Skift Take
The IMEX startup competition clearly needs a bigger forum, not to promote the event tech companies, but to showcase to more planners the potential hybrid event user experience of the future.
The event technology arena is a bit of a Wild West show these days as more event planners are seeing more value in the booming array of new technology products and services.
Demand is clearly growing for digital tools that improve productivity for event planners and participants, but the real world supply for mature, fully executional event technology is lagging. To date, event tech has promised a lot and delivered little, especially because so many large venues are unable to keep up with even basic Wi-Fi capacity required for many next generation cloud-based platforms.
Event app technology, which requires minimal bandwidth, is one bright spot. Conference attendees can easily research sessions, manage their schedules, and connect with other attendees in real time and on demand. It's hard to believe that this was such a challenge to integrate into meetings less than two years ago.
Since then, adoption rates for event apps have skyrocketed. In one recent case study provided by EventMobi, the 2015 conference for the Atlanta Chapter of the Society of Human Resource Management saw a 9% jump in attendance and a 115% rise in event app usage.
Beyond that, there's still a lack of full scale awareness among planners and attendees about the value proposition, cost, and integration of new event tech.
The IMEX Group is trying to change that at its two annual meetings industry tra
