different experiences and placing them in the same basket. Are we talking about the leading virtual event platform? The top exhibition platform? The best hybrid platform? Or the leading event technology provider? In fact, are we even talking about the events industry? Lalit Mangal, co-founder and CEO of Airmeet, offers a new perspective. “A lens that I would like to use to look at the market is the 1 billion knowledge professionals. Let’s allocate $1000 value for synchronous engagement per annum, that’s a $1 trillion events or experience industry out there.” Mangal believes that this potential is behind the interest in event technology, along with the slow realisation that the impact of a warming planet is becoming the most critical driver to people engaging virtually.
can do this without platforms that unnecessarily blend audiences. Hybrid is only the answer if the question is: how do virtual event tech investors get their money back? The pandemic indeed showed us that there is a continuing place for technology within our events, but it proved something more critical; it highlighted the issues organisers were having with physical meetings. A jump to digital events proved that we could all run shorter, smarter, and snappier events, and it created space for meeting design. And painfully, it highlighted how poor our content was. This realisation has crystallised the focus for event planners to improve the quality of the product, ensuring that they look way past the technology towards the more fundamental aspect of their events. Event organisers are once again becoming content creators, pushing content out via publications, websites, and social. Event companies are becoming membership organisations, finally achieving the 365 engagement that has remained elusive to an industry desperate to add more value. This has accelerated interest in membership and community engagement software, marketing platforms, content creation and editing software, and project management tools. And there is a danger that the “virtual event platform” is left
IF HYBRID IS THE ANSWER, WHAT IS THE QUESTION?
What undeniably underpinned the interest and the investment in event technology during the pandemic was the somewhat vague idea of a hybrid event in a hybrid world. The downward trend in investment interest in virtual event platforms has shown that there is little current desire from attendees and event professionals for the hybrid
behind. Covid-19 has pushed the events industry from a product to a service industry, and many of the virtual event platforms that pulled in investment still sit at the centre of this pre covid transactional world. A thriving event technology sector will be built on offering attendees the choice of how to engage with content and make connections. It will be built on helping attendees find and enjoy the content and the connections most relevant to them. It will be marketing-
In March 2019, the problem for an event organiser was finding a platform that could host a virtual event. Fast forward 18 months, and the challengewas differentiating the offer fromhundreds of providers
world that event tech companies have been pushing for over a year. This issue has challenged the event technology industry for more than a decade: how to get their technology adopted. As the world started to return to physical events in 2021, virtual event platforms started trying to persuade attendees and organisers that hybrid was the answer to all their problems. But it isn’t, in fact, the answer to anything. Event planners who can provide an unmatched virtual and a physical experience will excel, and many planners
led, helping planners, attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors to find the right events, amongst the noise. And the events technology sector has the potential to be bigger. Much bigger. In a digital world, organisers have tentatively started to move past the idea that an event is something that people drop into once or a few times a year and think more about a space where people exist. If that trend continues, the valuations of companies and the value event planners provide will explode.
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