Event Technology Trends That Improve the In-Person Attendee Experience

As often as we hear it, it’s true. Technology can help achieve a well-rounded event and transform the onsite experience – whether the objective is to enhance human connections, captivate attendees, customize spaces, or design frictionless visitor experiences. As we strive to stay relevant in an ever-changing events marketplace, consider how your venue spaces play a part in the attendee experience and what technologies can be used to enhance the overall attendee journey.

Improving the attendee experience

Engage attendees with smart spaces

Beige walls, projection screens, in-house A/V packages, and track lighting…a traditional meeting environment can only take us so far. Today, meeting venues and spaces are being redesigned; there are plenty of ways to rethink your space, and technology can help.

• • Purpose-built rooms

    Simply put, participants can’t focus on content when they are distracted by their surroundings. Comfort promotes productivity, creative energy, and mental focus. Smart meeting venues are using technology to mitigate discomforts – allowing planners to control room temperatures, enable interactive displays, and order more coffee at the touch of a button. This trending approach to meeting and event space combines tech-enabled venues with highly intentional interior design, 5-star hospitality, award-winning menus, wellness initiatives, and sustainable practices – all wrapped up to provide distraction-free surroundings. 

    On the rise in innovative spaces are high-tech venues in the medical field; across the country, we’re seeing purpose-built rooms that revolutionize approaches to medical training. These spaces are integrating holographic theaters, high-definition broadcast cameras, virtual reality capabilities, and simulation centers.

  • Projection mapping

    From session to session, reset your room as a completely new and different space. This technology allows event designers to project theme and color schemes, repaint an entire ballroom, project table decorations around place settings, or even have your room flow with movable art – projection mapping allows for an immense amount of creativity and visual stimulation to get away from your standard meeting room look.

    In addition, there are now ways to project 3D images into physical spaces. This ability bring ordinary objects of different shapes and sizes to life in front of the attendees by using non-flat surfaces. For venues, there are many benefits to projecting in 3D: it lessens the restrictions of what they can project onto, it doesn’t require 3D glasses like other forms of 3D media, and these projections and the surfaces they go on can easily be reused. The biggest benefit of all is that 3D projection mapping has a really great wow factor.

  • Teleconference tech

    ‘Digital Engagement Strategy’ sounds complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s essentially the ability to connect with attendees who are not physically at your event. Facebook Live, Instagram stories, YouTube, and advanced teleconferencing platforms are powerful tools that allow you to share content from your event and involve a wider audience. Oftentimes, through teleconferencing, hosts are able to make a powerful case to attend the event in person, and virtual participants might make stronger efforts to attend the next meeting in person.

  • Live translations

    Due to the increase of virtual and hybrid events, there’s been more opportunity than ever for event professionals to scale their meetings and events to larger audiences. While English is a primary language in many places, there will always be value in making it a point to include non-English speaking attendees to connect with them as well. Live translation services have begun being used in physical spaces via the projection of subtitles being cast somewhere in the room in times when interpreters are not available or viable. Continuing this connection outside of virtual spaces is invaluable. There are multiple services that provide live language translations, and venues that offer them will expand the number of planners they can work with and the attendees they can engage.

• Digital video and photo booths

  There’s been a huge rise in the popularity of video content around the world. To cash in on this, many event planners have begun finding ways to incorporate this for meetings and events for their clients. These virtual booths can be used to snap branded photos, GIFs, boomerangs, and short-form videos of all the attendees, both virtual and in-person. The use of these can also go hand-in-hand with the promotion of the event via social media channels.

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