Live and direct from Canada, Jeff Campbell, author of two partnerships playbooks and founder of Incentli, a company committed to improving attendee motivation and engagement, fell into event industry from the e-Learning vertical.

Jeff’s background in education fostered his interest in online learner engagement and gamification. So much so, he started Incentli and built an integration with learning management systems (LMS). Ultimately, Campbell’s/Incentli’s goal is to make partnerships as easy as they can be, making him a perfect fit with this episode.

Across some 45 minutes of chat, host/Event Tech Live co-founder, Adam Parry, and Jeff Campbell dig down into the integration equation, with the equally successful and ‘agnostic’ Incentli a perfect case in point.

A clued-up collaboration – typical of the Event Tech Talks series - they talk imposter syndrome, tech stacks, connecting LMS to ecommerce platforms, driving attendee stickiness through partnerships and the energy from collaboration.

From the difference between online learning and virtual events, timeframes and a useful burger parallel – the calendar year is bottom of the bun, events ‘the pickle’ – right through to what integration actually means, it’s all here.

‘Designed in Belgrade. Made remotely worldwide’, Beams is the business, launched in 2020, behind its eponymous ‘virtual event engine with a one-window technology’.

In this episode, recorded the day registration opened for Event Tech Live 2022, topically, host Adam Parry talks to Yana Kuodis, co-founder and head of business development at Beams, who can trace her history in events back as far school, and Nadya Kuzmenko, head of marketing, whose experience from other fields left her with a commitment to carry the big ideas.

Born of, and during, the pandemic, Beams’ focus is on strengthening the hand of virtual events, pushing on to unleash still untapped potential and revenue.

Across a fascinating 45 minutes, the conversation covers how it feels to be encouraging people to deliver digital events while the in-person option is where the want is. And the argument between ‘how the virtual model was thrust on a population typically not interested, invested or truly understanding the concept’ and the extraordinary amount of time huge numbers working at home spend, interacting, learning, buying and selling online.

There’s more too of course…

The eighth episode of Event Tech Talk Show is all about data, and in Joe Colangelo host Adam Parry has found another perfect sparring partner.

Joe is co-founder and CEO of Bear Analytics, a firm dedicated to translating data into actionable intelligence for event producers, trade associations and professional societies.

Putting questions both as data the infatuated co-founder of Event Tech Live and as a very interested independent other, Adam gets the back story; how Jo Colangelo started with a biotech trade organisation, going on to work with its events team where he identified a “pretty big” deficiency on the data side. And how he and partner Eric Misic

founded Bear in the summer of 2013 as a result.

Adam and Joe discuss the impact of the Covid pandemic, how close it came to suffocating the business, and the subsequent launch of Bear IQ.

They talk about the burgeoning value of data and how to get the most out of it, which business operations benefit the most from centralised, clean, consolidated data. They look at tech stacks, Bear’s unique place in the puzzle, and much, much more.

In little over 10 years Jimmy MacDonald, together with Rachel Isherwood, founded, developed and sold London Design Fair.

At the end of May 2022 – soon after the Evening Standard and Citibank had rated him one of the top 1,000 most influential Londoners - California-based e-commerce platform Ribbon appointed MacDonald as its global fairs liaison officer.

Episode 7 of the Event Tech Talk Show sees Jimmy MacDonald talk host Adam Parry through that considerable background, making mention of 100% Design, a JV with Reed Exhibitions, Super Brands London and much more.

Meeting out praise for Old Truman Brewery and Excel, MacDonald goes on to discuss his biggest challenge and the trade show mechanic before tackling the hybrid commerce question – with a spotlight on the Ribbon platform.

In this episode of Event Tech Talks, number 6 of Season 2, Canada-based Evan Babins – who joined Klir, succinctly ‘the operating system for water’, at the turn of the year - tells host Adam Parry about planning, producing and executing trade shows in the water industry across the United States.

Steeped in relevant experience, and a great, sharp communicator, Evan got a start in virtual events back in 2017. With a focus on a full-bore event year in 2023, he offers tech advice for the meantime, as the industry finds its feet again.

Evan highlights the value in incorporating virtual and hybrid models post-pandemic, connectivity – properly mixing in-person with virtual attendees – latest lead generation/lead capture solutions, getting better quality information, more substance, via Voiceform rather than asking people to fill a form out, and much, much more.

Event Tech Talk Show Season 2, Episode 5 sees host Adam Parry talking shop with Ben Axtell and Gus Perret – co-founders of GoRemote.

In March 2020 – as events businesses around the world were postponing, cancelling, rethinking their everything in light of the then encroaching pandemic shadow. Tech took the calls but there was, naturally enough, some oversight.

Virtual/hybrid event specialist Ben, speaking from Annecy in the south east of France, and show caller/AV man Gus, around the corner in Thônex, do the detail on GoRemote, which focused on supporting speakers as they found their feet across the digital platform through lockdowns, making sure they were fully briefed and confident before stepping on the virtual stage. And how the company has moved on as restrictions have lifted.

Event Tech Talk Show’s episode 4 in Season 2 sees host Adam Parry crossing the hemispheres to talk to Mike Day in Australia.

Mike is Asia Pacific regional manager for One World Rental, the event tech hire business, who comes to the conversation with more than five years’ experience managing teams, operations, projects, and client relationships internationally for the company.

While overseeing all APAC operations, Mike also focuses on the continued development and expansion of the company internationally as well as onboarding global partnerships.

Having revealed that he’s IOS more than android and would choose a cocktail over a coffee – particularly on the beach – in answer to Adam’s quickfire questions, Mike goes on to remember his first steps in the event industry, joining One World Rental, when it was called High Tablets and moving Down Under, before digging into the event services partner question.

Event Tech Talks’ episode 3, series 2 sees host Adam Parry talking to Joel Olandesca, creator/co-founder of the self-explanatory SOS Charging Solutions and, topically, SOS WebAR, which is a browser route to immersive augmented reality and all its commercial potential.

With a background in mobile technology, marketing and the money side of the events world, along with prominent positions at the ILEA, Joel Olandesca is another perfect fit for the programme.

Talking from his Calgary base, where it’s -25°c, incidentally, Joel fields Adam’s quickfire ‘who are you’ questions before digging into what augmented reality means for the events industry, how it’s used, how SOS is working with clients to integrate AR activations, what the future holds for the technology and more besides.