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Ross Dawson
Futurist and keynote speaker Ross Dawson is founding chairman of Sydney-based Advanced Human Technologies Group of companies. He’s the author of five books, including Thriving on Overload: The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information. For the Event Industry Forecast 2023, Convene asked Dawson for his take on event trends for the upcoming year.
Is there one event technology trend that will dominate in the coming months?
AI will transform events, and leading event organizers are trialing an extraordinary array of powerful applications. High-value use cases include live session summaries, intelligent attendee matching, customized event pathways, and AI-powered insight generation for delegates.
Is there an important trend that you think is flying under the radar?
Technologies to enable the most useful connections between event participants are not new but can offer immense value. A new wave of AI-powered personal devices [such as Humane Technology’s “AI Pin,” which can take calls and project information onto nearby objects and surfaces will take these capabilities to the next level.
Top Ways AI Will Fuel Events
Steve Mackenzie, chief innovation officer of Momentus Technologies (formerly Ungerboeck), included the following in his list of the top ways he expects AI to power event technology:
- Facial-recognition software
- Voice-activated tools
- Chatbots
- Personalized preferences and recommendations — especially for networking and hostedbuyer programs at trade shows and exhibitions
- Automated live language translations
- Smart floor-planning tools
- Automated task management for event planners
Julia Hartz
Why AI Will Be Bigger Than Social Media
In a conversation on Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, Eventbrite co-founder and CEO Julia Hartz explained why she thinks AI could have a greater impact on her business than social media by an “order of magnitude” — by making company operations more productive and connecting people with events in new ways. “I think that searching and browsing and discovering is going to be obsolete in the next three years,” she said, adding, “I think you are basically, as a consumer, going to prompt an engine to tell you exactly what it thinks you should do. It will be contextual, it will be somewhat emotional, and it’ll be based on what AI knows about you.”
Barbara Palmer is deputy editor of Convene.
Events Industry Forecast
This story is from the November 2023 issue of Convene and is part of our annual Events Industry Forecast, Find more stories from the issue below: