4:2 This event company keeps relevant at 50+

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Lee:
Welcome to the Event Engine Podcast. This is your host, Lee. On today's show, we have the one, the only. It's Colija Dams from VOK DAMS. How are you, sir?

Colija:
Very good. Thank you very much for having me.

Lee:
Well, it's wonderful to have you. We're here at the Event Tech Live Conference Expo, whatever you would call it. How are you finding it so far here?

Colija:
Amazing. I do like the idea, combining Event Tech with sustainability, the two major topics right now. So very clever idea.

Lee:
Absolutely. Especially how technology can foster sustainability and support it as well. I believe you also did a talk here today. What was that on?

Colija:
I was speaking on AI and why AI will drive life events in the future.

Lee:
Well, we must circle back to that. What I really love is a little bit of a history lesson about your company because you have a very rich history. You're not a young Event Tech company. Could you tell us how you guys got started?

Colija:
Yeah, I was actually born into it. My father started the company in the '70s and starting actually out as a professional photographer, creating multivision slide shows because in the old days it was difficult to get big picture up on the screen. You could only do film. Then there was together with the company Kodak, that not many people know nowadays. I'm old.

Lee:
Enough, sorry. Kodak, I know who you mean.

Colija:
Actually, I'm not sure. In Germany, Kodak is now producing the brand for online printing machines for pictures. That used to be one of the major players in this world. We created together with them a system to soft-edged slides and have millions of slides on the walls or on the big screen. What we actually use projectors for now, and this is how we started, and then everyone came to us and asked, Can you do the rest? The content, not just the content, but the hotel venue, all the travel management. This is how we became a full events agency specialised in corporate events almost 50 years ago.

Lee:
How long was that trajectory? You started off with the photography, I believe it was.

Colija:
Your dad.

Lee:
It was my dad, yeah. At what point did he realise the events industry was the place to be?

Colija:
It actually came naturally because we were doing lots for pharmaceutical industries, automotive industries, and helping them blow up their pictures on stages. Then we ended up being the content provider for events. By early '80s, we became taking care of all the events.

Lee:
Then you go beyond, obviously you've gone beyond that blowing up pictures, obviously back in the '70s and '80s, what is it that you guys do now?

Colija:
We do events purely on the corporate end. Companies come to us like automotive, pharmaceutical, you name it, and they ask us if they have a defined target group, we will do their product launches, partner meetings, trade shows, whatever.

Lee:
You guys very much focus on the experience. Could you define what... And what that means? What's an event experience and who's it for?

Colija:
The event experience really starts with setting the goal for the event. When a client approaches us, the first thing we ask is, what are the people attending your event supposed to do differently after the event? Then the client either knows it already or comes to think about it, and then as a next step, decides, Okay, okay, when we have this answer, we ask him, so if you know what your guests are supposed to be doing after attending the event, we'll circle back with the second question asking, Why don't they do it right now? What keeps them from doing it? Then we really double-check. Is it really an event or this event that can help solving this issue? Sometimes we end up doing something totally different than an event. Okay.

Lee:
Do you have any examples of where one was an event and One wasn't?

Colija:
Just an example from a few weeks ago. A company approached us and wanted to do their anniversary because they turned 125 and wanted to celebrate this, inviting all their free sales agents from all over the world and inviting 5,000 of them to come to London and celebrate the company's anniversary. We asked this first question and the client was, Good question. We want them to pick our product over the competitors' products, which they also have in their portfolio, if they go to a client. Then we followed up with the second question. Why don't they do it today? The client said, I honestly don't know. Then we had our sister company, which is purely focusing on event consulting, come in and said, Okay, for three months they travelled the world and talked to their free sales agents, finding out what keeps them from promoting our clients product over the competitors product. It turns out the top issue was that there were no local language sales collateral available. Then the client, they were doing everything in English and Chinese, but that was the only language. But in Thailand, Vietnam, in Spain, everyone was either to use English or Chinese documentation.

Colija:
Then we the client, Okay, if you want them to sell more product, there is a far easier solution. Just translate all your collateral and we helped them do it with AI solutions and they're still doing the event with us, but they're extremely happy because this was what solved their issue. The event itself would have not solved the issue. No.

Lee:
And how are you doing the event differently as a result of asking those two questions?

Colija:
Very easy that we are focusing on AI translation into every single... I mean, we're down to 27 languages, but going very much into their local language because we felt this is key for everyone and giving more opportunities to really mingle and have serendipity moments. -

Lee:
yeah, absolutely.

Colija:
This really helps.

Lee:
It's clear to me that VOK DAMS is a company that is able to evolve with the times, starting 50 years ago with your dad, working with Kodak, etc, to do something that wasn't really possible at the time. To today, you're using AI, which is relatively new on the scene, especially when it comes to translation, etc, and you're using AI to clearly solve a problem. How does a company like yourselves manage to stay current and stay on top of changes in technology?

Colija:
A good question. You need to..

Lee:
I'm proud of that one.

Colija:
I think you need to stay curious. This is also what this trade show is about. I've been wandering around. I've done my keynote, but then wandering around and talking to people, finding out about what is the new cool stuff. I just found out about a technology that is AI-driven, helping you pick your picture out of the whole bunch of pictures taken at the event. Oh, of course. That's cool. what a great idea. that's super cool. You take a selfie of yourself and instantly you get from all the pictures taken of the event, you get pictures where you are in the picture and you can even add attributes like where you're smiling or where it's a good shot of yourself in the shot. It's amazing. I'm learning new stuff every single day.

Lee:
That's awesome. The importance is stay curious. I feel that's something then that you've learned from your dad and you've carried on as a tradition. How do you create a culture within the business as well? Because obviously you're the leader, but how have you created that culture with your team?

Colija:
I believe it's what we call... We created a concept of agile event management. Agile event management, merging the agile project management, which is known from all kinds of disciplines, especially the software development, and merging agile project management with agile with event management. This bring together, being on high level, talking, everyone is a member of a team, and everyone's opinion counts and we're taking decisions together. Therefore, we are probably a lot different than other companies because we take the decision together. It's not even if a client calls me up and say, Are you going to do this? Then I said, Well, I'll check with the team. Then it's a united decision taken, and this is extremely helpful. This gets everyone curious and everyone... We have internal channels where we then vote hot or not for the stuff. If there are more people thinking this is hot than not, then we look into it. This is how we come up with new trends all the time.

Lee:
That's a great and very refreshing way of hearing a company operate because in many circumstances, you'll have a small management team who lead, who make all of the decisions, and then for other people to be involved or to even be able to suggest things is a near impossibility. I think what you're describing here is, yes, you are the leader of the company along with probably a management team of sorts, but what you're doing is you're modelling the curiosity, you're modelling getting together, talking as a team, and you're creating safe spaces for everybody to be involved to say, From the new hire to somebody who's been there 20 years, everyone sounds like here has a voice, can contribute to an agile event management, and the best ideas will turn into something for your clients and that keeps everybody with that feeling of ownership. Would that be a good way of describing it.

Colija:
Absolutely. Perfectly summarised.

Lee:
Awesome. That's fantastic. As you are a curious person and as you've already looked around here at Event Tech Live today, what are your predictions for, say, the next couple of years in the events industry with regards to tech or with AI?

Colija:
I believe the two major topics are displayed here. It's sustainability and it's Event Tech, the transformation into a more digitalized world. I believe in both fields, there will be lots of development driving us. Starting out with sustainability, from the supply chain requirements we are feeling all over Europe and in the rest of the world, it's extremely important that the entire supply chain, especially in big, large scale corporate events, can be secured with ISO certifications and all kinds of stuff in these fields. We have been certified by the ISO 2121, that is the International Standard on live events and how to make them more sustainable. There are lots of products coming out, really hitting this market, seeing what are the opportunities in every single field of it. Then on the other hand, you do have the entire field of the digitalisation. I believe the future is data-driven event management. We are not making decisions based on what we as an agency like or someone on the client side likes. We've done this a long time. Everyone is like, Oh, let's go to Spain because we have been in Portugal last time. Let's do Spain this time, Italy next year.

Colija:
No, it makes sense to really base all decisions on data. This is going to be the future and AI is helping there. It gets extremely exciting if you bring both of them together. As an example, over 80% of the CO2 footprint of an event is travelled to and from the event. It's actually a no-brainer to think about just pay attention which destination you're choosing. We developed an API with a Google AI checking out if the client provides us these are the thousand people attending the event and we know where they live. We just run this Excel sheet through our AI processor and figure out what is the CO2 optimised point where we should meet in the world. I believe there are going to be millions of more of examples coming up in the next years.

Lee:
It has been an incredibly fascinating few years, especially with OpenAI releasing ChatGPT. I mean, AI has been around for quite a while and there have been models like this. But I think ChatGPT itself, obviously, has made it more mainstream. People are so much more aware, which is refreshing. It's been great being here at Even Tech Live, just seeing the amount of people who are infusing AI into the products and the services they're offering. I haven't yet seen the one, the example you gave. That was pretty darn awesome. But I think it's Gist, I think it's pronounced, they're offering AI-powered networking, so they're able to pair people up. In the old days, I might have paired people up based on, say, some categorization, AI can take that far further. I'm really fascinated to see how things… I, too, like you said, will stay curious, and I think that will be a great title for this episode. Colija, thank you so much for your time. What's the best way for people to connect with you? And then we shall bid you a due on Linkedin.

Lee:
Folks, we will make sure we put a link in the show notes, do add Colija on LinkedIn. Mate, thank you so much for your time. It's been wonderful.

Colija:
Thank you for having me.

Lee:
Take care.

Colija:
Thank you.

Lee:
All right.