The COVID-19 crisis is definitely not yet over, which is why things can’t go back to normal no matter how much people wanted. However, it shouldn’t be an excuse to let everything come to a full stop but instead be a cue to adapt and show resilience amid such a global pandemic.
For those in the event management industry, this crisis has forced them to reinvent themselves and increasingly rely on technology to do their jobs well. The same can be said about employees and company executives who have to do business to keep their operations going. If you belong to any of these segments of the population, it’s important to know which upcoming technology trends you can use to run your daily affairs smoothly.
Here are eight event management and meeting tech trends that you should watch out for this 2021:
- Voice technology will help drive attendee engagement. Artificial intelligence-driven technology is pretty common these days, thanks to the continuous and rapid advancements in AI. Voice technology, for one, is an AI by-product with immense benefits to businesses. This 2021, voice technology will continue to be integrated into events management and corporate meetings as the tech becomes even more sophisticated and accessible to the public. With this tech, event managers can program “if, then” scenarios on voice assistants to help attendees with their queries or event concerns like scheduling face-to-face encounters with vendors.
- Electronic language interpreters will make events and meetings more productive. Today, electronic language interpreters have reached a level of sophistication to deliver near-real-time, amazingly accurate translations of one language to several others. This kind of technology has been in use for several decades now. Still, it’s only recently that users have become highly confident in their ability to process and interpret languages using complex algorithms and statistical probability. You can use this specific tech in events with multi-racial participants where accurate and quick translations of spoken or printed texts are needed.
- Dedicated planning and management solutions will make things easier for event managers. This year, tech innovations such as event planning software and similar solutions will see increased use to plan and manage various events. Such tools allow event organizers to plan, manage, and evaluate the activities they handle with great ease and efficiency. These multi-use event management and planning solutions work well with corporate, educational, and entertainment events, which make them indispensable for event managers.
- Social media will help in promotion, interaction, and evaluation. Social media is already widely used to organize meetings and events right now, and it will continue to be so for the rest of the year and beyond. With practically everyone having at least one social media account, organizers can easily schedule, promote, interact, and evaluate events and meetings, whether virtual or hybrid (combined virtual and face-to-face). This is a trend that is sure to sustain its popularity among attendees and event managers.
- Chatbots will be used extensively. Chatbots are yet another AI-powered meeting and event tools that will see continued use in 2021. They are extremely helpful for managers who need to answer multiple queries from different users. Event managers can use them to program replies to standard queries, so they won’t have to answer them personally or hire people.
- Virtual communication platforms will sustain their popularity. Zoom, Facebook Live, Webex, Skype, and other virtual communication platforms will remain in wide use throughout 2021. As the threat of the virus is still pretty much in the air, one can expect meetings and events to be held through these digital interaction tools. Their ease of use, multi-device accessibility, and economical nature make them highly popular among event managers and business owners who need to conduct events digitally.
- Wearable tech will make face-to-face events COVID-safe. Wearable technology has seen huge improvements since the first devices, such as smartwatches, were developed and introduced to the market. For 2021 and beyond, we can expect to enjoy wearable tech products such as wristbands that vibrate when another wearer gets within six feet, thereby making social distancing easier. The same device can also record such interaction and be readily available for contact tracing purposes, thus making face-to-face events COVID-safe.
- Tech tools will make hybrid-venues more accessible. For this year, we can expect event venues to have tools that will allow not only for in-venue participants but also off-venue attendees. These hybrid-venues are now popping out everywhere, so it’s only a matter of time before they become the rule and not the exception.
Truly, technology is the gift that keeps on giving, and we can expect to see more of such gifts this entire.
