Event firms find digital capabilities crucial for business in new normal

Singapore

"HYBRID" events comprising a small physical event and a larger online counterpart are set to be the new normal for the business events industry.

Event organisers and service providers that spent the last several months pivoting towards digital events will find their new capabilities crucial.

"In the past, people used to have a livestream as an afterthought," said Veemal Gungadin, CEO of events technology provider GlobalSign.in. "If it didn't work, it didn't work. But now, in terms of preparation, organisers are having to be very serious about it, because they know that more than 50 per cent of the attendees will join online now."

And livestreams alone will not turn a business event like a meeting, convention, exhibition or trade show into a digital one, as some organisers have already realised.

Digital events are increasingly expected to provide channels for attendees and speakers to interact, digital versions of convention booths, simultaneous translation services, recordings that can be accessed afterwards on demand, and more. With attendees joining virtually from around the world, organisers have to ensure their data collection and cybersecurity measures meet international standards, too.

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Informa Markets' inaugural Food & Hotel Digital Week, which took place from May 25-29 during the circuit breaker period, was one of the first large-scale digital events organised here.

Ian Roberts, managing director for hospitality, food and beverage at Informa Markets, noted that challenges included finding suitable times to bring together the speakers for panel discussions, since they were joining virtually from all over the world. Informa also had to conduct rehearsals to familiarise speakers with the digital platform and closely monitor technical aspects to minimise related issues.

It successfully conducted a live outdoor cooking class from Myanmar, which Mr Roberts said was "very well received but quite challenging to deliver from a technical point of view".

"Running a business event virtually is a 'first' for the food and hospitality industry, and getting the community to engage was key," he said. "Most important of all, we had to try and ensure that the digital event experience is on par with the live event experience."

The digital events featured 25 speakers in live webinars and more than 300 suppliers exhibiting their wares in online product showcases. The events attracted 5,000 online attendees. The webinar series recorded more than 1,500 unique attendees with a 45 per cent attendance rate and more than 250 attendees staying online longer than five hours out of the eight-hour day.

Informa Markets' second Food & Hotel Digital Week from June 13-17 outperformed the first one, with more than 8,000 industry professionals joining in. The webinar series had 100 speakers and recorded a 47 per cent attendance rate.

Anticipating that attendees of its virtual Future Tea & Coffee Summit and Expo 2020 from June 24-26 would be hampered by the inability to taste or touch ingredient samples, organiser Conference & Exhibition Management Services (CEMS) partnered with ProfilePrint, a local company, to provide rapid and non-destructive fingerprinting technology for ascertaining the grade and quality of ingredients.

Although CEMS did not track the number of deals done in the show, since negotiations are expected to last beyond the event, group managing director Edward Liu said the exhibitors and visitors responded positively to the webinars and said they found the virtual exhibition site relatively easy to navigate.

Of the 3,111 visitors that logged in, 2,627 were unique visitors.

"We were especially encouraged by feedback from the exhibitors . . . such as, although they had more specific data from sensory tasting through the tongue, the experience with ProfilePrint was satisfying as the results of the fingerprinting of ingredients were close to the exhibitor's data of their ingredient," Mr Liu said.

Venue operation has also transformed, with some companies building proprietary platforms to host digital and hybrid events.

Last Friday, Marina Bay Sands unveiled a hybrid event broadcast studio at its Sands Expo and Convention Centre, featuring broadcast-quality livestreaming capabilities and a three-dimensional stage with LED screens on the walls and floor. It can accommodate a maximum of 50 people in the physical studio, and speakers can join "live" from other locations via hologram projections onto the stage.

Singapore-based GlobalSign.in provides technology solutions for inviting and registering visitors digitally, conducting live Q&A sessions through mobile apps and extracting relevant reports from the data gathered. While all these functions are relevant whether the event is digital or physical, the firm has added to its offerings by building GEVME Live, a dedicated platform to host digital, and eventually hybrid, events.

"Zoom is a digital venue, but it's a two-star venue. What we have been building is a five-star venue, that's what we would like to think," Mr Gungadin said.

The platform aims to bring all attendees, whether they are joining virtually or physically, into the same ecosystem, so they can all ask questions during live Q&A sessions and join virtual chat rooms for networking breaks. GEVME Live on July 29 announced a partnership with Interprefy, a remote simultaneous interpreting platform, to provide real-time translation of presentations during virtual events.

"We know the future is going to be hybrid. We are gearing up the relevant technology to make sure that it's not one piece of technology for your physical event and one piece of technology for your digital event, but rather a whole ecosystem that blends everybody together," Mr Gungadin said.

SingEx Exhibitions, the events arm of venue operator SingEx Holdings, has also built a digital platform that allows it to customise dedicated platforms for its events. The CAREhab Go platform that hosted the virtual healthcare event CAREhab 2020 on July 17-18 was designed with an artificial intelligence-powered interface and video-on-demand to provide convenient access to resources based on attendees' areas of interest.

A community hub portal and digital exhibitor showcase also provided more opportunities for collaboration and networking during and after the event.

More than 1,200 industry and medical professionals from over 30 countries attended the event, compared to 900 participants at the physical event in 2019. In addition, 70 per cent of the 200 virtual meetings facilitated between exhibitors and participants during the event were confirmed on the digital platform.

After the event, SingEx received feedback from exhibitors who said that the digital exhibitor showcase allowed them to reach a larger pool of attendees more quickly and with richer resources such as videos, as opposed to waiting for visitors to approach their physical booths to view the videos or browse hardcopy brochures.

Others said the ability to filter through attendees' profiles helped them find relevant contacts more efficiently than at a physical event.

"In addition to the strict safety measures that have become operational standards for a Covid-safe world, we need to create an environment within which participants trust to conduct business and move about safely, seamlessly and comfortably," said James Boey, executive director of SingEx Exhibitions.

"The best engagements have always been a hybrid of offline and online, and we expect that when the dust settles, we'll see a more balanced and blended environment."

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