[#EventTalks] Episode #1: All about Event Tech, Event Design & Marketing

When you have a veteran industry expert visiting your country for the first time, you’d want to grab onto any opportunity to get to converse with him.

Yes, Hubilo was lucky to get Mr. James Morgan, Founder of Event Tech Lab, to talk about event planning and communications strategies as he visited India for the first time ever at the MILT conference.

Mr. Morgan, with his 30 years of experience as communications and design strategist now runs a non-profit virtual event tech start-up incubator, as likes to define it, Event Tech Lab.

They support early-stage event tech startups with curating marketing and communications strategies and leverage PR through Event Tech’s strong market understandings and network.

Listen to the podcats here:

First Question we asked Mr. James:

What thought process or questions should an event planner have while planning an event?

Ever wondered what impact does design and physical setting has on the success of an event?

Well, that’s exactly what Mr. James told us about. Generally, event professionals focus on logistics, ticketing & registrations while almost neglect the event’s physical settings and design considerations or it is diluted when by the former.

People comes-up to an event and say OH! Wow, this is fantastic. But when instead of expected 250–300 only a 100–110 people turn up, it creates something that I call a negative space.

Second Question: Maiden Event Planning

What’s better for any maiden event you plan? A traditional backdrop approach or an effort to try out new design/setup?

Regardless of industry, most freshmen do have this dilemma whether they should stick to a traditional approach or try and do something new and bring a difference.

Every event is different from others, so while a traditional set-up can be the best for conferences where you must have a podium by a large screen and clear design. While for a product launch and sales kick-off meets should have a different set-up.

Third Question: Mistakes and Misconceptions

What are some common mistakes or mishaps happen while planning an event?

In his response, Mr. Morgan covered the entire spectrum from physical space utilization to speaker briefing and queuing process.

However, as a design and communication expert James Morgan discussed in detail how can event managers successfully induce a sense of anticipation and excitement in the attendees.

Fourth Question: Adoption of technology

How tech positive are you and what impact event technologies make these days?

Event design and communication veteran very rationally explained tech’s impact on internal usage and external usage as he classified event industries operations.

One of our favorite lines from this set of conversation and we quote is:

Event Technologies that can enhance attendee experience in either emotional level, cognitive level, and physical level are always welcomed.

Remember those silent Disco thing? AR/VR without a proper purpose are similar to that, not a big fan of those.

In his response to this question, he said how the fundamentals of gauging the ROI of technology doesn’t change.

Another point he made strongly was, attendees like using technology as long as there is no friction about availing that, sighting example of how difficult it becomes to accommodate AR apps on device with storage constraints.

Further in his response James also suggested a solution and something that even Hubilo does to counter Event App storage-related issues.

Fifth Question: Event Analytics

Where and when should event analytics be used?

ROI is an important consideration said James, defining “Qualitative Measurements” and “Quantitative Measurement” to the two separate measurements

Event success can be felt but how do you document and report that for those who weren’t there? This the kind of metric that MICE as an industry misses.

What part of the podcast are you looking forward to? If already been through our podcast please let us know what part you liked the most?

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