Technology and political changes will shake up the event industry as we know it. Are you ready to embrace the change?
I am not sure if you noticed but there is a lot going on in the world. The last 6 months have been quite dramatic, scary and exciting at the same time. It seems we are going through one of those cycles of intense change that happen every 10 years.
- Security and Terrorism
There is a very volatile situation involving security and terrorism related threats. I am not qualified to comment on any of that and I won’t. Looking at the facts of what has happened, events are increasingly exposed to such threat.
Going over what has happened and revisit the facts is too painful. We know several events have been targeted. Lives have been taken away. Security at events is under scrutiny.
It seems that most of these attacks want to strike wherever there is a gathering of people having fun, learning or simply enjoying life. - Technology
- So What’s The Biggest Threat?
The biggest threat at the moment for our industry, our event company, our job is how we react to these changes. There is no time to think whether a new tool is hype or not. We just need to embrace the change and understand what is happening.
While we were growing tired of using hashtags on Twitter, a disruptive change happened on major social networks that impacts on the event industry.
The live stream revolution is happening. What used to be written, is now live video. The social networks’ mantra ‘Tell us what’s up’ has been replaced by ‘Show us what’s up’.
- What Smart Eventprofs Do
BE CAREFUL.
I am not saying you should start playing 90s retro games or lock down your event altogether because you read it in the news. What I am proposing here is that we get deep into understanding what is happening around us.
Smart event professionals look into the recent terror events and understand what they can do to protect their event going forward. They start a conversation with local authorities to have a clear image of potential threats. They invest in extra security if they have established that there could be problems with their event.Smart event professionals understand why live streaming and augmented reality games are all of a sudden mainstream. They read about the dynamics motivating such a surge and then they make educated decisions about incorporating such technology in their event.
I put together these two VERY different topics because they elicit similar reactions. Rejecting the likelihood of an attack at your event is very similar to rejecting technology driven change. Of course the results can be quite devastating in the former, but they are two sides of the same coin, rejection to change. - No Excuses, Keep Up
Change is around us and recently is happening faster than we’ve ever experienced. Developments are faster and we need to keep up. No excuses, you need to keep up. If you want to be a good event professional you need to keep up.
Get the facts, read, think, strategize, protect your attendees, understand your attendees. Think how they are changing.
There is no such thing as hype anymore, understand change and be ready. Your attendees will thank you for that.
(Social Coup LLC)