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!
