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As the official ticketing partners for Wired 2014, we were lucky enough to get a chance to attend the exclusive forum of thinkers, doers and global influencers.
With speakers including the Duke of York, Esther Dyson and Will.i.am, the line-up was as diverse as it was impressive.
Taking in all the insights, energy and projects that were spoken about is an impossible job, but throughout the second day, a few key themes emerged that event organisers should be keeping an eye on.
- How we interact with the world is fundamentally changing
This theme was the most prevalent, being touched on by just about every speaker and present in the exhibition areas and innovation labs too.
We’re already seeing some emerging technology transform the way we experience live events, including iBeacon, RFID and Google Glass, to name just a few.
But what if we could transmit audio silently through touch? This is already being done by Yuri Suzuki, who also showed off a fun way to turn anything at all into a musical instrument.
We also heard about the revolutionary potential of haptic touch-screens, witness the incredible demonstration of Honda’s latest robot Asimo, and saw how Dhairya Dand uses physical prompts from super shoes to guitar-teaching gloves to help people experience the world around them in new and surprising ways.
Without a doubt, the event experience will be very different, and hopefully a lot richer, even just 5 years from now.
- Learn through doing, play and removing boundaries
One session was dedicated to rethinking education, and the themes that strongly emerged here were the ideas of needing to learn through doing, play and removing boundaries.
This has implications for all kinds of events, from workshops and training sessions to conferences and exhibitions.
Perhaps it really is time to put down the power point, ditch the formal agenda and find new ways to help your attendees attain the knowledge or skills they’re after.
‘Unconferences’ like YXYY and others are proving to be extremely popular for the very reason that they remove boundaries and focus on fun, innovation and self-organisation, so it probably won’t be long before these ideas break out into the mainstream and become adopted by the majority of organisrs.
- Telling stories will always be important, but how we tell them will evolve
Unsurprisingly, the topic of storytelling came up across several different sessions.
Buzzfeed’s ‘viral videographer’ Ze Frank spoke about the need to understand the psychology behind public sharing to really learn how some stories resonate (and go viral) while other’s don’t, focusing on identity as the most powerful driver of them all.
Cesar Hidalgo gave a fascinating demonstration into the power of data-backed, visual storytelling; while Will.i.am reiterated that telling a story which resonates with audiences is the only way to spark action – or sell anything.
The question for organisers is how do you connect with your audiences? Do your events help reinforce your target audiences’ identity and beliefs? Are you helping them navigate a complex world in new and intuitive ways once they’re there? Does your narrative have authenticity, and will it be well received by your market?
- Collaboration and cross-disciplinary pollination will create new opportunities
One of Wired’s core values is collaboration and multi-disciplinary exploration to find new ways of doing things. It can produce remarkable results.
Esther Dyson spoke about the incredibly simple premise behind her equally huge mission – bring together the right actors to spark action. She recognised they don’t have the answers to every solution, nor do they have the money or the buy-in to make change happen.
However, just by being a catalyst for interactions within local communities, they’re committed to facilitating the necessary changes to help prevent wide-spread health issues across the US.
Doesn’t that sound like events?! Of course it does!
But couldn’t we go even further, bringing in attendees or speakers from further afield, working to understand lessons that don’t seem immediately applicable to our day-to-day lives, or introducing new technologies that will enhance the attendee experience even further?
- Data will change everything
The transformative power of data pervaded the conferences, from Cesar Hidaglo’s presentation to the enlightening talk given by Pablo Rodríguez, Telefónica’s Innovation Director, on their collaboration with Barcelona FC to develop intelligent algorithms that could help evolve the team’s style and provide a competitive advantage against other major clubs.
If data can be used in environments as fluid, fast and complex as football; or at the size and scale of Telefonica’s operations, then you have to believe it could have a giant impact on the future design and operations of events.
From modelling the footfall and demand at festivals, to safety planning at endurance events, to maximising the value for exhibitors at conferences and exhibitions, event organisers are sitting on a gold-mine of data.
How you capture it, analyse it and put it into action are not easy questions to answer, but with the potential upside so big, perhaps 2015 should be the year ‘big data’ is taken seriously by the event’s industry.
