Interesting July
Welcome to July’s That’s Interesting. Our shortlist of the most useful and inspiring things we’ve come across in the wide world of events.
If you enjoy it, then please do share it!
Most Interesting:
Interesting Breakfast 10min explore
We recently presented the very best of That’s Interesting over breakfast at 100 Wardour. These are the themes and links to some of the most popular stories and ideas we’ve shared. You can find videos of some of the talks on our blog
Plain Interesting:
Hashtag mosaics 3min explore
Creative, participative idea that gets people talking by merging the physical and the digital
Selfie factories 3min read
The value of designing Instagramable events
AR signs in the air 3min explore
As fans of AR’s ability to add a new dimension to events, we were always going to love this clever way of using AR to signpost locations and people
Five ways to make your next presentation better 1min read
“A presentation is expensive. It’s many of us, in real time, in sync, all watching you do your thing”
Why I’d never do a TED Talk 3min read
Rehearsed smugness and making the simple sound profound – she’s not a fan!
Something to go to:
The Future Starts Here
Entertaining and thought-provoking exhibition that uses clever physical and interaction design to pose questions about the future
Something for your next BBQ:
If there’s something interesting you think we should include, please share it via thatsinteresting@liveunion.co.uk
Anatomy of a Delegate
What audiences value from events is changing fast. In this short presentation from our recent Interesting Breakfast Jez shares five areas that are central to designing events for the 2018 delegate.
Beyond the plenary
With audiences placing increased value upon building connections and the opportunity to personalise their own experiences - event networking and breakout spaces need to be re-imagined.
Take a listen to Sophie Frood, Account Manager at Live Union sharing three solutions to this challenge:
- Box Events
- The Big Debate
- The Digital Playground
Venues Re-imagined
A post by Kat Poznickova
As businesses re-imagine their events and embrace more innovative formats, what they want from venues is changing too. Non-traditional spaces are increasingly the order of the day.
More and more we’re seeing the below must haves on venue finding briefs:
Nature, not neon– Natural daylight and changes of scenery are ideal ingredients for making your event more than just another conference or meeting. They inspire deeper connections and meaningful experiences.
Versatility – Flexible venues allow organisers to be more creative when it comes to format design and use of the latest technical innovations.
Local / Authentic– Venues that are important to the local culture and economy help your delegates learn more about the destination in which the event is being.
Surprising–There’s no better way to prime audiences for a different type of experience than to take them to an unexpected venue. Old factories, empty retail spaces, carparks – the list is almost endless.
Here’s a small taster of some interesting venues you may want to consider:
A great contemporary, modern blank canvas space that lends itself to complete transformation. The ideal space for dinners for up to 200 guests and product launches.
You may not think of the London’s oldest and most renowned food market as an events venue, however, it offers variety of spaces to hire. The most impressive is Market Hall – a grand space with plenty of natural daylight which can accommodate up to 300 people.
Located in an exciting area of Kings Cross, Central Saint Martins offers 5000m2 of flexible space from lecture theatres for 400, through to a roof terrace with fabulous views across London to a space for 1000 standing. It has a great potential for holding conferences, awards ceremonies, exhibitions and networking events.
Steel Yard is two beautifully restored Victorian railway arches underneath Canon Bridge Station in the heart of the City.
This versatile event venue lends itself well to everything from dinners and receptions, conferences, awards ceremonies to exhibitions and product launches for around 400 guests. The notable selling points are its size, versatility and extensive lighting.
A new exciting space on the 4thand 5thfloors of the Science Museum is opening in early 2019. It will be available for both daytime and evening hire, with capacities of up to 400 for dinners and conferences and 450 for receptions. Among the features of this new space is a panoramic window on Level 5 offering stunning views of the City and plenty of natural daylight.
If you’re looking for a venue for a leadership retreat, consider No Man’s Fort. It is one of three Solent forts dating back 150 years. It has 22 luxurious rooms and a large atrium with natural daylight for 200 people for dinner or a conference as well as smaller meeting rooms.
At Live Union we’ve an extensive database of venues. If you need any ideas drop us a line.
Energizing for Engagement
Listen to Harriette Wight, Account Director at Live Union exploring some unexpected ways to build surprise and energy and help people make connections.
These included:
Having people create incredible physical infographics, known as data strings.
Thinking differently about name badges.
Turning travel between venues into a networking opportunity by pairing people for pedicabs rides.
And, if all else fails instigating a mass snowball fight.
Interesting June
Welcome to June’s That’s Interesting. A bumper collection of ideas and inspiration from right across the event world. We’ve been taking That’s Interesting on the road - so do get in touch if you’d like us to come and share some event inspiration with your team.
Most interesting:
Formats re-imagined (15min read)
A new report from Live Union exploring the incredible innovation that’s happening in event formats. We share six exciting and diverse event architectures. Download your copy
Just plain interesting:
Data strings (3min explore)
A clever way to get to know your audience by creating visually stunning, live, real-world infographics. Here’s a nice photo of one
Stunning Ligeo lighting bars (2min explore)
You may well have seen these in retails displays; they’re definitely worth considering for your next event or exhibition design
Six TED talks for event professionals (20min explore)
Where good ideas come from and Build a tower are special favourites of ours
Spherical touchscreen display (5min explore)
Fun and intuitive way to help people navigate your content
C2 Montreal changes the rules (30min listen)
Fascinating insight into a business event that really does things differently
Dom Perignon’s Lumiere Dinner (2min watch)
Really clever use of projection and lighting to create a dinner like no other
Something to go to:
Borderless
See what can be created with 520 computers and 470 projectors – reason enough to head to Tokyo for your summer holiday!
If there’s something interesting you think we should include, please share it via thatsinteresting@liveunion.co.uk
53
Thanks so much to everyone who came along to Interesting Breakfast at the fabulous 100 Wardour. It was a brilliant opportunity to share the innovations that are exciting us and join conversations about how different businesses are using events.
We thought it would be useful to pull together some of the examples that were shared and give a flavour of the topics for those of you who couldn't make it this time.
The thread that ran through everything was 'experience rich delegates'. The idea that today's business audiences are actively seeking new event experiences and formats, and that what they value is changing fast.
To help spark ideas people were encouraged to get hands-on with AR and Snapchat Spectacles. Everblock helped people think differently about designing physical spaces and ITR showcased some incredible ideas for using LED.
Speed presentations by the Live Union team shared different ways to design events for experience rich delegates:
Anatomy of a 2018 Delegate
Summarised a recent Live Union report getting under the skin of today's audiences. What the 2018 delegate values from a live experience was characterised as: brain-friendly / personalised / connecting / sharable / entertaining. The word 'bleisure' made an unfortunate appearance in this presentation!
Energizing for Engagement
Explored some unexpected ways to build surprise and energy and help people make connections. These included:
Having people create incredible physical infographics, known as data strings.
Thinking differently about name badges.
Turning travel between venues into a networking opportunity by pairing people for pedicabs rides.
And, if all else fails instigating a mass snowball fight.
Next Gen Presentations
From TV to gaming to phone interfaces we're surrounded by visually stunning graphics. So how can you give your event audience an equally rich visual experience?
Think beyond PowerPoint and embrace the opportunity to use any digital screen as a canvass onto which you can blend different layers of content: presentation graphics / live camera / live data / audience voting.
Explore the new opportunities for real time rendering of graphics. This allows you to have animation quality graphics without making the presenting process difficult for your speakers.
To see what's possible with next-gen presentations scroll through this incredible INTEL presentation at CES.
Beyond the Plenary
With audiences putting more value on building connections and the opportunity to map their own experience, the onus is on us to re-imagine networking and breakout spaces. In this session we shared three Live Union solutions to this challenge:
1) Box Events
Specially produced cardboard boxes are used to create agile open-plan spaces. The branded boxes are used for seating and stacked for signage and to divide spaces. They allow us to quickly reformat a space, setting it up for conversational formats such as campfires and fishbowls. They naturally create an informal participative feel.
2) Big Debate
A format that puts discussion at the heart of your event. Designed to help people input to the big topics in your business and sector. The Big Debate can be scaled to different audience sizes and spaces.
3) Digital Playground
A format that makes technology playful, opening minds and engaging even the most extreme technophobes. The Digital Playground sees people getting hands-on with some fun technologies such as Google Tilt Brush and works as a great introduction to discussions about technology within your own sector.
Vital Event Technology
All too often people share event tech that might be useful in the future but isn't ready for today. Here are some that you should consider using right now:
Live translation tends to be a costly and cumbersome undertaking. Technology is changing this. Interactio sends translation directly to a delegate's device, removing the need to give everyone headphones. Microsoft Translator goes a stage further and uses AI to translate both slides and spoken words, removing the need to have translators present. Microsoft's product isn't 100% accurate (you can read our review here) so be mindful of the audience you're using it with.
Klaxoon is a very cool digital collaboration tool for events that uses a great post-it note interface.
Augmented Reality is proving to be incredibly valuable for events, particularly to help delegates tailor the content they choose to consume. We love this example of Samsung using it at a launch event.
Puffer Fish projects content onto a spherical touchscreen, providing a stunning way for people to navigate content - obvious uses for any business with a global story to tell.
Venues to know about
There are three trends in venues right now: natural light, versatility and having an authentic story. Below we share some that fit the bill:
Design Museum - enlivening creative space particularly for dinners and product launches
Borough Market - an incredible authentic story and space for 300 people
Central Saint Martins - a creative space at the heart of a very exciting part of London. Offers a very special roof terrace.
Steel Yard - beautiful railway arches right in the middle of the City.
Illuminate - The Science Museum's, soon to open, light-filled venue.
No Man's Fort - Could be the perfect retreat for your leadership team.
We hope you found plenty of new ideas to engage your experience rich delegates!
Interesting April
Welcome to April's That's Interesting. We've been taking That's Interesting on the road to bring to life the best of these newsletters for various businesses. Do get in touch if you'd like us to come and share some event inspiration with your team.
Most Interesting
TED's Tech Playground (3min explore)
At Live Union we run a Digital Playground at some of our clients' events, designed to help make technology more approachable. This is TED's version of the same concept and includes some lovely playful experiences.
Just plain interesting
Beautiful touchscreen data viz (3min read)
Great David McCandless installation at the Qatar National Library
AOL's incredible DJ cube (1min explore)
Three stories, five DJs, four screens. Perfect for your next turntable battle
Hip Props (3min explore)
On trend furniture for your next event
How to give a five-minute presentation (1min read)
Typically succinct and insightful suggestion from Seth
B2B events & the women's movement (4min read)
The CES keynote controversy and how brands are taking the lead in supporting women in business
Why this financial summit had its own roller coaster (2min explore)
At the heart of Capstone Investment's Volatility Summit was a roller coaster sculpture made out of 3,500 rolls of coins. Check out some of the other photos from 'Volatility Park'
The storytellers who read aloud to Cuban cigar rollers (3min watch)
Historic and inspiring storytelling
Something interesting to go to:
A pint of Science (5min explore)
Science talks in the pub. There'll be one near you
Interesting March
Welcome to March's Interesting. We've recently been taking Interesting on the road. Bringing to life the best of these ideas to various businesses. Do get in touch if you'd like us to come and share some event inspiration with your team.
Most Interesting
Anatomy of a 2018 Delegate (15min read)
We've had loads of great feedback to our report getting under the skin of what today's audience really value. Download your copy.
Just plain interesting
Samsung use AR to solve a problem (3min read)
All too often AR is a solution looking for a problem. Samsung actually had a problem - how to get enough of their Galaxy 9s into people's hands at Mobile World Congress.
Convening power (2min read)
As businesses lose control of the environments in which their marketing appears, events are an increasingly attractive way to communicate their brand.
Six ways to use apps to get people networking (3min read)
A concise introduction to the networking apps you need to know about.
Graffiti Kings (2min explore)
Fun, energetic idea to put a bit of colour into your next event.
Radical hospitality (3min read)
Do your event audience feel welcome?
Inside the Olympic drone spectacle (3min watch)
If you haven't seen the show itself you can watch it here.
A venue to know about:
New space open for bookings at the Science Museum
Something interesting to go to:
Tunnel Visions (2min explore)
The Barbican are great at installations. This looks like one to check out.
If there's something interesting you think we should include, please share it via thatsinteresting@liveunion.co.uk
Interesting January
Welcome to the first Interesting of the year. Below you'll find plenty of stimulus for your 2018 events, including an incredible presentation from CES and some sage advice on how to think about your event audience.
Most Interesting
Jaw dropping INTEL CEO presentation (90min watch)
Brian Krzanich's CES Keynotes are an annual masterclass in how to make the most of a speaking opportunity. Skip to 27mins to see some awe-inspiring graphics.
Just plain interesting
Random coffee dates (5min read)
A wonderful post on the power of new connections within an organisation and a tool you can use to bring this idea to your next internal event.
Are your event audience tourists or explorers? (3min read)
Jeff Hurt shares a compelling way to frame how you design your events.
From Webin-argh to Webin-ahh (3min read)
Live Union's Conor Harte shares his tips for designing this very particular type of presentation.
A podcast to know about (25min listen)
Bizbash's GatherGeeks podcast is a good listen. The first part of this episode discusses Microsoft's Translate plug-in for PowerPoint. Up to 60 languages streamed live to the audience's devices; we're going to trial it to see if it lives up to the hype.
Sensory Reality Pods (2min explore)
No one has yet found the killer application for VR at events but this certainly opens up some new options.
Something interesting to go to:
The Moth
True stories told to a live audience. A fascinating way to observe the art and craft of storytelling. Started in the US but now also running in the UK. Find out about the next London event here.
Something for anyone going skiing:
Ski the world (4min watch)
