Welcome to another week and its our last full week of the year before the team here at Cloud 9 Towers take a well earned rest over the Christmas season.
Its been a busy old year and we've welcomed some lovely new clients to our company, run conferences and awards in various UK locations and abroad, booked all sorts of venues for all sorts of events, attended a variety of trade shows, exhibited at a couple of shows, been on some amazing fam trips and industry parties, expanded the team, and held a couple of open days in addition to welcoming a raft of visitors.
We would like to thank everyone we've worked with this year, and whilst we are still around for the remainder of the week, the team will be calling time on 2014 this Friday.
You will still be able to contact us via email and mobiles for the duration of the Christmas holidays though, before we come back raring to go on Monday 5 January 2015.
2015, who would have thought it!?
So what of next year, and what as an industry can we expect? Well, these
are certainly exciting times. The rate of technology change is accelerating with
thousands of ideas, apps and innovations bubbling up to help meeting
planners, exhibitors, venues and other meeting participants to do their
jobs better.
Mobile apps for events have become mainstream and it seems the trend will continue to grow in 2015.
Now,
nearly everyone, including technology laggards, is carrying around a
smart phone. Mobile use at events has exploded and mobile event app
providers are expanding and refining the options. Much of the development has focused on replacing existing processes such as replacing paper event programs, agendas, attendee lists exhibition guides, and/or course notes, replacing the need for keypad polling and paper surveys and replacing directional signage and program maps.
Additionally, event apps have offered improved means of on site social media networking, group or targeted alerts and announcements, improved peer-peer messaging, appointment making and business contact exchange, networking and social media engagement.
However, mobile event apps are not just about improving existing processes. They can be about providing entirely new services including tracking trends and delivering vital analytics such as identifying the top speakers, the best attended stands, crowd flow and influences at conferences and events.
Free Wi-Fi is the most desired hotel in-room amenity. With hundreds of mobile event apps now
available, Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity have become the lifeblood of
event communications. This has not been without challenges, with hotels
and other event venues scrambling to keep up with the exploding demand.
The
good news is that the technology exists to provide very high-density,
high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity to large groups – and many facilities are
starting to catch up! Planners are increasingly examining venues’
abilities to provide good quality, easy-to-use, and reasonably priced
Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity as key factors in making venue purchase
decisions.
In
the meantime, the larger the event (especially large tradeshows), the
more likely that attendees will experience less than ideal Wi-Fi
connectivity. In two to three years, as venues digest the “bulge in the
snake” of Wi-Fi demand, this will be less of an issue.
The transition from “attendee” to “participant” will continue.The
combination of social media and mobile technology has provided a wide
range of attendee engagement options. The entire dynamic of meetings is
changing; instead of “top-down” it is “bottom-up.” Instead of
attendees passively sitting at event watching a talking head, meeting
participants are demanding a greater say and expect active engagement.
This is playing out in several ways including social media apps, used to recruit and engage participants before the events, during and after events.
Additionally,highly mobilized social media tools (Twitter, Instagram, Vine, YouTube and others) are seeing strong use during many events, and certainly we have noticed that at any media related event, a speciality of our, a live Twitter feed is a must.
Another trend for 2015 is that meeting
designers are moving away from passive theatre-style seating to
alternate room sets to facilitate discussion and participation and delegates at events are now expecting personalised communication and choices tailored to their desires.
A bit more worrying for the industry though is that attention spans will continue to decrease! Human knowledge is doubling every year and the rate is accelerating rapidly .
We are awash in information. The world’s body of information is at our
fingertips and available 24/7 wherever we go. We are barraged with
hundreds of marketing messages daily and receive hundreds of email/text
messages as well. 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every
minute! As we desperately try to multi-task to keep up, many of us feel
overwhelmed.
One
of the results is decreasing attention spans that are changing how
events are marketed, managed and experienced. Shorter presentation times are being scheduled (the15-minute TED talk style is becoming more prominent), more interactivity during sessions and more audience engagement tools are required.
Images
need to play a prominent role in articles, blogs, website postings,
event promotional materials and computer presentations (a picture is
worth a thousand words).
Short
video is the new language of the internet – more powerful than pictures
and far more powerful than text. A good video can be worth a thousand
pictures!
Finally, despite the increased use of virtual meetings technology, face to face meetings and trade shows will remain an important part of the industry. In today’s multi- tasking and often distracting work
environment, attention spans are short. Thirty to forty-five minutes is
usually the maximum you can expect someone to pay attention to a webinar
while sitting in front of a monitor.
Meetings,
on the other hand, take people to a more focused environment with fewer
distractions. As long as attendees are informed, entertained and fed,
event hosts can keep them engaged for days. At the minimum, we share a
social contract to at least look like we are paying attention at an
event. The opportunities for networking, brainstorming, and relationship
building are usually far greater at face-to-face events than online.
For an exhibitor, it is often the best way to meet so many qualified
buyers in such a short time. For buyers, it is a great chance to meet
vendors of interest – all together in one location, categorised and
mapped for your choosing.
Meetings
provide a vastly richer, more targeted, and more focused learning
experience than nearly any virtual meeting. To put it succinctly, there
is no such thing as a “virtual beer!”
These are just a few of whirlwind of changes coming, and one thing is for sure, 2015 is going to be a whirlwind of a year for Cloud 9!
Have a great week and please remember the office will be closed from Friday until Monday 5 January.
During the festive period, please call 07774 741883 for any urgent or venue enquiries.
Enjoy!
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