Let’s start with the obvious questions first: what does event planning have to do with AI? Aren’t events places where human contact takes priority over interfacing with technology?

This notion has some truth to it, but in reality, AI and events are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it may come as a surprise for many people, but modern event planning relies heavily on AI to deliver memorable event experiences.

The reason why people don’t immediately associate event management with AI is because the latter often works behind the scenes. But even this has changed in recent years. More and more people are starting to get used to the idea that an event is a perfectly natural place to encounter AI.

To understand why this is the case, we have outlined 6 ways in which event organizers are utilizing AI today.

Real-time Feedback For Event Staff

One of the main characteristics of an event is that multiple things happen at the same time. Visitors come and go, presentations get held according to a schedule, food and drink corners get emptied and restocked, etc. To the casual observer, all of these things happen automatically. But from the perspective of the event staff, it is a careful balancing act where a lot of things can go wrong.

In such a scenario, AI can help organizers with real-time event feedback. Such a system could keep track of footfall and registration data live at the event, and then anticipate the staff and resources needed to keep things going smoothly.

Session Recommendations For Attendees

Some event-goers visit events in order to see a specific presentation. Others like to browse around until they find a session that interests them. The problem with this second approach is that events are timed, so it’s easy to miss a presentation that would actually interest you while you’re trying to figure out where to go.

But what if you had AI-powered information terminals scattered around the event floor that could help you find presentations that match your interests? These terminals could offer a short quiz for determining your event preferences, and then use the information to guide you towards a session that matches them.

24/7 Support On The Cheap

Larger events with multiple presentations are often difficult to navigate for attendees, which raises the need for event support staff. However, even with a large support team, it is difficult to provide a consistent level of support throughout the entire event. And it’s not cheap either.

Luckily, most support queries are relatively straightforward to solve, so you can handle them with an automated system such as an AI chatbot. Once you set up such as system, you can leave it running for the duration of the event. And the setup cost is significantly lower than the sum total of wages you would have to pay to keep a large support staff around.

A Convenient Alternative to Event Apps

Mobile event apps have grown in popularity in recent years, but their usefulness has come under fire lately. Installing an app for a single event is usually fine, but having to do so for all events you plan attending is not really desirable for most attendees. A more convenient way to deliver event information to attendees would be to leverage the technology they’re already using such as their mobile web browser.

When using this approach, event organizers usually create a special landing page for the event. But you can take things a step further by adding conversational AI to the landing page. That way you will get all the benefits of using an AI system to help attendees get the most out of your event, with the added convenience of not forcing them to install a separate app.

Translation in a Multilingual Environment

The events you organize will have visitors from all walks of life, and some will speak in a language that is different than your own. This is especially the case for larger events, or events you host in other countries. Serving a multi-lingual crowd is a difficult thing to do, even if you hire staff with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

AI provides a convenient way to solve this issue thanks to its natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. Attendees can communicate with AI in their language of choice, without you needing to write a separate script for every language.

Collecting Event Data

Every interaction with a software entity such as an AI produces a trail of digital data. This includes AI hosted at events. Attendees interacting with AI at an event will share data about themselves, make queries using voice commands or by typing, and they will be doing these things at specific times and locations. All of this information will get collected by default.

The power of AI scales in proportion to the quality and quantity of data used to train it. So just by leaving an AI running during an event, you will harvest volumes of data that you can use to further train your event AI.

Event Planning in The Age of Intelligent Machines

As we’ve seen, AI plays a subtle but important role in event organization. It helps event staff deal with repetitive tasks through automation, and it offers a convenient way for attendees to get informed about the event. And as technology develops, we can expect to see more aspects of the event planning process left in the capable hands of AI.

By Michael Deane

Michael has been working in marketing for almost a decade and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing and hopes to make it a daily habit. You can read more of Michael’s work at Qeedle.