Trends in Events

The report reflects the various trends that are followed by the event industry sector and how these events affect the productivity and success of an event. A brief introduction of events has been provided at the beginning of the event followed by six trends that impact conventions and meetings in a positive as well negative manner. The next part of the report focuses on three downward trends in the industry. Events which have used the six trends have been described which includes the venue, date, and proceedings of the events. The report has been summed up with a brief conclusion n gather from the discussion.

Running head: TRENDS IN EVENTS 1
Trends in Events
Name of the Students:
Name of the University:
Author Note

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Abstract
The report reflects the various trends that are followed by the event industry sector and
how these events affect the productivity and success of an event. A brief introduction of
events has been provided at the beginning of the event followed by six trends that impact
conventions and meetings in a positive as well negative manner. The next part of the report
focuses on three downward trends in the industry. Events which have used the six trends
have been described which includes the venue, date, and proceedings of the events. The
report has been summed up with a brief conclusion n gather from the discussion.
Keywords: Event industry, Trends, Downward trends.

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Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................5
Impact on meetings and conventions industry..........................................................................5
Impact of influencers.............................................................................................................5
Impact of mobile apps............................................................................................................6
Impact of diversity..................................................................................................................7
Impact of venues....................................................................................................................8
Impact of personalization......................................................................................................8
Impact of facial recognition technique..................................................................................9
Downward trends in the Event Industry..................................................................................10
 VIP speaker............................................................................................................10
 Audio-visuals:........................................................................................................10
 Sponsorship:..........................................................................................................10
Real Events...............................................................................................................................11
“Under the Influence”..........................................................................................................11
“BankSocial”.........................................................................................................................11
“Leveraging Human Difference”..........................................................................................12
“Dreamforce”.......................................................................................................................12
“Personalized Learning Summit 2018”................................................................................13
“International Corporate Event Award (ICE Awards)”.........................................................13

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Conclusion................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Events are any occurrence at a certain place and time which may be result of
preceding occurrences and may or may not involve human performance (Pacifici, 2017). It
consists of the happening or performance of certain activities arranged in a proper order
which can be for entertainment, meetings, conferences, ceremonies or for any social
causes. Events are generally aimed to deliver a range of tasks, informations or circulations.
Various types of events include life cycle or social events, sports events, entertainment
events, career or education events, corporate events, political events, religious events and
cause related or fund raising events (Müller, 2015). There are certain trends that are quite
common in the event world. The article “18 Trends Shaking Up the Events World in 2018”
produced by Social Table were read thoroughly along with two other similar kind of articles
“Event Studies: Theories, Research and Policies for planned events” and “A future for event
management: the analysis of major trends impacting the emerging profession”. Six trends
that were found common in all the three articles are the trends that are most acceptable by
event organisers. The common trends are collaborating with influencers or celebrities,
mobile apps, diversity, venues, personalization and facial recognition technique for security.
This report focuses on the trends of events and the downward trends in the events world.
Impact on meetings and conventions industry
Event trends are the techniques, ideas and principals that are followed by event
planners and event organisers to carry out an event successfully. These trends impact the
events related to meetings and conventions to a large extent and decides the success and
achievement of goals of the meetings. It affects the perceptions and opinions of the
audiences related to the event. The following section discusses the impacts that each of the
six trends have on conventions and meetings.
Impact of influencers
An influencer with as strong personality who may be a celebrity or a leader can
influence the opinion or thought of people involved in the meeting or the event by his or
her leadership quality, personality and ideas. They motivate people to act and take part in

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the conventions and meetings. The following are some of the impacts that influencers have
on conventions and meetings:
 The audience of micro-influencers are focused on interests, which are niche. This
leads to a more effective interaction between audiences and the influencer, which
ultimately combines authenticity and influence. Micro-influencer often possess a
high level of authenticity which increases the credibility of audience thus creating a
community which brands can target (www.socialtables.com, 2018).
 Micro-influencers possess a high average engagement rate since there community is
highly engaged with the contents produced by them on social media. In the industry
of event management, 1 to 3% engagement rate considered as a good one (Turner
et al., 2016). The higher the engagement rate of the micro-influencers, higher is the
visibility of brands.
Along with these positive sides of social media influencers, there are some
downsides to this trend as well. Since a post in social media does not take time to go
viral over the internet, any incorrect post by the micro-influencer can lead to an adverse
effect on the audience. Clash of opinion is another downside or drawback of the trend of
partnering with influencers and celebrities. Clash between the views of the influencer
and the audiences can lead to disruption the meeting which can be huge loss.
Impact of mobile apps
With the incorporation of event apps in mobile devices, attendees now get a positive
event experience with reduced communication gaps. These apps help in assisting the event
organizer or event planner as well as the audiences. According to the statistics mobile apps
of events are used by 63% event planners (Tashtarian et al., 2015). Following are some
positive impacts of mobile apps on conventions and meetings:
 Brand images can be enhanced by developing Artificial Intelligence powered event
apps. Mobile apps are the best to keep consumers engaged with a particular event
and keep them interested irrespective of the interval of the events. By designing an
online billboard on in the app, event organisers can create and increase visibility,

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brand loyalty and brand image. This acts as a reminder for the consumers and
attendees.
 24/7 engagement is a big impact that mobile applications of events have on
meetings or other events. This provides the event planners and marketers to
connect and engage with the customers and attendees at any time if the day. This
creates an everlasting relationship between the marketers and the customers.
 Engaging on social networking sites through mobile applications also puts a huge
impact on events. Creating a platform with the integration of various social media
sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram can enhance consumer engagement and
visibility of the events across the social networking sites (Lee, 2016). This enables
the guests to upload videos and pictures of the event and tweet or comment on
posts and follow other guests.
Despite having the impacts which are positive, event mobile apps can also put some
negative impact on events like meetings and conventions. The trend of developing mobile
event apps may not bring success to those event managers having event apps that are only
supported in mobile phones and not on laptops. Many attendees have been found to prefer
laptop due to its big screen to personalise agenda, create profile, and upload pictures,
videos and post contents. Poorly designed apps may also lead to failed events. Attendees
may not find an app useful or convenient to use which requires more many clicks. The lack
of intuitiveness and attractiveness in the apps may lead to losing out on attendees. People
usually tend to dislike apps that contain too many adverts within it. Including ads in mobile
application has been increasing and therefore apps containing advertising may fail.
Impact of diversity
Diversity and inclusion is yet another trend of events in the modern world. People
are more encouraged to come up and speak irrespective of gender, cast, culture and
religion. This trend focuses on making people feel at home and give them a scope to
communicate and get involved in the event and diversifying in every aspect from serving
food to providing restrooms to the whole gender spectrum (Park & Park, 2016). The points
mentioned below can be termed as the impacts of diversity on conventions or other kind of
events:

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 Diversity and inclusion in events act as motivational factor for the attendees. It aims
at harnessing the talents within the attendees and bringing out the best within them.
This gives the event planners an opportunity to incorporate new talents into the
events.
 Diversity impacts the contents delivered in an event to a great extent. Opinions and
ideas from diverse background and minority groups can be obtained which increases
the effectiveness of the events.
Diversity may have some negative impacts as well. If an event or convention hardly
speaks about diversity, it will not have any impact. An event would be successful when
people share their experiences it is able to bring people together.
Impact of venues
Venues play a significant role in events and it is usually the first thing to select and
incurs a huge cost. The ambiance of the venue is one of the factors that leave an impression
on the minds of attendees about the event. Venue and its environment is the first thing that
people tend to notice and create a preconceived notion of the event. The positive effects of
venues can be evaluated as follows:
 Venues put a great impact on the success of the event as well as on the perception
of the audience regarding the event. A pleasant ambiance of the venue encourages
the audience to attend the meetings or conventions.
 A good and suitable venue helps in carrying out an event in a proper way and
enhances its effectiveness. Non-traditional venues are quite trendy in the present
era since it provides a lot of space for the event planners to conduct the events
smoothly (Getz & Page, 2016).
A venue, if not chosen properly, may lead to chaos and disappointment among the
attendees and audiences. A venue of an event, which is not in a convenient place, may lead
to loosing of audiences in the event. A bad ambiance can create a negative image on the
minds of the attendees and can hamper the progress of the meetings and conventions.

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Impact of personalization
Personalization is one of top trends in the events industry and it is expected to continue
placing itself in the same position due to increase in technological changes. According to
statistics, the average rate of opened emails for messages that were personalized was 18.8%
as compared to a 13.1% for messages that ware not personalized (Joppi et al., 2018).
Offering custom experiences is becoming easy for the event managers due to the
introduction of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.
 By personalizing events to attendees, event managers or planners can reduce
attendee’s energy and time required to register to an events.
 The trend of Personalisation has enabled the event organizer to well organize the
informations for the event attendees as well as for event planners.
Lack of time and resources is the biggest challenge with personalization. Personalization
does not provide the scope to see what kind of return the event organisers are getting
which leads to event planners sticking to personalization which is basic. It has been found
that measuring the ROI of personalization is difficult. Personalizing too much can be harmful
for a convention meeting and it does not impose much effect on an event.
Impact of facial recognition technique
Security is a big concern for the people in event industry and it also enhances the
credibility of the event. Using technology for security requires a huge budget and thus event
organizers willing to invest a good amount in security adapt facial recognition technique.
The event industry is expected to witness an integration of AI and softwares of facial
recognition. The following are the impacts that facial recognition technique has on
convention meetings:
 The trend of facial recognition technique in events industry has been a great factor
in saving time and energy of the audiences. QR Codes, Radio Frequency
Identification, iBeacons and smartphone tickers has replaced the traditional printed
tickets thus saving the time of standing in a queue to enter an events (Goldblatt,
2000). Softwares of facial recognition has also led to finer experiences of
participants.

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 During the time of terror attack risks or alerts, events that require special security
forces, facial recognition techniques are used to ensure that only authorised
members enter the venue of event.
 Checking of identification documents or IDs like passports and driver`s license have
increased in the recent times to increase security in every event or every place
where a huge crowd gathers. In the event industry, checking IDs of the attendees is a
mandatory step and thus consumes a huge time since many things on the ID needs
to be checked. Thus, facial recognition proved a faster way for this security check. It
requires the attendees to click a picture of their IDs along with a picture of their own
while registering online. The facial recognition technique ensures that a real picture
is being produced and that the picture of the two faces match.
In spite of benefiting the events industry, facial recognition software also has some
downsides. Size and quality of photo is a major issue since the software captures a
person’s face in a photo and the size of that image is compared with the enrolled one.
The process of facial recognition gets affected by a poor image quality.
Downward trends in the Event Industry
Along with the positive trends in the event industry, there exists some negative or
downwards trends as well, some of which are inevitable and have a poor impact the events.
Such downwards trends can be explained as follows:
 VIP speaker: Event organizers include VIP speakers into the event to make it a more
informative and authentic one. The trend of VIP speaker can go wrong if the speaker
fails to turn up on the day of event. The situation may create a sense of
disappointment among the audiences and the event can get disrupted thus putting a
bad impression on the minds of audience about the company or the organisation.
 Audio-visuals: Malfunctioning of audio visuals is a common downward trend in
event industry. It tends to create an unpleasant scenario in the event when an audio
visual or projector stops working and the session gets interrupted. This can lead to
audiences losing interest in the event and can affect the productiveness of the event
or meeting.

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 Sponsorship: Sponsorship, being an integral part of an event can also be termed as
a negative trend in the event industry. Sponsors sometimes may show their
disappointment regarding the calibre of attendees or their turnout, presence of
other sponsors in the event, lack of recognition by the event organizers which can
lead to outrage among the sponsors and can deteriorate the environment of the
event (Grohs & Reisinger, 2014).
Professionals or event organisers can still follow the trend of sponsorship in their events,
conventions or meetings since without sponsorship an event may not be successful one. For
events to run smoothly various kinds of supports are required including marketing, funding,
coordination, communication which will not be possible without engaging sponsors in the
events. A large part of the funds required for an event comes from the sponsors. Thus the
event planners or event managers need to build a strong and cordial relationship with the
sponsors for the present event as well as for the future events. Event managers need to deal
with a disgruntled sponsor carefully while maintaining the relationship with them. Event
agreements need to be decide by the organisers to negotiate with the sponsors regarding
the agreements. The contents of the agreement must be communicated to the sponsors
properly before the event to avoid any miscommunication and chaos during the event.
Real Events
This section discusses the real events which succeeded following the trends
discussed in the first part.
“Under the Influence”
“Under the Influence” was an influencer Marketing Conference that was conducted
by Influencer Marketing Hub on 8th November, 2017 at The Crystal, which is a world famous
event venue in London. According to Google Analytics report accessed by the company, they
are the number one resource of events for the event industry. The event was a great
success and the presence of influencers, brands and marketers gave the event organisers an
insight into what event engagement looks like. The brands which attended the convention
were Warner Music Group, Topshop, Skyscanner, Zalando, Yves Rocher, Stokke, Viacom,
BoohooMAN and Universal (Mohr, 2017). Traackr and Assembly sponsored the event. The

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speakers in the event were Oliver Bruegmann, Lyle Steven, Simon Staib, Neil Henderson,
Nicolas Chabot and Gil Eyal. The conference helped its audiences to learn about topics that
are relevant to entrepreneurs, relationship managers and influencer activator. The topics
that were discussed include discovery of influencer, influencer marketing automation, ROI
deep dives and Influencer Relationship management.
“BankSocial”
The event BankSocial took place on 4th and 5th April 2017 in the United States. The
event was dedicated to the social media marketing and content marketing for banks and
credit unions. The event used the event management app “Attendify” to engage with
attendees, make connections and display the agendas of the event. It invited banks and
credit unions from across the banking sector of United States like PenFed Credit Union, TD
Bank and US Bank. Attendify offered the event a social networking which helped them to
accomplish their goals of the event. More than 100 people attended the event BankSocial
which was a result of effective use of the event app (Kobyletska, 2018). Attendees at the
event had to download Attendify to have access to speakers and agenda. A demo session to
the attendees was provided by the founders of the event. The founders demanded more
engagement through the app by asking the attendees to use the app, tweet and rate the
speakers at the end of every session. The app had a great impact on the reviews of attendee
regarding the event. Audiences were pleased to use Attendify as it provided them a better
experience the opportunity to integrate their existing social media accounts with their
profiles.
“Leveraging Human Difference”
The Greenville Chamber organized its 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Summit the
theme of which was ‘Leveraging Human Difference’. The summit was organised on 17th
October 2017 at the TD Convention Center in Greenville, South Carolina. The summit was
organised with an aim to provide an opportunity to the audiences to learn from experienced
authorities. The event created a learning environment and was filled with engagement,
inspiration and interaction. It was a platform where each individual got a chance to harness
and showcase their skills and talents irrespective of their religion, gender and cultural
background. The event was huge success due to the contribution of over 450 attendees, 11

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presenters and more than 20 sponsors. The attendees of the summit learned about
developing leadership quality, making connections, engaging in meaningful and valuable
conversations.
“Dreamforce”
Dreamforce is an annual convention organised by Salesforce.com, which brings
together various IT professionals, industry experts and leaders to share their thoughts, ideas
and opinions related to trending topics in information technology industry (Hastings College
of the Law Alumni Association, 2016). The convention takes place at the Moscono Center in
San Francisco which is considered as one of the top convention centers in the wold. The
convenient location, great space and the ambiance of Moscono Center has helped
Dreamforce to grow over the years and become the world’s largest software conference
(Potter, 2016). Dreamforce 2015 was a commitment by Salesforce to tackle new industries
which offer Internet of Things (IOT) and Health Clouds.
“Personalized Learning Summit 2018”
The Personalized Learning Summit was held on 2nd and 4th May 2018 by Education
Elements at Hilton Union Square, San Francisco, CA. It was the fourth annual Personalized
Learning Summit and the event was full of inspiration, storytelling, idea generation,
professional approach, engaging and dynamic session and connections. The summit was a
gathering of around 750 attendees who contributed their valuable ideas and thoughts in
using personalized learning to shape and build the future of education (Personalized
Learning Summit 2018, 2019). The summit incorporated an interactive workshop focus on
the theme ‘Shaping the Future’ which lasted for 75 minutes, a 20 minutes coaching session,
a roundtable conversation where practitioners participated to discuss on specific issues and
a creative and collaborative session which focused on common challenges in education
system.
“International Corporate Event Award (ICE Awards)”
ICE Awards was launched in 2015 which recognizes the departments and teams of
in-house corporate event. The event of 2017 took place on 6th July and the venue was
Saatchi Gallery in London. The award function integrated the global business organisations

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on the rostrum of the winners. The facial recognition software ‘Zenus’ was used in the event
which searches for databases of faces in real-time thus identifying the attendees. This
technique was used with an aim to increase security in the event and shorten check-in
times. The ICE Awards used RegieFACE, which is integrated with Zenus (Ryan, 2016). It
enables the attendees of the event to register before the event starts using their profiles in
social media sites or by uploading their picture. In the event there were around 75 entries
which were evaluated by 28 judges. Among the 250 attendees, 70% were in-house event
planners who represented 60 companies.
Conclusion
Therefore to sum up the discussion of the report, it can be concluded that the event
industry have many trends which are widely followed all over the world in every type of
event. The trends are that are followed by the events across the world are unusually
positive and help the events to succeed, make a great impression on the minds of the
attendees and achieve the desired goals. However, some negative or downwards trends also
exist which hampers the productivity of the events but with proper arrangement, the
hurdles can be avoided. It has been seen that there are a plethora of events which have
succeeded following the positive trends and made a great impact on the attendees.

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Appendix 1
“Under the Influence”

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Appendix 2
“BankSocial”

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Appendix 3
“Leveraging Human Difference”

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Appendix 4
“Dreamforce”

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Appendix 5
“Personalized Learning Summit 2018”

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Appendix 6
“International Corporate Event Award (ICE Awards)”