Executive Summary

What is the future of conventions and large events? Who are the most innovative thought leaders today in meeting design? Who is blazing new trails in event technology? How are the world’s most forward-thinking tourism bureaus attracting larger percentages of market share in the international convention arena?

This Skift Trends Report incorporates the greatest scope of interviews with convention industry leaders brought together in a long time. They present a cohesive look at the future of the convention industry from both a macro destination level and micro meeting design level.

Savvy veterans and a batch of hungry newcomers are leading the way outside of the “big beige box” convention center to a future where events cease to exist in a singular time and place. Advances in event technology and increasing tech adoption rates are driving new levels of brand engagement and participant reach globally, creating new business relationships on a worldwide stage.

Large and small tourism brands are adapting with new strategies to build growing networks of networks, designed to generate higher levels of communication among more attendees and more stakeholders.

The quest for knowledge—the currency of the future—is fueling these trends. Convention industry players who can satisfy that demand will have a competitive advantage in the knowledge sharing economy.

Introduction

The future of conventions focuses on fluid connectivity. Think of it like Facebook. Think of a large community where everyone is linked via one branded experience, with the potential to create a network of “friends” and “likes” with any member of that community. Those individual networks congregate to discuss specific issues and conduct business, creating larger networks of like-minded people engaging when and where they choose.

That is the model of the convention of the future (or conference, trade show or exhibition, used interchangeably in this report). They are curated networks of networks. Tomorrow’s convention is a knowledge sharing hub taking place at a physical space at a specific time, with virtual engagement channels extending like spokes that connect people globally who physically attend the event, and many more who don’t.

Therefore, the next generation of convention organizers are expanding their community engagement and marketing reach through a variety of new digital platforms. To fuel this outreach, they’re placing a new importance on educational content co-creation and communication to keep members interacting with each other and the brand before, during and after the physical convention itself.

On a macro level from the destination side, the most forward-thinking destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are adapting and developing new services to capitalize on this evolution of fluid connectivity. We will see how some DMOs are now positioning themselves as knowledge sharing hubs to convention planners and meeting owners, by bringing together visiting delegates with local thought leaders to differentiate their markets within their competitive sets.

At the same time, the reurbanization of downtown cores is creating a new level of excitement around many convention center campuses, which a decade ago were often considered dead zones after working hours. These re-energized cities are further galvanizing the knowledge sharing spirit among local business, academic and cultural influencers with convention attendees, often in what are being marketed as “Innovation Districts.”

On a micro level, within the convention environment itself, event technology delivery systems such as sophisticated event apps and virtual streaming platforms continue to grow in overall usage. These are no longer considered add-on experiences by many planners. Instead, they are being integrated into the overall experience, or rather, they are becoming the experience.

Advances in event tech and growing adoption rates of event apps are rapidly driving the Facebook-ification of conventions. That is causing concern among established travel brands in the hospitality and tourism sectors who fear virtual meetings are encroaching on face-to-face live meetings. Exacerbating that concern, Millennials are considered less enamored with face-to-face, which new research is showing to be a myth.

That argument between live and virtual programming—that either/or proposition—ignores what’s becoming a clearer vision of the future of conventions. Rather, conventions are evolving into fully integrated, holistic, hybrid live/virtual events with each part of the experience complementing and cross-promoting the other to drive higher levels of engagement, reach and new business development.

Curating conventions: The DMO of the future

A selection of DMOs represented here illustrate how tourism bureaus are attracting more group business by positioning themselves as knowledge sharing hubs. While many DMOs are developing similar strategies, the following bureaus have been actively promoting them over the last few years.

A perfect example of building networks of networks, the Singapore Tourism Board is convincing convention planners to cluster their business events around other events happening in the same industry. Today, each month in Singapore has a convention theme, such as Urban Solutions in June, when multiple international groups in the sustainability and urban design verticals meet in the city-state.

“I think, increasingly, events are beginning to feel that rather than competing with each other, they’re often complementary,” says Kershing Goh, regional director of the Americas at Singapore Tourism Board. “In this time and age where obviously it’s expensive to travel, and there’s so much digital technology, it becomes: ‘Why do I need to go?’”

That is a primary concern among suppliers throughout the convention industry. With so much free content and technology available, how do you sell stakeholders on the ROI of travel to a live event. In Singapore, by offering planners the opportunity for their delegates to meet thought leaders outside their group, but within their industry, it provides added educational value and networking opportunities.

“If a planner is going to attract a delegate to take a 22-hour flight from the U.S. to come, we’ve got to have a really darn good week in Singapore with all of these many layers that are happening,” says Goh. “So it’s not really about the convention space. It’s not really about how wonderful the destination feels. I take for granted that it’s going to be great. It’s really those additional layers that deliver that nudge factor to make someone say, “You know, I really need to be there.”

Looking ahead, Singapore is creating a new cluster around digital. YouTube Asia and Google Asia are based here, and Mark Zuckerberg’s former partner Eduardo Saverin launched a local venture capital fund to seed area startups.

Goh says Millennials are pushing for this to the point where the bureau is developing a new Tech cluster. She says Gen Y and X are much more interested in going behind the scenes to meet people and visit the offices of such marquee companies, because they’re hungry for experiential travel with educational and professional development components.

“So we see this brewing and we say, you know, there’s something happening in this sector here, so how can we as a CVB provide the catalyst to create another cluster capitalizing on the fact that we have this huge talent pool that’s living there?” says Goh. “And second, we try to see how we can stretch it out a little bit, so instead of staying for two or three days, people say, ‘Oh, I have to stay for that keynote.’”

Business Events Sydney (BESydney) has produced a series of comprehensive research papers over the last few years focusing on the impact of convention business, titled “Beyond Tourism Benefits.” Rather than measuring the total spend on Sydney’s local tourism infrastructure like most DMOs do, BESydney also measures the educational value for local delegates, networking value for local business, and the value of new business deriving from conventions in Sydney.

“For our clients, we don’t see them in the tourism space,” says Lyn Lewis-Smith, CEO of BESydney. “We’re in the business and innovation space. I think what many cities get wrong is they’re working in the tourism space, so sure they have good delegate expenditure on restaurant and retail that feed the supply chain. But that’s only one part. It’s a very narrow view of what international events do for a city. Delegate expenditure is one thing, but all of these legacy outcomes are so much more powerful, so when you get that story right, governments start to listen.”

Armed with that data, BESydney was able to go to the state government to secure funds to tear down a perfectly good convention center in order to build the new Darling Harbour and ICC Sydney convention center complex, fully connected with the city’s knowledge and business sectors.

“We’re in the process of building an innovation hub for the future,” adds Lewis-Smith. “The new convention, exhibition and entertainment facility is all integrated with the local community, but the key point here is what we’re calling an innovation hub, so it’s linked to the University of Technology of Sydney, and it’s linked to the federal government’s innovation hub where there’s startups and entrepreneurs. And what that means is international delegates will be able to go into that space and interact with over 150 companies and understand how they go about problem solving, integrated thinking and the like.”

The German Convention Bureau has long leveraged its many auto, tech, medical, financial and logistics industries to attract global conventions. The goal in 2014 is defining those niches unique to each destination, not only to position German cities as world class industry thought leaders, but to create storytelling around those niches to market the experiences in a more memorable and impactful way.

For example, the port city of Hamburg is promoting its expertise in logistics with tours of the new modern port and century-old shipping warehouses still operating in the historic downtown core. Also, Dresden is the only city in the world to have companies operating in all of the European Commission’s “Key Enabling Technologies,” like nanotechnology and photonics, so they promote educational lab tours. Or in the capital, Berlin touts medicine and science with introductions to some of the world’s top minds in health management. The number of medical conferences in Berlin increased 3% in 2013 over 2012.

“It’s a little bit of a difficult path to tread because when planners see: “You should come to Germany because of our expertise,” they wonder what that’s all about,” says Laura d’Elsa, regional director USA/Canada at the German Convention Bureau. “But as soon as we give convention planners some examples, they’ve been responsive to that. I’ve seen more and more coverage on that happening in the media and at conferences, so it’s starting to resonate with planners.”

Especially popular with meeting planners worldwide, the Porsche and Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart are at the cutting edge of auto tech. The Stuttgart Convention Bureau is promoting the city as such to planners with three events under the banner of “World of Energy Solutions,” including f-cell congress, Battery + Storage, and the e-mobil BW Conference.

“On the basis of its almost 130-year tradition of vehicle construction, the region is also emerging more and more as Europe’s leading location for electromobility,” says Karina Grutzner, business development manager for Stuttgart Convention Bureau.

D’Elsa adds that the knowledge-sharing trend provides value for everyone—planners, attendees, companies and organizations.

“Talking with planners, what’s really popular are those technical visits, and the beauty of it is you don’t have to create something new,” she says. “You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg. You’re just looking for what is already there, and asking, ‘How can we use that for my program?’”

Co-opetition versus competition

Visit Baltimore, San Antonio CVB, and Anaheim/Orange County VCB joined forces this year to create the Synchronicities alliance, designed to share knowledge about conventions alternating between different cities. By working together, the three non-competing DMOs can provide companies and organizations a discounted package deal for three events revolving among the three cities.

For example, one of the first groups to sign a three-year deal with Synchronicities was the International Association of Exhibitions & Events (IAEE). When the group meets in Los Angeles in December, representatives from the Baltimore, San Antonio, and Anaheim DMOs will all be there to get to know the planners and understand the event’s business objectives. That way, the collaboration between all of the stakeholders begins much sooner, building a deeper body of intelligence and expanded relationships around a specific convention in three cities.

“We said to David Dubois [CEO of IAEE], we’re all going to become partner cities of IAEE, the three of us,” explains Tom Noonan, president/CEO of Visit Baltimore. “When we’re rolling out 2015 at the 2014 annual meeting in L.A. in December, we’re going to go on stage, all three of us together, and talk about how Baltimore, San Antonio and Anaheim are hosting this meeting for the next three years… so it’s not just a bunch of one-offs.”

Adding to the benefits, meeting planners can source a wider array of attendees and partners through the tri-city coalition. For the DMOs, they’ve tripled their sales reach.

“The shared knowledge of training for our sales staffs is important, so we’re teaching each other how to sell our sister cities,” explains Noonan. “So if someone says, ‘I’m not looking at Baltimore, I’m going to California,’ we’re saying, ‘Okay, look at Anaheim.’”

In October, 17 national European DMOs teamed up to create the strategic alliance: European National Convention Bureaux. The singular goal is to strengthen the position of Europe across the globe as a meetings and events destination. It was first formulated over a year ago between Eric Bakermans, marketing manager of meetings/conventions with the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, and Matthias Schultze, managing director of the German Convention Bureau.

“Matthias and I started the initiative to address the need for knowledge sharing on specific issues, which affect our daily work as national convention bureaus,” says Bakermans. From the business side, Schultze adds, “Our partnership approach unites the individual and unique offerings of each member to simplify and strengthen the approach towards key markets.”

One of the DMOs among the group of 17 is the Slovenian Convention Bureau. Director Miha Kovačič is a leading proponent for small DMOs in emerging destinations. He actively promotes the idea of partnerships and business relationship building, both within the local destination and outside, as of primary importance to attract international events. This is especially true he says for DMOs who lack the big marketing budgets typical of the major European countries.

“The biggest challenge in our industry on a destination level is that there is a need for close cooperation of the whole supply chain,” says Kovačič. “True added value of an event organized in a different country is not to experience the country’s culture, gastronomy, people, weather, etc. It is the specific knowledge that the country has and is willing to share with an international audience.”

He explains that due to the very competitive international environment of the meetings
Co-opetition versus competition market, small destinations have to develop a unique set of advantages that are sustainable and cannot be copied easily.

“In destinations where convention bureaus act as a connector of public, private, government, business, academic, science, and education networks, then there is a potential for the creation of knowledge sharing hubs,” adds Kovačič. “And the convention bureau is actually the only one who has the capacity to unite all these very different networks, because in most cases, these networks don’t cooperate.”

Based on that, the Slovenian Convention Bureau instituted the following mandate:

• Be a Business Events Champion: Create, grow and attract business events that reinforce the destination’s reputation as a business and intellectual hub.
• Be a Collaborator: Partner with organizers and other government agencies to leverage established strengths in key industries such as biomedical & healthcare; ICT & media; transport & security; lifestyle & cruise; environment & energy; infrastructure; and business, trade & professional services.
• Be an Experience Architect: Work with local suppliers to deliver exceptional experiences for business delegates.
• Be a Global Marketer: Engage in various marketing and promotional activities in order to entrench destination’s position as a premier meetings and convention destination, and to provide marketing and publicity support for partners to reach their target audience regionally and internationally.
• Be an Industry Developer: Work to create a vibrant meetings and convention environment with strong industry players, robust alliances, world class infrastructure and an emerging pool of meetings and convention talent.

The rise of ‘Innovation Districts’

In January, the Brookings Institution launched “The Rise of Innovation Districts” study examining the growth of mixed-use communities that combine commercial, residential,
educational and start-up culture, where people from all walks of life can collaborate in
vibrant settings.

For example, the Brooklyn Navy Yard emphatically illustrates the reurbanization of America’s industrial and warehouse districts. Dating back to the Civil War, the shipbuilding facility launched vessels ranging from the USS Maine to USS Arizona. The Yard closed down in the 1970s, and for over two decades the massive industrial buildings fell into ruin while destroying the social fabric of Brooklyn.

Today, there are over 6,000 people working in the Yard in industries ranging from fashion to filmmaking. There are many creative venues and companies promoting themselves for offsite group functions, such as Steiner Studios, the largest movie studio in the country outside Hollywood.

“Innovation districts are the manifestation of megatrends altering the location preferences
of people and firms and, in the process, reconceiving the very link between economy shaping, place making and social networking,” writes Bruce Katz, founding director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.

In the seven destination case studies in the Brookings report, the DMOs are actively engaged in positioning those districts as knowledge sharing hubs to convention planners. One of those is the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle Park, anchored by Duke University, North Carolina State, the University of North Carolina, and 140 high-tech companies including the U.S. headquarters for Lenovo.

“You’re starting to see cities aligning with their academia, their economic development organizations, their private sector, and saying, what can we do in our backyard to showcase to meeting and event planners, beyond restaurants and hotels and attractions, the business community that’s here?” says Loren Gold, executive VP of the Raleigh CVB. “We’re trying to offer the meeting planner our local connections, and what is a very community partnership-based focus here that we can tap into for event speakers, sponsors, exhibitors and things of that nature.”

Gold adds that companies are still scrutinizing the costs of travel to conventions, so by
providing intellectual capital as a drawing card for Raleigh, the DMO is providing additional return on investment to validate the meeting spend.

“Sure, we’ve got great outdoors, a great topography, a great downtown with old hardwood oak trees, and a LEED-certified convention center, but a lot of people can say that,” explains Gold. “I think what’s crucial in the planning industry right now is the ability to deliver valuable educational content in a variety of different ways.”

Raleigh CVB is also actively developing the destination as a knowledge hub, based on the success it’s had luring events like the World Wide Web Conference previously held in Helsinki, Johannesburg, and Barcelona. Toward that end, the DMO is producing its first Data4Decisions conference in March 2015, focusing on big data collection and analysis.

Two other innovation districts in the Brookings report are in Boston, including Kendall Square in Cambridge anchored by MIT, and the Seaport District—newly minted as the “Boston Innovation District.” Long under-developed until 2010, the Seaport has since welcomed more than 200 technology, medical and scientific companies.

Anchoring the development, the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center is within minutes of these knowledge industries, providing a wealth of new educational and business partnerships for visiting convention delegates aligned with the industries represented in the District.

“We are very fortunate to have so many world class educational facilities and thought leaders in Boston,” says Beth Stehley, VP of convention services/sales for the Greater Boston CVB. “[And] we are developing a new program to integrate that with the meetings and convention industry.” She would not elaborate because the details of that initiative won’t be announced until the end of the year.

The integrated convention campus

With the reurbanization of many downtown regions, DMOs are positioning their convention centers as all-encompassing convention districts. They’re promoting the centers as holistic meeting hubs closely integrated with hotels, F&B, entertainment, cultural venues and local business/academia. Demand among convention attendees for that seamless connectivity with the local destination is huge, because everyone wants to meet the locals and get out to explore the city.

In Nashville, for example, the new Music City Center convention facility and Omni Downtown Nashville Hotel opened last year with an open plaza separating them for private outdoor functions. The two buildings together represent the next generation of convention center packages.

“Once Music City Center and the Omni Hotel happened, then suddenly there was new residential, more hotels and new restaurants, and the whole vibrancy has enhanced what we already had in terms of our entertainment district,” says Leslie Davis, sales administration manager for the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corporation. She adds that almost 5,000 new residences have been built downtown in the last eight years, bringing a fresh local vibe to the urban core.

Davis is also seeing a shift among visiting groups who are asking to network with a wider variety of local players.

“We hosted CEOs for Cities, and they could have come in and discussed some
boring things, but they reached out to us, they reached out to the chamber, they reached out to all the major corporations to get some additional engagement,” says Davis. “I feel like people are asking a lot of different businesses how to be successful, what are they doing to attract employees, and that sort of thing. So I do think conventions are engaging other organizations than those that just come immediately to mind.”

Additionally, the downtown Entrepreneur Center (EC) is a startup incubator that also provides professional advice and support services for local artists. The EC is actively partnering with the bureau to provide artists for convention events.

“I think we’ve finally gotten past the country thing,” says Davis. “Music is definitely our brand but I think we’re now bringing a whole lot more to the experience, and it’s paying off. It’s definitely driving new business, you can hardly get a room downtown on the weekends.”

Over the last two years, Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau (AOCVCB) has garnered extensive national exposure after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing the new outdoor plaza and newly branded Anaheim Convention Campus. The Anaheim Convention Center, surrounded by the Hilton Anaheim, Anaheim Marriott and Sheraton Park Hotel, is expanding further with a new 200,000-square-foot addition.

“As an organization, we’ve been working towards the goal of becoming the destination marketing organization of the future,” says Jay Burress, president/CEO of the AOCVCB. “Part of that was coming together with our hotel neighbors to build the Anaheim Convention Campus.”

The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center New Orleans anchors the city’s post-industrial Warehouse District, but it has never been integrated with its surroundings. The facility is investing $150-$200 million to develop a convention center anchor hotel and entertainment district on the 47-acre plot adjacent to the facility.

“The proposed project is the most important growth phase for the development of tourism in New Orleans,” says Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans CVB. “This is absolutely critical for us to keep pace with our major competitors around the United States.”

In the same area along the riverfront, Tulane University is opening the strikingly modern Tulane River & Coastal Center research facility and conference space dedicated to the protection of the marine environment in the Mississippi Basin. Already, the convention center is developing partnerships to introduce groups to the scientific faculty.

A decade ago in Phoenix, the downtown core was mostly empty and not very friendly. Since then, there’s been a surge of young professionals relocating to the area. At the same time, the Phoenix Convention Center tripled in size, and incorporated the 2,300-seat Symphony Hall, home to the Phoenix symphony, ballet and opera, as well as the 1,360-seat Orpheum Theatre built in 1929. Downtown Phoenix is now a completely different experience, and the convention center campus is being marketed as much for its surroundings as it is for its facilities.

“With a lot of our planners… when we get them here we really convert quite a bit of our site visits into bookings because they all have this kind of ‘aha’ moment,” says Sarah Field, CMP, sales manager at Phoenix Convention Center. “They’ll say, ‘We didn’t realize you had all of this,’ which is a perception issue that we as a sales team and Visit Phoenix are trying to overcome on a regular basis.”

Amy Johnson, DMCP/CMP is president and owner of the AlliedPRA Atlanta destination management company (DMC). The downtown and Midtown communities are exploding with new developments,
offering convention planners more options for off-site events.

“Everyone wants not just a venue for drinks but something more interactive and educational,” says Johnson. “The big trends are personalization and high service, and new ways to share something in common among groups because it opens up new avenues for networking.”

The new College Football Hall of Fame & Fan Experience is perfect for that, because it was designed with today’s modern meeting trends in mind. The venue offers guided group tours, dedicated meeting space and F&B, and a slew of personalized interactive experiences. When visitors check-in, they’re asked to name their favorite college football team. As they go through each exhibit, it recognizes the person’s team and delivers information specific to that school.

“It shows your school and everyone can see it, so people begin to meet up to talk about their teams and rivalries and things like that,” says Johnson. “The football museum is cool because it involves technology, personalization, and shared passions, so it takes the whole experience to a new level. We took an airline industry group of 500 people there and they said it was their best event ever.”

Convention center flow and design

How convention planners and attendees are actually using convention center space is changing dramatically, emphasizing the shift toward more fluid connectivity. Convention center design is also adapting to these trends to provide more organic meeting environments for spontaneous gatherings and work sessions.

At the Vancouver Convention Centre, the staff is helping convention planners organize more free-flowing events to take advantage of all of the natural light in the enormous front hall with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the harbor and mountains.

“We’re creating a sense of place because delegates are demanding more, and people are so much more visually oriented these days,” says Claire Smith, VP of sales/marketing at Vancouver Convention Centre. “The foyer is the new meeting room, and I see it here all the time. It’s about being in a more interesting environment. Those discussions are really important and support the meeting objectives, and the delegates want to connect with the outdoors to create more interesting and inspiring places to learn, share and connect.”

Smith says she’s even seeing actual sessions moving into the foyer space, which she adds “can be a nightmare for planners” when 50 people start hauling chairs around. She’s also seeing less standard activation areas and less displaying of wares, while at the same time, there’s more sponsored, interactive, loungy experiences to support a certain brand. Many of the top sponsors are creating areas where people can interact versus standing at a standard exhibition booth.

Target, for example, created a casual meeting environment in a dedicated meeting room with tables and chairs and F&B so delegates could simply mingle and relax.

“Or they’re just sitting cross-legged on the carpet having a dialogue,” says Smith. “We didn’t see that five years ago. We saw people sitting in rooms doing what was expected of them. This is all based on consumer behavioral trends driving travel trends, and meetings are having to adapt. For example, buffets are coming back based on the demand for personalized experiences, for controlling the experience. It’s just a reflection on society.”

In Nashville, the 1.2 million-square-foot Music City Center convention center opened last year with three out of four exhibition halls having natural light, which is extremely rare. There are also eight outdoor terraces, including the two largest with 18,000 and 15,000 square feet, hosting receptions for up to 1,000 people. Also very rare.

“When we did our focus groups six years ago, the one thing we heard more than anything was that you need inviting public areas,” says Charles Starks, CEO of Music City Center. “We also heard that we need an extreme amount of daylight and informal gathering spaces inside and outside. It’s similar to what you see happening in hotels with living room arrangements and lots of little nooks and cutouts and group workspaces.”

One concern with natural daylight in meeting spaces is the difficulty to create complete darkness for events requiring projection. Starks says they have a sophisticated black-out system but it’s only been used half a dozen times in one and a half years.

During the construction phase, the center polled the locals for what to do with one of the large spaces. They voted to install the Songwriters Hall of Fame, which didn’t have a home at the time. Starks says people love all of the communal lounge areas for informal networking.

Redefining face-to-face events

There is a surge of advocacy for face-to-face meetings spearheaded by the Meetings Mean Business Coalition (MMBC), sponsored by many of the largest brands in hospitality, theme parks, cruise lines and a variety of large DMOs. The MMBC’s mission promotes the value of face-to-face meetings as the best vehicle to drive business growth, supported by a comprehensive website with research, case studies and testimonials.

Meanwhile, the advance of event technology is a juggernaut, with sizable venture funding, that’s only just beginning to grasp the capabilities of how large groups will interact in the future. Many established tourism brands fear that event tech will cannibalize convention business, which is only now in 2014 recuperating from the global economic crisis.

The members of the event tech sector portray their products as additive to face-to-face meetings. They promote the idea that event apps and web streaming drive more engagement and reach to convention stakeholders and attendees. In turn, they assert, that is creating wider global networks that drive more attention, and ultimately attendance to the physical events themselves.

That debate today about face-to-face versus virtual is going to dissipate in the coming years as companies and organizations discover the business value and sponsor dollars that event technology deliver. Technology adoption rates are increasing year over year to facilitate more hybrid events marrying live and virtual experiences, but the challenge for everybody is calculating the economics to determine the best balance of the two for each individual group.

In an October 2014 report produced by the DoubleDutch event tech company, based on research provided by MPI, data compiled from nearly 1,800 meeting planners shows that 63% of planners are using event apps. The report goes on to state: “In the next 6-12 months, it is expected that we will see an 85% or greater mobile app adoption rate among event professionals in a variety of industries.”

Nothing is going to slow the growth of hybrid events. What the industry needs is a neutral voice with access to significant research to nullify the face-to-face versus virtual conversation.

One candidate for that role is MPI. In 2012 and 2013, MPI partnered with Leeds
Metropolitan University in the UK to produce a comprehensive series of white papers revolving around industry trends, including meeting design, social media and event tech. In the final Future of Meetings report last year, the data showed that just over 50% of those polled believe, “Virtual meetings will be used in addition to face-to-face meetings.” The rest were split evenly between believing virtual meetings will “enhance” or “replace” face-to-face meetings.

CT Business Travel in the U.K. unveiled another study in Q4 2014: Why Face-to-Face Communication Won’t Disappear. Defying conventional wisdom about Millennials being less enthused about in-person events than older generations, the study reports that 80% of Millennials prefer face-to-face events, while 78% of Gen X feel the same way.

“The fact that Millennials get online and use their devices creates new reasons to get together, and creates new groups,” said Paul Van Deventer, CEO of MPI, at the IBTM America industry conference this past summer. “So that’s actually driving the progression of [live] meetings, and the advancement of meetings. But it has also changed the way that meetings have to be put forth…. So technology, when you’re in the live event now, has to be used to provide a different experience.”

Much more of this type of research is needed with so much disruption happening so quickly to provide an unbiased, up-to-date roadmap for meeting owners and organizers. In 2015, expect to see more thorough case studies with reliable data to back up claims about the ROI and deliverables surrounding hybrid meetings.

Next-generation meeting design

The Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) and MPI, the two primary member organizations for the meetings and convention industry, experimented with next generation meeting design strategy at their annual conferences in 2104.

For the first time in January, PCMA tracked physical and virtual audience engagement during its Convening Leaders conference in Boston. Of the more than 5,000 attendees, 17% of them were virtual. Reasons given for virtual attendance were: 48% budget consideration; 46% scheduling conflicts; 7% convenience.

“By releasing these numbers, we hope that the industry understands having a hybrid event will drive new traffic to your brand, and in the upcoming years, to your face-to-face events,” says Deborah Sexton, president/CEO of PCMA.

Mary Reynolds Kane, senior director of experience marketing for PCMA, adds, “We are converting more and more people to members, to face-to-face attendees, and to engage deeper with PCMA. In fact, 65% of our hybrid attendees were non-members, with 63% of those being meeting planners.”

At PCMA’s Education Conference this summer in Toronto, the event organizers tested a new Open Area Learning meeting design configuration. It involved moving four concurrent sessions into one ballroom.

“The groups were smaller, and many of the presenters who spoke the day before took a deeper dive into the subject matter in the open area learning,” says Kelly Peacy, CAE/CMP, senior VP of education/meetings at PCMA. “Attendees were also able to freely move from one space to another at their own leisure, and they took the time in between to network and discuss the
content going on in the room.”

She says key positive takeaways included: the energy in the space, the spontaneous dialogue that wouldn’t have happened with individual sessions, and the fact that people came back after lunch, suggesting the event was a success.

However, there were detractors. “We had a good portion of our attendees who have learned that through this experiment, they didn’t like this type of environment,” Peacy says. “That’s a very good thing to know about yourself and for us to know about our attendees. It’s not only about learning what our attendees prefer within the adult learning sphere, but also what may or may not work for their own meetings and attendees.”

Sexton added, “EduCon is designed like a learning lab so planners can test out things here and apply to their own meetings.”

At its annual 2014 World Education Congress (WEC) in Minneapolis, MPI experimented with new event technology and meeting design.

“WEC is a laboratory for members, we do some things here on the cutting edge a little bit,” said Paul Van Deventer, CEO of MPI. “It might be a little bit different than what a professional meeting planner might do on their own.”

Multiple “campfire” sessions for up to 30 people, designed with various casual seating arrangements, were held in the convention center’s prefunction spaces where people could come and go without disrupting the conversation. MPI also tested out a new Town Hall session with industry execs using the Conferences/io audience response app, where participants can ask speakers questions via their devices.

The technology worked flawlessly but the entire session was conducted using only the app technology, and there was no verbal exchange among the audience the entire time. A hybrid strategy incorporating both the app and the ability to verbally counter argue topics would have been more interactive. As it was, this session provided no additional value as a live meeting experience versus virtual.

Jessie States, manager of professional development at MPI, is one of the world’s leading figures in meeting design architecture and education. She proposes that, with all of the new event tech advances, planners are not being given the time by meeting owners to implement, test, reiterate, and measure ROI and key performance indicators. Basically, with budgets frozen and meetings growing, planners are falling behind under the weight of constantly being required to do more for less. The “more for less” phrase is even beginning to take on meme-like ubiquity in the meetings industry.

“A couple of years ago we decided we wanted to find out what the future of meetings and events was going to look like, and we went out into the industry and we asked meeting professionals that belong to our organization what they thought that might look like,” says States. “And we were a little disappointed in the results, because we found out that meeting professionals are so busy, and they’re doing so many different things, and they’re being tasked with doing more with less, that they really didn’t even have the time to think about what two years down the road was going to look like, much less 10, 15 or 20.”

Content, context & curation

The annual Incentive Travel, Meetings & Events (IMEX) America convention in Las Vegas is the largest meetings and convention industry trade show in the U.S., while the more established IMEX Frankfurt show is even larger in scope and attendance. Miguel Neves is IMEX Group’s senior online community manager and president of MPI’s U.K./Ireland chapter, who has been instrumental in driving virtual engagement before, during and after the two IMEX events.

He suggests that events are now evolving into media publishers with the exponential rise in content surrounding events.

“I think everyone is struggling with the amount of content out there, and they’re trying to filter out what’s good and bad and worth dedicating time to,” Neves says. “Events and organizations are assuming the role of content hubs to help provide that filter, so events and media are becoming a little interchangeable in a way.”

IMEX partnered with companies like Bob.tv and Hilton Worldwide, who produced and sponsored about 50 professional videos. Meanwhile, independent video producers like International Meetings Review, Convention News TV and the Meetings Mean Business Coalition created even more video. So Neves is building a content inventory while disseminating and delivering that content over multiple months to extend engagement and build the IMEX brand. IMEX Video content often focuses on interviews with speakers and association people, like Kevin Kirby, chairman of MPI, to share what’s going on in their world and why they’ve come to IMEX.

“The hybrid thing is really getting interesting, and I think we’re at a place now where most events have experimented with some kind of hybrid,” says Neves. “Although at the moment, I’m seeing everyone trying to get serious about video strategy but not many people have a definite plan of action yet.”

A first this year at IMEX, the organization hosted an Event Technology Startup Contest with 10 startups in various stages of bringing new tech to market. The goal was to introduce planners and travel brands to where the industry is going. Contestants included companies like GruupMeet, which culls publicly available flight data and pairs that with convention VIP and speaker lists. If a flight is delayed, the event management team can respond immediately to adapt schedules.

Neves told us, “We were blown away by the quality of the presentations, and I think we were very lucky to partner with the right person, Julius Solaris from Event Manager Blog. He has a Pinterest board with over 1,000 startups.”

When it comes to the actual content that planners are consuming, the PCMA-affiliated Convene industry magazine and media company is regarded as the most professional and informative in the business. Editor-in-Chief Michelle Russell says planners are always looking for what’s new, and technology is a big part of that. She says Convene especially focuses on case studies because those are the stories that drive the most engagement.

“Real life examples are how we really learn from our peers, so don’t just tell me theoretically, I want to see how it’s been put into practice,” explains Russell. “So for anyone in the industry, certainly that is a best practice, to tell a compelling story, to be able to do it in different ways, and to do it very succinctly.”

Presently, Convene’s online presence is embedded in PCMA’s portal, but there will be a new standalone site launching around April 2015. Russell and her team are focusing on expanding their online content, and she suggests meeting planners try to build their audiences in the same way. Content marketing before, during and after an event is evolving into the best event marketing option with the highest ROI, as long as the content provides real-world value.

“We live in an increasingly online world, and there is a place for face-to-face, but there’s also many ways to create community,” says Russell. “Because there’s so many competitive forces that are pulling your attendees away, there’s a need to create a 24/7, 365 days-a-year kind of community online. They want to feel that they really are a part of a group of like-minded professionals, who not only meet during the year, but regularly provide content and resources to help them be better at their job.”

Russell, however, questions some content coming from meetings and conventions that feels a little too much like marketing.

“All of these hosted buyers who come to IMEX have stories to tell, not testimonials about why they go to IMEX, but stories to tell about their success and their
challenges,” she says. “I think there’s a great opportunity to tap into that insight and learn from them, just as much as the education at the event.”

CincyUSA meetings blog

CincinnatiUSA is one of the few DMOs in the country with a robust blog dedicated exclusively to meetings and conventions. DMOs globally are attempting to differentiate themselves in the group market by delivering industry thought leadership about how planners can activate a city’s infrastructure to improve engagement and boost attendance. Cincinnati’s content focuses on macro and micro industry trends often independent of Cincinnati to help expand the DMO’s reach.

In 2014 to date, pageviews of the blog increased 37% over 2013. Complementing that, 849 people have attended three webinars introduced for the first time in 2014. Topics revolved around creating high profile events, innovative meeting design and corporate sponsorships.

“We really took somewhat of an educational standpoint with the planners, not just selling the destination but providing knowledge on industry trends,” says Barrie Perks, VP of sales/services at CincinnatiUSA CVB. “We’ve found that we’re acting as a huge resource and planners are asking us now what we recommend, and how would we go about something based on the blog. It’s quite remarkable, planners are calling us now and asking us questions.”

Oracle’s OpenWorld

The event management team behind Oracle Corporation’s annual OpenWorld conference is considered an industry leader in content delivery, engaging almost 60,000 event attendees and a global virtual audience consuming over seven million page views during six weeks around the event. OpenWorld is the primary tool to bring together Oracle’s whole ecosystem of customers, partners, analysts, press, employees and anyone else interested in software development.

“This really is about being part of the knowledge hub of Silicon Valley where great ideas are formulated and exposed,” says Paul Salinger, VP of marketing at Oracle. “We take a content-driven and digital multi-channel approach to the way that we engage remote audiences, because we look at it from a pre-, during and post-event strategy…. Then we’re aggregating that data and using that strategy to drive people to the next logical marketing activity or next logical conversation.”

Salinger makes the distinction that hybrid means a lot more than live streaming video. Generating conversation across social channels is paramount and as important to drive conversation as the content itself. Rethinking and reworking content underlines Oracle’s marketing strategy to leverage the maximum value for each piece.

“We’re sort of taking the approach of not thinking of the conference as a particular time in space, so whereas one of our executives might have a keynote on a particular topic, one of the ways we’re starting to think of it is, how can we turn that more into a six-week keynote,” explains Salinger.

Especially over the last couple of years, Oracle’s content directors have shifted away from pushing content from an Oracle perspective only, to inject the customer voice into the virtual conversation more in an effort to create a two-way dialogue. For example, by asking for questions from the audience, Oracle executives and some of the company’s content experts, are provided with the opportunity to answer those questions to keep that conversation going.

“The other thing that we’ve really tried to do is not make the things that we push out so content-specific as to only reach a narrow audience,” says Salinger. “But instead, we’re trying to be a little provocative and more on the thought leadership side of things, and ask interesting questions, pose interesting problems, have our executives talk in
visionary, thought leadership terms, rather than talking about a specific product.”

That bottom-up approach to co-create content is one of the trends most exciting for Salinger, which further builds on the premise of events as knowledge sharing hubs. “One of the things we really tried to hone in on this year was the idea of co-creation,” he says. “There’s lots of different aspects of how customers can participate in the development process in terms of providing feedback, being part of beta groups and all of those kind of things.”

Event tech and education

QuickMobile and DoubleDutch are two of the leading companies developing event apps for the meetings and convention industry. Both of them are positioning app technology as integral to the event experience, versus add-on components.

Event apps will evolve in 2015 from a re-creation of the event’s print guide to a fully developed knowledge sharing hub, delivering a branded social media-style experience. The best apps already feature social media integration, but we’ll see more functionality to comment on educational content, communicate with peers and sponsors, and connect with new people based on like-minded interests via beacon and geofencing technology.

The next generation apps will also curate more user generated content and live streaming, and they will show on-the-fly schedule changes based on spontaneous pop-up experiences and delegate demand cultivated from real-time analytics review.

MPI’s annual World Education Congress (WEC) this summer went paperless for the first time, driving new levels of adoption of QuickMobile’s event app.

“To me a good mobile app should do a few things,” says Tahira Endean, CMP/BHM, manager of events at QuickMobile. “It has to provide all of the information and content, and it also has to connect people. It needs to include all of your agenda, program and speaker information, you should be able to build your own schedule, and there needs to be a survey mechanism built in.”

Endean explains that hybrid meetings are about bringing together two separate audiences in one place. People attending the event use an app to curate their entire program experience, while virtual attendees use the app to consume session content, engage in the social media streams, and understand the overall context of conversations taking place at the physical event.

In terms of live streaming video, QuickMobile works with vendors like INXPO and Sonic Foundry. Endean says planners are less and less intimidated by hybrid technology to deliver live streaming video because they’re understanding that, “In the simplest terms, it’s just about sending the same content to a different box,” she explains. For large events, convention organizers already have multiple cameras recording content, “so then it’s just a matter of live streaming it out with a live streaming partner.”

The first and most important step in incorporating event app and hybrid technology, according to Endean, is developing a digital marketing strategy revolving around content.

“As we look to grow our memberships, as we look to grow our audiences, or even maintain the size of our meetings, people have to have that good content to go back to, and I think that hybrid meetings really offer that,” sums up Endean.

At DoubleDutch, Jennifer Hawkins, director of marketing, emphasizes that an overlooked role of event apps is the ability to measure engagement. She explains that, just like a website owner relies on Google Analytics, meeting owners should be relying heavily on event app analytics.

“We want to make sure there’s data surrounding the entire event lifecycle that you can hold onto and measure and track, so you can optimize events,” she says. “It would be crazy to let all of these interactions go by without somehow capturing them, so you can see at a high level what is performing well and what is not performing well.”

As an example of how apps can deliver business insight through metrics, DoubleDutch worked with one company that wanted to test how well employees understood the company’s vision, culture and products. Using the DoubleDutch app, employees were polled before a company event and then after to gauge the impact the meeting had on employees.

Hawkins also suggests that convention organizers should think of an app as a communication channel. Instead of thinking of it as a screen, think of it as a window.

“Most of the apps out there do a really great job creating a nice digital agenda, and some pull in social media,” she explains. “What we have done is really pretty different. We’re actually more like a branded Facebook for you event, so everyone has their own profile, and you’re able to contribute into the app.”

Hawkins says the goal is to create a more interactive experience that can extend the lifecycle of an event by connecting people with similar personal and business interests.

“We’re seeing and encouraging more organic connections, so for example, if I see on the feed that you’ve posted some really provocative comments about mobile marketing, I think this could be a really interesting person to talk to,” she says. “So within this very public sphere, I can actually post a reply to your comment and say I would like to talk to you more about this.”

Due to the transparent nature of these apps, they tend to be very attendee driven rather than exhibitor driven. Meaning, people tend to actively contribute around content in order to make connections, compared to cold soliciting, because with that you’re never going to get any response. At the same time, it’s a platform to provide a voice for exhibitors or vendors who want to get in the conversation about topics they’re passionate about.

“I think it’s still really new for this particular industry,” suggests Hawkins. “Events by their nature are very physical, in-person experiences, but there has to be data coming from it, and I think we’re really starting to see it happen.”

The future of hybrid

The group of meeting design and event technology companies consist of established players like Maarten Vanneste at the Meeting Design Institute, and veteran tech experts such as Corbin Ball and Jim Spellos. There’s also a new batch of fresh people making a lot of impact like Dan Berger at Social Tables, Julius Solaris at Event Manager Blog, Dahlia El Gazzar at The Meeting Pool, Miguel Neves at IMEX and many others.

Brandt Krueger is another one in that group. He’s an event tech consultant and educator whose tagline is: “Making corporate meetings and events suck a little less, every day.”

“I say often that technology isn’t the end all and be all,” he says. “Don’t just use it because it’s shiny and new. Use it because it’s going to make your life better. I would much rather see someone using old technology really well and effectively, rather than new technology just for the sake of it being new.”

Krueger worked for an event production company for 18 years before going independent this year. He consults for a growing list of clients and provides educational videos at the Event Leadership Institute, including his latest on hybrid meetings.

“One of the things I say in that video is that hybrid is coming whether you like it or not,” he emphasizes. “We’re going to reach a point where every meeting that we have that’s in any way public, and even a lot that aren’t, is going to have some kind of online component.”

For convention organizers, Krueger suggests they have two options regarding hybrid and virtual meetings. Technology is becoming a sort of line in the sand for convention organizers that’s becoming wider with each year.

“You can take charge and learn how it works, and be the person leading that charge in your organization, and learn how to do it right,” he says. “Or you can just sit back and get out of the way. So who do you want to be in your organization? Do you want to be the one who your company looks to when it comes time to figure this stuff out, or do you want to be left behind?”

Another rising star in event technology, Steph Pfeilsticker is a digital strategist at Interactive Meeting Technology (IMT), who gave a presentation on hybrid tech at MPI’s WEC event this year. She says hybrid meetings do a great job of extending in-person events to a larger audience, and when a hybrid event concludes, planners have a treasure trove of content.

“It’s easy to focus on the live hybrid event and overlook planning for the post-event use of content,” she says. “Planners should take the time to consider appropriate post-event uses of sessions.”

Some organizations allow the content to be viewed for free to demonstrate the company’s high quality of thought leadership, and to encourage future participation in a conference. Conversely, the content can also be repackaged and sold as a live re-broadcast, or made available on demand for a fee.

Pfeilsticker recently produced a three-day hybrid national sales meeting for a group of financial services representatives, using Digitell as the virtual platform vendor.
Content was made available for 12 weeks after the event for free, but promoted expressly to attendees.

IMT then viewed sales production data prior to the meeting and after to measure the impact of the new sales strategy education.

“We saw a dramatic increase in sales production rising over 30%, and the virtual attendee increase was 36% over the previous year,” says Pfeilsticker. “I believe that we were reaching a group that hadn’t been touched by some of our education before, or reenergized by our inspirational speakers. We gave them knowledge and tools that they desperately needed to build their business.”

A Millennial, Gen X’er & Boomer talk trends

For this report, we interviewed three meeting planners among the Millennial, Gen X and Baby Boomer generations to learn some of the trends they’re seeing and industry issues they’re encountering.

Millennial: Claire Harrington, CMP, manager of communications at Social Tables, Washington, DC

Harrington attended a conference in L.A. in 2014, and one of the ways that the event organizers were trying to get people to engage was by giving attendees name badges with QR codes. It was a business card swapping technology, but instead of people walking up to one another and introducing themselves, Harrington says she literally had people rush up to her just to scan her code and then walk away.

“And I was like, I don’t even know who you are, so I refused to partake in it,” she says. “I saw a lot of people who were not Millennials, older industry people, even industry leaders. I think people who are not in the Millennial generation are so excited to learn about tech, but haven’t grown up in tech, that they don’t really see the grey area. It’s just black and white for them, where you have to be in tech now. You have to be in tech because if you’re not you’re lagging behind.”

Regarding the L.A. event, Harrington says that she easily acquired her fellow
attendees’ information after establishing a personal, face-to-face connection. She adds that her Millennial-age colleagues were equally unimpressed with how people were abusing the technology without respect for basic human social skills.

She told us, “I think that just goes to say, that while tech is growing and it’s huge, face-to-face relationships mean face-to-face relationships.”

Gen X: Krista Reimer, CIC, managing director of Blue Next Events, NYC

Reimer says the most relevant trend she’s seeing for conventions is the ability for the planner to pair their visit with potential site visits pre/post trip. This allows the planner to save time and also gives an additional justification for attending the convention. This ‘piggyback’ effect seems to have increased the number of site inspections happening around a particular conference.

Reimer recently attended a peer-to-peer roundtable discussion with the IBTM conference group regarding what planners are looking for when attending trade shows and conventions. Along with piggybacking, preference for a different city each year also rated high. Although, she says
planners still prefer their conventions held at tier one cities, since that is where most of their clients’ business is held.

Conventions are also more frequently going outside of the hotel ballroom for networking opportunities. From welcome receptions at a city cultural center, city orientation tours using unique transportation methods like pedicabs, or taking breakout sessions to a local park, these allow for the attendee to have a more connected experience between the conference and the destination.

“For a recent book publishing company event, we took the convention outside of the ballroom to incorporate the city of New York,” says Reimer. “We utilized the New York Public Library for a private viewing of their most historical books, and held their gala dinner at the local non-profit bookstore, Housing Works, which uses donations to assist homeless New Yorkers living with HIV & AIDS.

Boomer: Terry Matthews-Lombardo, CMP, TML Services, Orlando

Matthews-Lombardo works with a lot of repeat corporate clients, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. She says corporate clients tend to look at virtual engagement during meetings as a risk as much as an opportunity.

Many corporate clients are also learning that just because they have a PR and marketing team, doesn’t mean they have the required personnel to oversee hybrid event technology and event marketing.

“That’s a challenge, getting clients to understand the need for third-party event tech and social media people,” says Matthews-Lombardo. “It’s hard to convey we need outside professionals but they’re worth their weight in gold.”

She adds that it’s also important for corporate clients to know who their audience is, because those audiences are changing so fast. With the workforce developing in all different directions, companies need to know who is going to buy-in, and why or why not. Next generation technology is the best way to accomplish that.

“Big corporations don’t like to admit not knowing technology, and people often don’t want to take a risk that their event will be a flop,” says Matthews-Lombardo. “When they do see great results, they’re excited and they like that they overcame a challenge. But one executive recently told me when that happened, ‘Whew, we dodged a bullet,’ which is an interesting way of looking at it. The good news is I do see a shift toward more overall usage of technology. There’s a lot of hand-holding, but there’s definitely a positive shift taking place.”

Five key strategies for convention and event planners

• Learn everything you can about event tech. This is number one by a long shot. Today, event tech providers have become the leading content source for event tech education, and while they may be biased toward their own brand, the amount of actionable insight is extensive. Also explore thought leaders such as the Meeting Design Institute, Event Leadership Institute, IMEX Group, IBTM Events, The Meeting Pool, Event Manager Blog, Corbin Ball and Jim Spellos.
• Learn about tomorrow’s industry trends. Join Meeting Professionals International (MPI) and Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) to get access to their education and research papers. Planners will also learn best case examples in meeting design and event technology in the online MPI/PCMA member ecosystems. If you’re not a member, you will be surprised how much value you get out of your annual fee by building new relationships.
• Establish pre/post engagement. This is both art and science to develop robust conversation before and after an event, so the important thing to do is experiment. Develop and test different types of content and be sure to engage all of your social media channels to cross-promote each other and provide context. Ask attendees, stakeholders and related third parties to contribute content, whether it’s a LinkedIn post from a senior executive or Instagram photos from your event.
• Ask destination suppliers for thought leaders. Creativity and innovation are the new luxury. More and more attendees value professional development, education and relationship building over the most luxurious venues or experiences. That takes work to create, so ask your DMO, DMC, hotel and convention center contacts for area thought leaders aligned with your industry, and general business/cultural influencers to build new layers of engagement.
• Measure everything. According to an endless variety of professionals throughout the meetings and convention industry, the key to acquiring higher event budgets is the ability to provide empirical evidence supporting the clear ROI and deliverables of any new initiative. Work with your event tech provider to learn how to understand analytics and convert big data into big action.

Endnotes & further reading