6:6 Choosing the right event tech

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Lee:
Welcome to the Event Engine podcast. My name is Lee, and today we have the one, the only. We have Thomas. How are you, sir?

Thomas:
I'm so fine. Thank you so much. You're so fine.

Lee:
You are so fine. It's wonderful to finally get to interview you, mate. We've had people here, and you've been hanging around waiting patiently in the wings.

Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely. Everyone stepped in, stepped in, and I talked to your colleague. We had a lot of lovely conversations. That's really good.

Lee:
That's the most important thing. Mate, tell us a little bit your company.

Thomas:
I'm working for a company called Adventix. Adventix, we're based in Munich and Vienna also. We have two offices doing developments in Vienna with our great team there and sales and marketing hosted in Munich. We are a consultancy for trade shows, big trade show organisers in Germany, in the DACH region. I just learned in English DACH is something to understand, right? It's a terminology. Is it? You don't know it?

Lee:
No, I'm not. I'm going to learn something now.

Thomas:
Okay. It's called DACH, the acronym for Deutschland, Austria, and Switzerland.

Lee:
Well, I did not know that. You've just taught me something. Thank you.

Thomas:
Great. Great. Also the viewers maybe or the listeners. In the DACH region, we're active with the biggest trade shows there. If they want to qualify an event platform now, which seems to be a bigger trend here, as I learned as a visitor also on ETL, they come to us and maybe ask us, Hey, what platform would be the best one for us? What's the best fitting? Also putting stuff out to tender, as I learned now in the EU, we also help out with that. Provide consultancy in terms of digital strategy, digital business, mostly everything digital, ticketing, registration also. If a bigger trade show or any trade show, fairground, need some entry systems, stuff like that. We also help out with that. We know all relevant partners, I'd say, in the world. We have good connexions to all of these people. This is the business we're doing there.

Lee:
I guess then I'm about For example, I'm about to launch a big trade show. I want to maybe look for a registration provider. Perhaps I want to be able to sell tickets. Perhaps I want some other form of event tech. But I know my industry, but I don't necessarily know who all the right providers are to use. Is it you that I would come to for that advice?

Thomas:
Yeah, actually, this is exactly that. This is what we're focusing. It's something that's to be experienced in any industry, I guess. You're profound in a specific thing like machinery or organising trade shows or AI or whatsoever. But all of the other components that are necessary to form the service you're providing or the product, mostly you don't know about building a website, for example, or something.

Lee:
Who would you go to?

Thomas:
Who would you go to? This is only a problem, in my opinion, increasing because knowledge, there's more and more knowledge every day There is. The rate of knowledge being created is also accelerating. There has to be people filling in these gaps because transmitting this knowledge. Actually, consultancy is about transmitting a bit of knowledge then in the end, I guess, right?

Lee:
No, I totally agree. You raised websites, for example. We specialise just in websites. As I learned, yeah. Yet there are companies all around here that offer event planning software, which a portion of it includes building a website. You've got all these all-in-one platforms as well. How do you, as a consultant, work out from all of this noise, what's the best platform for a client, and whether they should go for an all-in-one or whether they should bring certain aspects of different companies It's hard as there is such a big offering and everyone's the best.

Thomas:
First of all, I think it starts with screening requirements. We visit the customer multiple times. We interview all the key players there, from facility management to CEO management, digital business people there, you name it. All of these have different requirements. You gather them and you can, of course, then screen out, would you say, or what? Yeah, screen out. Multiple vendors in the beginning. Some are left over, some you already have good experiences made within the past. Some have a good and profound history in trade show business, especially. That also comes down to scaling, then I have the feeling, because now here in ETL, there are a lot of vendors of platforms. From my understanding, they focus more like events in a fashion that's like company-hosted events. Like a company like Vodafone. I can't say company names, right? Yeah. Vodafone, for example, is hosting an in-house fair, inviting all their customers and stuff like that. This is what they're focusing on, one to a thousand attendees in something. Trade shows are a different case of events, a special, unique case of events, a niche case of events, maybe 100,000 visitors. As I learned in IAA, International Automotive Fair in Germany, they had up to a million visitors.

Lee:
Well, so MEDICA, was it last week in Düsseldorff? Yeah. It had 6,000 exhibitors.

Thomas:
Yeah, right.

Lee:
Over 15 halls.

Thomas:
Absolutely. We're in exile now. I don't know how many halls There, it would... Yeah, it's not sufficient room here, I figure, right? It has to happen in these super big trade shows. Bauma in Munich is the biggest trade show in the world. We also have our lead tracking system there. Yeah, these types of events. If you want to organise these types of events with a platform, of course, scalability is one big factor that that's about to evaluate.

Lee:
That's true. I could be one of these big companies, and I think I know what I need, but I don't know the right questions to ask, do I? It might be, do you do this? Yes, tick box, tick box, tick box, great. But when I then launch, maybe I go for a registration company and they say they can do everything that I've asked for. Then when 15,000 registrants hit their server and their server goes down, that's the due diligence you guys would have done, but I wouldn't have necessarily done it as event organiser, and now I'm in a bad situation.

Thomas:
Exactly. This is it exactly. I mean, for example, we did a project with a medium-sized fair in Germany now, a qualifying platform, and We gathered 600 specific requirements for that. Coming from, okay, admin UI has to be this responsive, and people, accreditation has to This is not what's going to happen like this, whatsoever, covering mostly every topic. We also enrich these with our own requirements regarding maybe stuff that our customers did not think about, as you said, like support times. Is there a hotline, for example? That's what we did a lot to. Also, a big topic was who owns the data then in the end? This is something nobody thinks about at the moment or people who have been burned in the past. Some of you, regarding this topic may think about. Most people don't. A big vendor of a very big platform. We found out our customer wanted to qualify. They wanted to have this. We screened their terms and conditions. Turns out the platform provider does own all the data. All the people who register, all the transactions, all the engagement, it's all on the side of the platform. The trade show owns nothing.

Thomas:
If they want to swap out the system, it's going to happen eventually because in my opinion, it's maybe something for the five minutes in the future, but I don't think this platform architecture is going to last really long in certain situations. They will swap out the platform and the data is gone. Your whole business data, events are about engagement and gathering this information and so on. This is your core asset then, and that's gone because you never owe it. Maybe you didn't know. It's a trap there. That's scary stuff. We try to think about that. But then again, it would be... Obviously, it would be fraud to say, We know all the questions to ask, because each and every day, new questions to ask pop up in the meta sense, and we have to learn about it as well. That's why I'm here. I'm trying to, for example, now I'm trying to figure out what are the differences between all these platform vendors. How do they differentiate? And yet I did not find an answer, to be honest.

Lee:
That is a tough question. Well, on that, though. Like I said earlier, we're a web platform, and I had a discussion with somebody who was already talking with another web provider in the same as us, and they said, Well, what's different about you guys? I said, Well, I'm not sure how to describe that. I said, I know that what we do is predominantly custom development, so we'll make things that don't necessarily exist right now for you, so we'll answer that solution, as well as design your website. However, if you're already talking to the other provider and they're already going to meet all of your needs, there's no reason necessarily to come to us.

Thomas:
Got to be honest about that.

Lee:
What we believe in is that we're an alternative provider. Everybody's an alternative provider. No one company can do all the websites because you need too many people. They wouldn't do all of them well. I think, reasonably, is there plenty of room in the industry for lots of people to do the same thing, to serve the masses out there of people that need those things. Sometimes there isn't much that differentiates them at all, I don't think, other than Here's another set of people who can do stuff who also happen to have a little bit more of a niche skill in maybe a particular type of event. For example, the provider they were looking at has way more experience than we do in trade shows. If they were looking at doing a trade show, I'd say go over there straight away. Asp events, by the way, everyone is wondering what we're talking about. Yeah, absolutely go to ASP event. They do amazing things with trade shows. We focus mainly on conferences and do a lot of really good stuff in conferences.It's.

Thomas:
Something different.Exactly.

Lee:
For us, people, if they want a conference website, they're probably going to come to us for that. That's how we differentiate ourselves. But when it comes to actually the ability to produce a website, both ASP and Event Engine can produce a really great website, as can Cvent and other people who also offer websites within a bigger holistic package. How people differentiate themselves, it's a real tough question. I think there still is plenty of business out there for everyone to share. I think for people like Cvent, they're probably differentiating themselves where you can get everything with them, can't you? Because they've got their whole the wheel of the event organiser where you've got everything from your registration right through to people on site, I believe.

Thomas:
Yeah, But then again, it must be expensive or targeted to... If you're a 4,500- I imagine it is.company, you need to target bigger clients the same size. Otherwise... I I totally agree with you when you say, yeah, there's room for most of them or everyone. As the market is increasing, budgets increase regarding events, I took this as a fact from a presentation I just heard. 60% of marketeers say, There's 20% more in events budget next year. It's going to be a great year for events due to AI and stuff. One thing this speaker pointed out, though, that I agree with when I'm hearing it is, yeah, events will take a bigger place. This human-to-human, person-to-person interaction will be of so much more value than in the past because it's the only alternative for truth, I say. Because due to this whole AI content, media stuff, you don't know what's real, what's fake anymore, and so on. And real life on-site events are just real in the sense of the word. As people increasingly realise, Man, everything my smartphone or my computer tells me is... Can I say words? It's bad, at least, or it's making me sick at first.

Thomas:
There's the person, the speaker, actually. Cool, yeah. Yeah, it was very good. He stated that fact. He's a legend. I really is?

Lee:
Last year, we interviewed him, folks. You can go back and watch his episode.

Thomas:
Carry on. This is good. His pointer didn't work and the presentation was a mess a bit. I felt sorry for him, but it was good. This particular fact. The market is growing then, therefore, because people have ever more desire for then meeting people, get real information, make real experiences. People spend more in experiences, apparently, spend less on goods. This is what you also say, that totally believe in it. The market, therefore, is growing and market shares, I don't know, are about who's the more innovative. But yeah, there's room for everyone. Absolutely, I see that.

Lee:
I think as well, everyone's systems work differently, don't they, as well? There could be side by side five different registration companies, and one of them may be really good at handling the way someone, maybe one of your clients needs to be able to register where a secretary will be registering on the behalf of many other people, and they need all these different features. Some reg companies can't handle that, some can. I guess that's why you're here to help people with it. But just on AI, if you're listening, folks, go to YouTube right now and you will see my hands are real. We are We're not AI generated. I agree with you about events and the realness. But you also said earlier that there's a lot of knowledge out there and there's more knowledge. A lot of that knowledge is being expedited, isn't it, by AI. Ai isn't creating the knowledge, but it's regurgitating all of that knowledge, as it were, online so that there's more and more and more of it. There's There's more stuff to read, more stuff to look at, watch, etc. Like you said, these fake videos, which I've actually been tricked by, where I'm like, Wow, that guy's hugging a bear.

Lee:
Then I have to logically think for a minute, Wait, that's no. Then you look at the hands, hence the joke, and you're like, Oh, I think it's AI. Excuse me. But with all of that knowledge, with AI, with starting to trust what's going on less on my phone, something about being in person is, like you said, is, and I reckon, will continue to be so much more valuable than ever before. I hope, at least, because Yeah, of course.

Thomas:
At least for human beings that are socialised, the both of us and mostly everyone else here is. My wife lately told me, just randomly dropped the fact, Hey, I read in newspaper X whatsoever, not X, formerly Twitter. I don't know why people say that anyway. In any newspaper, she read, By 2050, scientists say people There will be more marriages between a person and a robot than a person-to-person marriage.

Lee:
Well, I hope that doesn't exist. A whole lot of times.

Thomas:
Will it happen? Will it not happen? The thought experiment, of course, is maybe this is possible. I mean, I would never marry a robot. I say now. If I cannot distinguish, then I have never been to this situation. But I've seen my niece devices who are now 11 and 12 and so on. Ten years ago, when my brother had the first iPad or whatsoever, they already, in a super intuitive fashion, controlled the iPad when they were one or two years old and could not even speak or see in distance, I guess. Whereas my father, who's 79 tomorrow, he would destroy the iPad by smashing on it and so on. He wouldn't learn, right? This intuition in the future where people being born now and in 10 years, robots and AI is common place? I don't know. Of course, they have a total different take on this stuff, maybe. Maybe really, I don't know if this is too deep for the podcast or not, but maybe even changing the way and what it means to be a human. Maybe then at some point, we cannot communicate properly, we cannot understand each other anymore. You and me and this person who says, Okay, of course, I'm going to marry a robot.

Thomas:
What's the problem with and so on. We're like, Dude, why should I explain even? How did you get here? I got carried away.

Lee:
No, that's fine. But I think just bringing it full circle, though, is that I I think there is an inherent danger that people will become a little bit too reliant on things like AI, et cetera. If people do become too reliant on AI and neglect the human interaction, then that stops us from being what we are, which is human, which are people who do crave connexions, et cetera. Because I think with COVID and that, that certainly made a lot of us more introverted than we maybe used to be because we got used to being locked down, we got used to being at home, and then coming out to an environment like this was actually quite scary at first. Yeah, absolutely. This time last year, I was interviewing people, and I was trying to stave off panic attacks because I wasn't used to being surrounded by people. I was seeing people sneezing, and I was like, Oh, no, I don't want to go home and take COVID home to my son because he's still little. I was still having all of that fear, et cetera, that post-pandemic fear. Thankfully, have been able to push through that and have become- Some of it remained, though.

Thomas:
Sorry to interrupt. Some of it remained because I think people, I myself and everyone else is keeping more physical distance to each other. It's common place. Maybe this distance would have been 10 centimetres more close before a pandemic, I'd say, right?

Lee:
Yeah. Well, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I hope that Colja is right and that more people will go back, as it were, for more human interaction because AI has created an abundance of information which I just think is too overwhelming. I think people learn from people. I've learned from you, from you sharing your experiences today. One example of a very quick takeaway that I don't think I would have learned reading online was right early on, you mentioned that when you're looking for a solution for someone, you'll go ahead and interview all sorts of key stakeholders. Normally, what some businesses will do, will say, What do you want? Okay, great. We'll go find it, and that'll be that. I've learned from you that there is something really important, and this is through human interaction as well. From your experience, you're not an AI, you're a real person, and in your experience, you've worked out that it's better to go and... Sure, take the brief from the main guy or girl who said, Hey, this is what we want, but then go and interview everyone else within the company to get a bigger, more holistic picture.

Lee:
Then add in your own experiences of other events and other questions that you think would augment that to make that a better tender.

Thomas:6-6-
Then add in AI, whatsoever, even.

Lee:
Ai could never do all that. I don't think. Maybe it could one day, but I think there is something very valuable about all of your your humanness in that. Let's end the podcast there in hope that human to human interactions will only get more and more valuable.

Thomas:
But I'll come to your wedding if you do in 60 years time, marry a robot.Thank you so much. I'll send an email. Please do send an email. Or I'll watch it online if I'm super introverted. Yeah, last words there. It's really a challenge, and we need to work really day by day keeping this humanness. Absolutely. Really.

Lee:
Well, on that, what's the best way for people to connect with you? And then we'll share goodbye.

Thomas:
Thank you so much for listening, guys.

Lee:
What's the best way? Linkedin?

Thomas:
Yeah, LinkedIn, I guess. Awesome. Email also. Then in person, of course, visit us in Munich. We'll be in the east of Munich, beautiful place, or in Vienna. Always glad to host people. Amazing. Have beer in the office.

Lee:
Oh, even better. I'll be there soon. All right, guys. So links will be in the show notes of this episode. Mate, put it there. Thank you so much.

Thomas:
Thank you so much.

Lee:
Cheers..