Organising an event can be a daunting task. Smaller gatherings can be easier, but as your event scales, it becomes much more difficult to manage effectively. Luckily, the advent of AI has given a great companion to assist with bottlenecks and difficulties. Whether your looking to run an in-person, virtual or hybrid event, learn how AI can improve your event management.
Why great event management is crucial for success
Good event organisers know that great events are about providing an excellent experience. In-person events especially rely on this due to the added costs of physical travel. People will only come to your event if they are excited for it, and any missteps or missing things can put them off. So, planning and executing your event well is core to a great user experience, and that starts with a solid management plan.
Even if your event schedule is top-notch, without the fundamentals nailed, it can be hard for it to succeed.
How to use AI for Event Management
1. Ideation
At the very start of the planning process, AI can be a great brainstorming and ideation tool when used right. Its ability to generate ideas that you may not have thought of can greatly increase the quality and quantity of your offerings.
Be careful thought - you shouldn’t rely on AI to come up with everything in your event. While it’s a great ideation tool, AI cannot create truely new, unique an innovative ideas. Don’t rely on it to do everything for you, but utilise its strengths where you can.
2. Personalisation
Speaking directly to people can be difficult when you have a wide range of attendees. Catering for each of them is a big task for any algorithm, but AI might have a solution. With a range of AI applications that can focus on different things, you can get the insight without the complexity.
AI is great at taking in data and making suggestions, so leverage that to give personalised experiences to each attendee. Creating attendee profiles to use for AI-driven insights can suggest events or conferences to go to, or individuals to network with, all without having to build complicated algorithms.
3. Networking
Speaking of networking: it’s a big part of events. Attendees only have so much time, and often cannot get around to talk to all the people they wanted to. AI-powered networking can help by acting as a smart interface between attendees and other event goers.
A key improvement of networking comes from AI-powered matchmaking. Instead of rolling the dice, which might lead to attendees talking to people who don’t give them value, they can instead get recommendations to talk to people who would. This can also work both ways by matching attendees who will both provide value to each other, letting them get the most out of networking in a short time.
4. Reference Material
There’s a lot that happens at events: keynote speakers, panel discussions, workshops, and much more. With all of this, it can be hard for attendees to stay on top of everything, and find what they need. To help this, you can utilise AI’s excellent ability at summarisation. It can take an incredible amount of data and synthesise it, so attendees can know what they should spend their limited time on.
After your event has finished, providing summaries and other AI generated reference material can help attendees continue to find use in your event. Instead of having to search for something by themselves, they could ask a chatbot about what happened, and have the relevant information given to them. These systems can become much more powerful with AI transcription services and other AI technologies that can make information a lot more accessible.
5. Support
Time is short. People get lost. Having real people on standby to help attendees is always a good idea, but they can easily get swamped with recurring issues that could be solved quickly and easily. You want your people-powered support to be as effective as possible, so let AI handle the easy stuff.
Adding AI support as the first layer can reduce the volume of calls that need to go to real people. Done right, this doesn’t detract from the user experience, instead enhancing it by giving solutions quicker. Remember: if the chatbot isn’t helpful, always give users the option to connect to a real person.
Bonus: Feedback and Improvement
For any long-term event, improvement is a must. If you can’t make things better and keep up with the times, chances are your event will start to fade. Instead, you can again leverage AI to iterate on your formula moving forward.
The most important thing is to hear from people directly. AI can be a great tool to craft custom post-event surveys to get the information you really need from each attendee. They can also condense feedback to find the common pain points. And finally, AI can suggest improvements you could make - but remember, don’t rely on these completely, just use them as a jumping off point.
The Future is Bright for AI Event Management
Used (and trained) right, AI can be a great tool. There are new developments happening all the time, so be on the lookout for ways new AI capabilities could improve your event. Things like deep thinking and meaningful integrations are close by, but there are many more we don’t know about yet.
For now though, mastering AI is becoming a far more important skill. Knowing when to, and not to use it looks to separate those at a high and extremely high level. So next time, make sure you integrate AI into your event management - and know how to do it well.
Are you planning an event and want to leverage AI the best you can? Get in contact with us at FONSEKA - we can walk you though the process so your event runs smooth while providing a great experience.