There a treasure trove of event data just waiting to be raided!

If there is a mine to be mined then Event Technology is the spade and the shovel. With the proper use of event technology no longer do we have to rely solely on feedback forms and testimonials as our only event data source. The extensive use of technology across our show floors and throughout our conference has allowed us to know so much more about our audience. 

A growing list of what event data we can collect

So by no means an extensive list but here’s my stab at what jewels there are in a data treasure trove! It is pretty easy now to know:

• How long attendees spend in each session
• Which stands were the most popular
• Who met with whom
• Which person read what, or downloaded what or retweeted what
• Which speakers content was retweeted the most 
• Who’s presentation was viewed the most 

When we know these few small things we can start to target our products and services at the micro level. The next step, with this event data, is to start to design products and services for our attendees.

What’s in it for me?

One of the reasons I love the idea of spending more time analysing our event data is that it allows organisers to reward attendees and other stakeholders. Mining this data can tell event planners:

• Which attendee/s engaged most of our physical audience and crucially engaged the wider audience
• Who turned their followers into attendees. We can offer free attendance next year and make them VIPs
• We can know who our most successful exhibitors where in generating attendees at our show, and we can offer them a discount

Data can help you find those stakeholders and attendees who are helping your event

Let’s get social

We can monitor the social conversations, not just our attendees, but the wider social world. Event technology allows us to mine data way beyond the confines of our physical audience and this is truly exciting. We can:

• Find out what we should have covered at our conference and what we must cover next year 
• Find out the exhibitors who our audience wanted to see there (and offer them a discount next year to attend!)
• Use data to collect topic and speaker trends building a loop from one year to the next
• Know – and not guess – what was so popular that it should be a stand alone conference next year

We know all this simply by gently persuading a higher uptake of event technology. And it’s really all about using the bit of technology that is in every pocket. We now all have tablets and smartphones with NFC and / or iBeacons which allow us to follow attendees around our events sucking up their data. The multi purpose APP allows us to include voting, rating, questions and feedback and is data thirsty. We can now easily engage the event technology at our finger tips.

The event professionals job and duty is to try to link everything together to create a wealth of data for us to gorge ourselves on. If we planners along with our event technology suppliers lead the audience to water we can all bath in the data!

[iphorm id=”8″ name=”Events in 2013 (duplicate)”]