Event Tech, Design, and Business Trends in 2017— Meetings Innovation Report


Skift Take

Using event technology and artificial intelligence to build and customize community engagement is the biggest meetings trend heading into 2017.
The Future of Meetings & Events Lots of stories this week about 2016 year-end meeting and event trends. Technology, by far, is driving the most interest among meeting planners and attendees, especially matchmaking solutions and strategies to integrate artificial intelligence and virtual reality into live programming. There's been a lot of discussion about AI and VR in hospitality and tourism from the leisure sector this year, but I expect we'll see a much bigger conversation about measuring AI/VR impact on the group side in 2017. The human-machine interface (HMI) theme, marrying human and computer cognition, is interesting, well beyond its applications in event design and new event business models. Check out the JWT Thompson wrap-up report of Web Summit in Lisbon, which explores the evolution of AI. Data from a Web Summit survey of 22