Technology

As in-person events come back online, health and safety remains a focus, and touchless technology is taking center stage.

A Salt Lake City-based tech startup saw an unmet need in the event industry – how to collect and analyze attendee spend and movement data – and now the company’s growth is skyrocketing.

The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games is using the latest digital twining technology. Interactive 3D models of key venues will be used by the organising committee, TV broadcasters and other stakeholders.

With the rise of virtual and hybrid meetings and the proliferation of platforms to support them has come a new source of frustration for planners: lack of pricing transparency. 

As event organizers work to monetize events happening online and in virtual reality, they will need to pay close attention to how governments will assess taxes on registration fees and transactions in these digital environments.

Whether state-sponsored or rogue, cyber threats from Russia aren’t new. But they are newly worrisome as U.S. officials warn that the Kremlin may be readying a fresh spate of cyberattacks against the U.S. in retaliation for sanctions related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Are events in Russian hackers’ cyber crosshairs?

Face-to-face meetings and events are returning, but many of the employees who worked in the hospitality industry in 2020 are not around to greet them. Droves who have worked in travel, tourism, hospitality, and events have moved on to other workforce sectors.

Event planners can learn a lot about organizing in-person, virtual, and hybrid meetings by studying how Cvent Connect, the annual event technology convention, uses various tools to plan, market, run and analyze its show.

VSef, a not-for-profit developer of a universal data format for hybrid and virtual events, recently announced the release of version 2.0 of its data standards and introduced Stephen Knowles as the new CEO. It is hoping the update will go a long way to helping standardize data for events, which saw the rise of much siloed information during the pandemic.

Virtual and hybrid event platforms, and the entire tech stack they support, continue to evolve at a rapid rate. However, a recent survey suggests that although event tech is advancing in its products, integrations, and innovations, the level of comfort event professionals feel around it is not. This pain point speaks to the need for enhanced, white-glove assistance services from event tech providers.