of sorry, my dog got excited the principle of the principle of those two that it's nice to have and it would be very good and would add value if you know how to use them. But those tools like planning and visualizations should become a must have, like the expo 360 thing that the FFair that you've mentioned run events. I think we had a conversation about those as well and they're very, very good.
Merijn van Buuren:Can we go quickly back to actually the first topic, because I see Julius Solaris actually asked our video clippers of any use. I find that most are amazing on paper but the results are very poor. And I know especially, Bogdan. Have a go at it because I think it's an interesting topic, it's very much top of mind for people.
Bogdan Maran:It's my favorite topic. I think I'll do a third. I try to do a 30 second and then I'll let Ade. I think the first thing that event organizers need to learn is the word editorialized and what it means and how it's being used. Then go to things like clipper or all the other things that are on the market and shout out and use that. But the AI editing tools and that's why I liked the shout out to shout out is because the pun is, because it's not a. I is not about clipping automatically. It's about knowing and adding context for your knowledge, which these tools don't have yet, but will get to the point where we will have it. And it's just about how you apply it and the team, where you go with the team. So the tools are as good as the user, and the user needs to be trained because we don't really know how to use content in the events industry.
Ade Allenby:I like this idea of the tools that give your event event superpowers, because what I liked about the conversation I have with Dan from Shout out was that he said this is about a collapse, setting up a collaborative, collaborative network.
Ade Allenby:So at the event you've got people out there on the floor who are sending in clips to a central platform and then easily top and tailing them with some branded some, you know some branded intro and outro, and then it's out there and so, whether it's a quick box pop or interview or you know a clip from a, from a session or a talk, it's immediately getting out there. So I think but again, with everything you've got to see that You've got to set it up for success and you've got to kind of have a plan in mind the idea of the tool is that you can be fleet of foot and you can. You know you can go to the thing that's interesting and make a content out of that, and so you know you can have contributors and then somebody editing and pushing out centrally but super quick, and I think that's the. That's the piece that gets missed, because you know it's often something that happens after the show and then you've lost the moment.
Bogdan Maran:Can I just add just a quick thought on that question? It's, it's, I think, for me and I know I've rented to, at least to the two of you over and over about the difference between user generated content, which is fantastic, and the user curated content and the tools that the events organizers need is that the tools that allow them to interact with the nice produced content that you get from get pick our, from any AV or from shout out. So give them the tools to interact with that, but don't give them the tools just to do something automatic, because they have their own knowledge, love it.
Merijn van Buuren:And to add my two cents on it.
Merijn van Buuren:I think they're very useful in general that the tools as in on paper, mainly because I agree that the quality is often not there yet, it cuts videos halfway and they still have to go back into editing. But in terms of quickly getting some, some clips that highlight the, that show you some highlights which you can then mainly just do a quick edit on it yourself to get the actual highlight how it should be, it does save some time in terms of skipping, like when I used to go through the content that I created and I had to go through a whole video and really listen to every second and be like, oh, second, one to second is where it's a highlight one and then minute one to one. Then is the highlight to. It's going to take you a long time and I can speed up that process so it makes you more efficient. It kind of picks out the highlights for you. It's relatively good at that. But then the details, the editing, you still need some hands on approach, but they will get better in the future.
Bogdan Maran:So oh, I'm just there, yeah, yeah, mainly because I'm working on one, so it's not selling point, but yeah, no, it launched the out by your right.
Bogdan Maran:It's the attention to details, because that's the episode. Right, it's attention to details and it's as we said, it's as much as about training the teams for the events to actually use those tools and not push everything when you can't push a content tool and you don't have a content team. And by content team I didn't mean the very the guys who work very hard to actually put the content on the stage, but the guys who use that content and transform your event company into a media company.
Merijn van Buuren:Amen, I see we are. We have flown through time. It's already actually outside of our time zone timeframe. But I know that there is a last piece of advice Ade wanted wanted to share with us, and it comes down to matching your technology to your event and not the other way around. Maybe you can close off at that one.
Ade Allenby:Yeah, I think you know when something's going to work for you, when you're listening to a demo and you're going, yeah, I've got that, I've got that problem, or yeah, I wanted to be able to do that. What what I witnessed, you know many times, was that obviously, you know event teams are hard at it, you know we've got so many problems to solve, but the temptation is to say, yes, but can I do this thing that I really wanted to do? And then, of course, the vendor's going to go, yeah, it could do that, and. And so I think there's a.
Ade Allenby:You know there could be a challenge around trying to make a platform sort of bend to into the. You know what your event wants, but vice versa, you can. I suppose you know this is where you know people like us can help, because we've seen what actually you know one of the pros and cons of different platforms and and there isn't the one size fits all, but I think that's a. It's just a good rule of thumb to say you know, is it, is it the platform matching your needs or you get your needs, you know to match on for, you know, hitherto unspecified functionality.
Merijn van Buuren:I think that's a great takeaway for people to go home with. Obviously, we will be diving into a next topic next week. Actually have another guest, brian Monaham. I'm looking very much forward to that one. It's about the kind of breakpoint between AV and technology and hosting an event in different formats, whether that's virtual, hybrid, in person, and how you can better optimize your communication with them to organize better events. So make sure to come around for next week If there are any questions other than Bob giving a shout out to to Ade. Great discussion. Thank you guys. Well, thank Bob for for joining us. It's been our pleasure. If there are any questions, make sure to drop them. Whilst I'm wrapping up this session, we'll be happy to jump into those. But yeah, in the meantime, I think I want to give a big thank you to Ade for for joining us today.
Merijn van Buuren:I have a little bit of an additional in terms of what he's actually doing with Allenb y Advisory, I think you get an idea in terms of what his experience is, but it's good for you to know what he actually is doing and how he can help you target or tackle these small details and make sure you have that full overview, that birds eye view, of your event so you can better optimize and create better event experiences. They actually focus a lot about audience engagement, onboarding, integrations and ensures you select tools aligned with your audience and resources, as you mentioned, make sure you actually match the right technology to your event or instead of your event to technology, but also fostering communities, optimizing content and CRM utilization. They offer flexible retainers or project based solutions, so make sure to reach out to Ade If you need any help, because they have the expertise to elevate your events. I do not see any questions coming in, so I think yes, thank, you very much and see you next Tuesday.
Bogdan Maran:And thank you very much. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you here.
Ade Allenby:That's great as the first guest.
Bogdan Maran:The bar is very high from now, I love.
Ade Allenby:I love. I love chatting e vent tech. I liked hearing new stories of people's challenges, so this is a this is a great forum. Thanks for having me.
Merijn van Buuren:Absolutely pleasure, our pleasure, and with that, we're looking forward to seeing all of you next week in a discussion about AV and how you can apply that to different event formats, how to juggle the in person, hybrid and virtual events, which is going to be another exciting episode where I'm looking very much forward to. But for now, thank you all for being here. Thank, Ade, again again for joining us and, yeah, we're looking forward to the next one.
Bogdan Maran:Thanks, thank. You have a lovely day.
