Skift Take
There's a big demand for event tech platforms that help conference attendees co-create their own educational and networking journeys. One company may have finally produced a matchmaking tool that actually delivers on that demand.
The Future of Meetings & Events
A lot of different event tech companies have been building matchmaking platforms to help conference attendees meet other like-minded people, but few of them are achieving any type of critical mass and widespread adoption.
Montreal-based E-180 is making a lot of right moves to perhaps become an industry standard. At C2 Montreal this year, it expanded on its individual Braindates meetup technology, and launched the online Group Braindates platform. Now, any conference attendee can organize a mini-workshop with four other C2 participants to discuss a subject of their choosing.
The beauty of the thing is that it actually works. More than 3,000 individual Braindates and 120 Group Braindates were scheduled, and there would have been more of the latter but E-180 simply ran out of space. Crowdsourced, collaborative learning is now a reality, although there were a few missteps with the Klik event app that hosted the Braindates tech, which need to be addressed.
—Greg Oates, meetings editor
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Next Generation Meetings UX
Crowdsourced, Collaborative Learning at Conferences Is a Reality, Almost: The new Group Braindates at C2 Montreal this year were revolutionary in their ability to connect like-minded people, but the severe challenges with the web-based event app need to be ironed out to make the online networking opportunities more accessible. Read more at Skift
Online Festivals Hub Everfest Raises $3.6 Million: About 32 million people attend at least one festival in the U.S. each year, traveling an average of 900 miles to attend one. Everfest has a promising model to profit off this trade by offering exclusive discounts and creating a festival recommendation engine. Read more at Skift
Steve Wozniak’s Speech Caps Sixth Successful C2 Montreal Conference: While everyone agrees that the C2 Montreal conference has been highly successful showcasing the convergence of commerce and creativity, there’s a bubbling of criticism questioning the purpose of the event for traditional industries and the somewhat provincial selection of speakers. Read more at Montreal Gazette
Case Study: Capturing the Essence of Discussions @IMEX Future Leaders Forum: The IMEX-MPI-MCI Future Leaders Forum is a 2-day event during IMEX Frankfurt for about 100 students who plan to start a career in the meetings and events industry. At this year’s event, IMEX organizers employed the Slido audience participation platform to support crowdsourced learning. Read more at Slido
This is How Purpose and Innovation Came Together at the PSFK Conference: The goal of the PSFK event is to provide attendees with “lateral inspiration that gives them insight into how other people and industries approach innovation, and helps them to get outside of their bubbles.” Here are five companies at this year’s show that are delivering on that mission. Read more at AlleyWatch
How Intel Is Using VR To Try To Change Sports Viewing Now And Into The Future: Intel and Major League Baseball announced a three-year partnership to live-stream one baseball game a week in VR. That followed a similar pact between the NBA and NextVR that kicked off at the beginning of the 2016-2017 basketball season. Read more at Fast Company
How the Sunshine Act Affected Medical Meetings: A paradigm shift in the relationships between doctors and vendors is creating new approaches to learning, including a virtual education format for physicians modeled after online poker. According to Convene, “Fewer doctors are willing to go have dinner or be seen in public with representatives from pharmaceutical companies.” Read more at Convene
Facebook Tries to Woo Gamers with E3 Livestreaming: On average, games represent more than 15 percent of total time spent on Facebook, and more than 450 million people have followed or liked an official games page in the last month. So Facebook is expanding its presence at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) with a new Facebook Live Studio and AR activations to drive social sharing. Read more at Venture Beat
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The Skift Meetings Innovation Report is curated by Skift editor Greg Oates [[email protected]]. The newsletter is emailed every Wednesday.
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Photo credit: The tiers of scaffold seating everywhere at C2 Montreal 2017 give the events a "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" vibe. Skift