The inaugural Digital Event News Tech Summit served-up two days of discussion, networking and one-to-one meetings between technology providers and event planners. Mike Fletcher reports on the opening keynote from Google Cloud.
The Digital Event News Tech Summit was held at Hanbury Manor in the Hertfordshire countryside from 23-24 November. Planners from companies such as News UK, Ernst & Young, Clarion Events, Forum Events, The RSPB, 73 Media and Philips, met with suppliers, including Hubilo, Notified, On24, Totem, iVent, Brella, CircData, Cvent, LexisNexis and LiveBuzz, to share knowledge and requirements in order to shape the future of virtual and hybrid events.
The two-day summit opened with a keynote from Google Cloud’s marketing director, Global Experiential & Demand Marketing, Matt Kaufman.
He began by telling delegates that in early 2020, Google took the decision not to go-head with its large-scale San Francisco-based annual user conference for up to 40,000 in-person attendees. But instead, began experimenting with different virtual formats.
He told delegates: “At that point in time, many organisations were discontinuing their events but we had already invested a lot in content production. So, we made the decision to convert the work we’d already done into a digital programme. We trialled a multi-week series called the Summer Camp between June and August and it landed really well.
“In reality though, there was a pretty significant digital deficit in platform capabilities. Although attendees were flexible and forgiving and the content was enough to fill the void, it was by no means perfect.”
Kaufman believes it took another year for the technology to start meeting the growing demands of virtual events. During that time, Google built-up its strategy for meeting attendees where they already hung out – on channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and technology-centric user groups.
He recalls: “We consciously drove people away from the event website and achieved a four times increase in engagement on a weekly basis. By meeting users where they already were, we didn’t have to rely on our content being discovered but then being forgotten.”
Kaufman’s key learnings around content were that sessions which lasted longer than 20 minutes couldn’t hold the attendee attention span, and that he needed to strike the right balance between pre-recorded, broadcast-quality programming and more authentic live-streamed content, where interruptions and glitches may occur but viewers would engage better in the experience.
From a technology perspective, Kaufman advocates the power of ‘low-fi’ experiences, encouraging planners to stay focused on what delegates need, in order to meet their expectations rather than getting distracted by more ‘tech-heavy’ platform capabilities.
He says: “Early on we looked at a whole raft of platforms. I’d still encourage anyone to consider the minimum viable experience, without additional functionality that you either don’t need or won’t use. When you find yourself spending too much time teaching people how to use a platform’s functionality, you have to ask yourself if that time is worthwhile and whether or not those features are really necessary.”
Kaufman is also an advocate for localised digital experiences, citing incorporating subtitles, translation services, plus scheduling broadcasts for different timezones as critical to event success.
Perhaps more critical however, is for Google to now find new ways to cut through the sheer abundance of virtual event activity, in order to build community and loyalty around its customer content programme.
Kaufman concludes: “We need to get back to creating scarcity and exclusivity in order to make it essential for people to tune-in rather than log-off. Viewers these days simply don’t now know what to attend and what not to attend because everything looks and feels too similar. For next year, we’re working hard to create those special moments that will distinguish between exclusive engagement and accessing the always-on content.”
Where do we go from here?
As part of Kaufman’s presentation, the Google Cloud marketing director provided the following future-facing advice for virtual and hybrid event planners:
- “Define what hybrid means for you, your stakeholders and your customers. Are you leading with physical events but adding-on a digital amplification programme? Or are you going digital-first but staging smaller gatherings and activities around always-on content? For us, we’re exploring all sorts of scenarios and definitely going through a period of experimentation right now. We’re asking our users and attendees what they would like and expect from Google Cloud.”
- “Balance ‘always on’ with ‘moments in time’. If people know that they can get event content whenever they want by watching it on YouTube, it distracts them from attending an event with an exact date, time and schedule. So be clear over what the ‘always on’ content comprises, where to find it and how it fits with say, an education module. Then blend that with moments in time and maybe anchor them with say, product announcements, keynote speakers or some kind of experience that really needs to be engaged with on a given date or time.”
- “Just because ‘Hybrid’ is the buzzword currently, it’s still ok for your event to be in-person only or digital only. We’ve made it clear that next year, certain programmes will continue to be digital only because that’s what our customers want. For some of our ‘white glove’ or executive programmes, where 10-15 senior leaders get together in a room or restaurant, that’s more conducive to being physical so we wouldn’t broadcast.”
- “Define what hybrid means for you, your stakeholders and your customers. Are you leading with physical events but adding-on a digital amplification programme? Or are you going digital-first but staging smaller gatherings and activities around always-on content? For us, we’re exploring all sorts of scenarios and definitely going through a period of experimentation right now. We’re asking our users and attendees what they would like and expect from Google Cloud.”
- “Balance ‘always on’ with ‘moments in time’. If people know that they can get event content whenever they want by watching it on YouTube, it distracts them from attending an event with an exact date, time and schedule. So be clear over what the ‘always on’ content comprises, where to find it and how it fits with say, an education module. Then blend that with moments in time and maybe anchor them with say, product announcements, keynote speakers or some kind of experience that really needs to be engaged with on a given date or time.”
- “Just because ‘Hybrid’ is the buzzword currently, it’s still ok for your event to be in-person only or digital only. We’ve made it clear that next year, certain programmes will continue to be digital only because that’s what our customers want. For some of our ‘white glove’ or executive programmes, where 10-15 senior leaders get together in a room or restaurant, that’s more conducive to being physical so we wouldn’t broadcast.”
- “Define what hybrid means for you, your stakeholders and your customers. Are you leading with physical events but adding-on a digital amplification programme? Or are you going digital-first but staging smaller gatherings and activities around always-on content? For us, we’re exploring all sorts of scenarios and definitely going through a period of experimentation right now. We’re asking our users and attendees what they would like and expect from Google Cloud.”
- “Balance ‘always on’ with ‘moments in time’. If people know that they can get event content whenever they want by watching it on YouTube, it distracts them from attending an event with an exact date, time and schedule. So be clear over what the ‘always on’ content comprises, where to find it and how it fits with say, an education module. Then blend that with moments in time and maybe anchor them with say, product announcements, keynote speakers or some kind of experience that really needs to be engaged with on a given date or time.”
- “Just because ‘Hybrid’ is the buzzword currently, it’s still ok for your event to be in-person only or digital only. We’ve made it clear that next year, certain programmes will continue to be digital only because that’s what our customers want. For some of our ‘white glove’ or executive programmes, where 10-15 senior leaders get together in a room or restaurant, that’s more conducive to being physical so we wouldn’t broadcast.”
