Transcript: inControl Meetup Dec 2025 - The next 5 years will define which event professionals thrive in the AI era
InControl Meetup: AI in Events
Introduction by Damir
Wonderful, we are live! Welcome to InControl Meetup. This is the first online meetup in the series of InControl, which is something that I will introduce a bit later. My name is Damir, I'm with run.events. I'm a Chief Strategist and also a Be Future Mentor, that means that I am asked from the European Union to help the event industry.
So I went to Event Tech Live two weeks ago. It's one of the most important tech events in our industry. And then to IBTM in Barcelona. And you have to know about me that my background is actually a computer scientist. So what does a computer scientist bring back from Barcelona? A virus. So I'm very sorry, but my voice is a bit weak and I will probably struggle here and there, but I hope that this will not disturb too much from today's discussion, because I'm super, super excited.
I have wonderful guests today. I will introduce them a bit later, but let us first share some slides to help me with my weak voice to explain what is going on right now and today.
The InControl Summit
We're going to talk about AI in events, AI in the event industry. This is something that really was the most important part of my work for the past year. I learned a lot and I spent quite some time going around and seeing what's happening in the world.
So before that, I want to introduce you to something that is coming in about six months, six, seven, eight months. It's InControl Summit. This is the first totally AI-focused summit for event professionals. So if you are in the event industry, if you are dealing with projects that are involving AI, if you think about AI, if you think how to use it, this is the place to go.
We will have some amazing speakers. Kolja Dams from Vogue Dams will introduce the most innovative approach to AI currently in our industry. Professor Stefan Luppold, who I will be introducing a bit later for a conversation about AI in the event industry, is our legend. It's someone who changed the industry for the past twenty-five years and half of the people in Germany who are working in the event industry actually read his books. He was the guy who told them how to do this properly. And last but not least, Ola Persson from BBC who will introduce live captioning with AI and without, and discuss how to work with AI in the future without replacing humans.
So there will be three tracks with a lot of interesting discussions. Go to this URL, look at it. This is an event without vendor pitches, without sales, just for the event professionals. You can use a meetup twenty code this time for twenty percent off. Super cool. I forgot about it—thank you to my colleagues who announced it. So it's going to be really cool. And we still have an early bird, so go and catch your pick.
AI Has Entered the Industry
But back to our actual topic. AI has entered the industry. So everyone is talking about it. I was at several events and every second booth, almost every booth has something about AI. But the big, big question is: AI is now here. Why? Why do we need AI and what to do with AI in the current world of events?
The big, big question that I heard on IBTM was: will AI replace event managers? There is a lot of excitement. There's a lot of, I would say, great ideas, but also a lot of confusion and a lot of, well, fear. What will happen?
And I was looking into it and I just discovered that this wonderful robot, a humanoid robot called Amica, was used for the past two years to showcase how AI will replace humans on stage—or not. However, I just had the opportunity to see it at IBTM World in Barcelona. You see Julian Solari talking to Amica. And the big thing, I just wrote it down: he asked, "Is AI ready to take over events?" And what Amica answered was: "AI is the tool and human creativity is the artist. Together, they build smarter, more personal, and more human events."
So if you look at that, there is hope for the industry. However, we need to focus on that which makes us human, that brings benefit and value upon using different tools.
The Shift in Questions About AI
However, this shift is really massive. If you look at how this evolved—two years ago everyone was asking the question: How will AI change the industry? What will come? What will be possible? Today, the question is a bit different. Today it is: How can I deploy it? How can I use it? And with all billion tools that are available on the market, which tool is actually the tool I should be using?
If you look at the trends today, definitely at IBTM—I'm a mentor with Be Future, it's a European initiative to support young startups in the event industry—eighty startups were showcasing their innovative AI solutions at IBTM. There is a twice as big event tech area comparing to last year. So both are signs that definitely AI is here to stay. AI is not leaving. AI is here and will stay.
If you look how this worked at IBTM, I read that there were eighty thousand arranged meetings. You can imagine with twelve thousand sponsors, attendees, exhibitors—this is huge. And things are happening right now that were never possible in the past.
However, not everyone understands how to utilize this technology. They see the effects, they see the benefits, but at the same time: "Well, my event is not IBTM. I don't have ten thousand people. Do I need it? Can I use it? And how should I use it?" This is the question that really appears everywhere.
At the same time, the same people are scared to change anything in their existing tech flow. Why? This event industry is not the IT industry. People are not skilled enough. Now when you look at it, everyone expects them to somehow start learning AI within five minutes. This is nothing that can happen overnight. You need to invest.
But if you look at investments and what's happening right now, you see that forty-five percent of event organizers are actively using AI today, according to a recent study, and eighty-four percent of planners use ChatGPT daily. So most of the people already implemented ChatGPT in some sort—like helping them to improve text, perhaps to organize a marketing campaign, to automate something. Everyone is working on that.
However, to be able to actually do this, you need to invest in proper education. However, people today are investing a lot in tools. And I was really pleased to see there's a lot of examples how AI was used in events today.
AI-Powered Business Matchmaking
If you look at the full portfolio, there are several solutions. I could list hundreds of possible solutions that are possible today with AI. At IBTM I was really lucky as a Be Future mentor to speak about business matchmaking.
In the past, matchmaking was really simple. You filled out your form, you said "I'm looking for this and that," then we looked in the database and connected you with someone who is offering this and that. That was probably a lucky guess. Among, I would say, ninety percent of meetings in the past were really just a lucky guess. Someone dropped by your booth, asked the right question, you were at the booth with the right answer, you connected and did what was necessary.
Matchmaking of today means that before the event, fifteen or twenty years of event experience was used to generate curated data for AI. Then a survey with different information about the attendees and sponsors are mixed into it. That data is analyzed by AI and meaningful connections are produced. It means that people actually meet someone they are looking for. It's not that they are just running around. They now have the chance to actually have ten to fifteen meaningful conversations at every expo.
At the same time, the organizers can offer sponsors ten meaningful leads—not ten leads, but really ten meaningful leads—which will simplify and really boost conversion. And conversion is return on investment. And return on investment—that's why we're doing all of this. Obviously we enjoy running events, we enjoy having fun with events, but at the same time we need to earn some money.
If you have a proper tool—and this slide is also showing automated post-event insights and sponsor ROI—this is something that is really possible today and allows you to dig into all the interactions, all the numbers, and to see what was really delivered in the event, what was valuable, and how to improve for the next event.
And obviously, I know it from my pretty long sales experience in previous jobs: you never start selling without having a history. With AI, now we have a history. We are able finally to present knowledge about the past events and to improve the next event based on this knowledge. It's just an upgrade, it's not a fresh start. But this is data-driven decision-making. That means in the future we will not just decide—we will have reasons to decide. We will have different options. We will be able to optimize input, agenda, sponsor spotting, product spotting. We will have better ticket prices because AI will help us to optimize at the right moment.
Reactions from the Industry
So it sounds really, really exciting. However, it is not easy. It is a totally different way of thinking. And I saw it in my presentation—I had two types of people listening to me. One type was super excited, nodding (because it was a silent presentation with headphones). On the other hand, perhaps yeah, some people were a bit confused, kind of not believing what I'm saying. At the same time, other people were really afraid.
And after that I was really interested to talk to them. So I went and they said, "Well, my boss wants me to do this. I have no clue how to do this. But to be honest, I also don't have a budget for this." The budget is mostly dedicated to software, to upgrades—something that is really useful for the event managers. However, to use the software, you need to learn how to do this.
And one thing that event managers are not having these days—but actually never—is time. To dig into AI, to understand how to use it, and to understand where the future of this industry is, you need to spend some time digging into different tools. You need to spend some time understanding how to use it properly. And this is something that will not happen overnight.
In a recent study, I really looked into those numbers just to have some meaningful numbers to discuss. Fifty percent believe that they will need to upskill. They will need to learn how to use AI properly. But if you are forty plus—well, I am forty plus, a bit more than forty—and I was really thinking about how to start again at this age. It's not easy because you spent your career building your reputation, building your capabilities, building your knowledge. And you define yourself a bit through your work.
If for some reason part of your work is no longer needed, you will feel less valuable. You will feel a bit frightened and you will feel that you need to start again, kind of from scratch. And this is a terrifying thought. This thought can be solved pretty easily. And that's why I invited today Professor Stefan Luppold, who is a legend in this space. He's the guy who knows more about education in the event industry than probably all of us together.
And not to make it too easy on everyone, I also invited an event manager with experience. Adis Hugo is the mastermind behind European AI in Cloud Summit, European Collaboration Summit, BizApps Summit—biggest Microsoft conferences in Europe—and also one of the biggest, I would say, examples of how to use AI right now.
The Central Question
So the topic we will be discussing is my invitation with the claim: "AI won't replace event managers, but it will replace those who are not using it." So if you are an event manager knowledgeable of AI, your job is probably safe. If you're not using AI, if you refuse to use it, it will consequently be quite difficult to do the job and do something in this industry.
So is it true? This is really provocative. Let's invite two of my guests and start the conversation.
Damir: So that worked really well. I didn't crash for once. Hello, Stefan. Hello, Adis.
Stefan & Adis: Hi. Thank you for the invitation.
Damir: I don't know if you've managed to hear what I was saying, but the last quote that I mentioned was that AI won't replace event managers, but event managers using AI will replace event managers. Do you agree with that? Stefan, you want to start? Is that okay?
Stefan's Academic Perspective
Stefan: Well, definitely I am fine with that. Well, from the academic perspective, first of all, we have to define what is an event manager. So then we could go ahead. But of course, Damir, I'm quite sure that we have something in between.
So we have people who are just working on a process on a daily basis, calling themselves event managers. So we can replace those already by using maybe a computer or something, or a CRM software or something like that. So it's interesting.
But the topic you mentioned—I'm fully agree that we have to face that it's not an issue. I would say mostly it's an opportunity for us, which refreshes our thinking about how we can work in the events industry in the best way. And for that reason, you are right, yes.
Damir: But you mentioned something, and that was also a big topic on IBTM this year, and I heard that last year there was also a big topic. They speak about a new type of event manager. That's what's needed. And now you're starting with "let's define event manager." So how do you define event manager today?
Stefan: A funny thing yesterday—and really accidentally—I had a conversation with a show director of a very important B2B show in Germany. And he said, "Do you think I'll make it? Because I'm not an event manager. I'm an expert out of that industry that we are covering with our expo, with our trade show."
And I said, "Well, if you are an expert and you have a great team to get everything managed—to select the right exhibitors, to send out invitations in time and so on—then you might be better than the event expert in that role."
So if we discuss the event manager, I took some notes during your speech, your introductional words. Of course we have to think about things like target groups, like aim or purpose—for what reason are we running an event—and so on. So it's much more than just that administrative thing.
Project management, which is part of our first and second semester lectures—very important, very basic knowledge—but there's much more on that foundation to be built. And that's what I think an event manager does. He is, on one hand side, a financial controller. On one hand side, he is a creative person, and so on. So a general thinker or manager.
But it's not a stereotype. There's not one person I could point out—sorry, Kolja Dams—to say "that's the ideal event manager." So we have different types, and it depends on, let's say, finally on the target of their role. So are they within a corporate company? Are they running their own business? Is it a five full-time staff agency or is it a five hundred full-time staff? So it depends. Is it international or is it local?
But anyway, I think we'll find something in between where we say again, Damir, you're right. And we have to take that up with the AI and think about how will that change our future in the events industry.
And Kolja is a great example. We very often mention him, but he is really the driving force behind innovation in this industry. And at ETL we had a very nice chat where he was focusing on data-driven decisions before the event. He wants to analyze before the event starts. And I was just saying, "Well, we focus on during the event." So it fits wonderfully, how to connect it.
But the discussion was more about the purpose. So that's what you said—now we have AI, now we have everything. And kind of we agreed (and it was also in the industry) just because of AI, there is more need for live events, for actual human interaction. Because we need this interaction today. We need to kind of understand how to deal with all of this.
And this is something that's a good sign for the industry. So that means that the industry needs to embrace the opportunity. And to embrace the opportunity, the industry needs skills. And now we're coming back again to this event manager topic.
Damir: You said project management, finance, creativity. In my career, I did not meet many people who are finance heavy, who are project managers, and also creative and delivering in time. So this is a huge demand.
So is it something that—do you believe that what the industry is saying, that we need live events in the future as well, will this change now that we have AI? Will the people go back and say, "Let my AI do the work for me. I don't need to do this anymore"?
The Value of Face-to-Face Events
Stefan: So finally, the AI talks to the AI? Our digital whatever persons and so on, they talk to each other? No, I don't think so.
You mentioned one thing, Damir—the matchmaking. So whenever we are talking about events, about direct communication, about personal communication, about on-site (most of the time on-site communication), we have to think about the value. Because we are adding not only time, but money to that.
So you traveled to Barcelona, you traveled to other places. I've been in Münster a couple of days ago to join an associational event. So when you question that—is that valuable? Is it worth allocating that time? Well, if we assure great matchmaking to meet the right people, to spend time on site that gains us knowledge, fun of course as well, and plenty of ideas for our future—then I think it's even more important to have those live events to be joined.
And let me say one thing: we are more and more digital people, like now in the moment. I have to say that Adis and myself, we met a couple of days ago in person in Ravensburg and we had a nice lunch. But now, of course, we are online. But the meeting on site—so the event—is becoming more important in the digital stream. So that's the highlight.
So once a year or every second year, after many conversations and information exchange online, we meet face to face. And that has to be kind of perfect. And if AI helps us to make it even better than now, then we are happy.
And I don't want to mention Kolja too often, but that's a thing he stated by talking about his digital twin, for instance—to ensure quality in advance and not to hope that this will happen on site. No, we know it will happen in high quality. And that's why we can, like you did before, announce that conference in Düsseldorf in June twenty-six.
Building the InControl Community
Damir: Yes, why I'm super happy about it—because at Event Tech Live in the UK there was a discussion about the perfect event for event professionals, but not a sales event or anything. And then I digged into it and discovered that the event industry is not having an event for the event industry. It's just kind of missing.
And especially if you are—well, there is ICCA, but this is just part of the industry. But if you say the whole event industry, all people involved, there was nothing dedicated to filling the skill gap, understanding where you are right now, what's working right now, discussing with the others who are perhaps a bit deeper into it—just an opportunity to meet and discuss.
And that's why I'm so happy that we are organizing this event. There will be around three hundred event professionals really interested in AI, and all presentations will be around actual use of AI today. So this is going to be a really, really interesting discussion. I'm really hoping for amazing and perhaps a bit controversial discussions in panel discussions. So I'm looking at you, Stefan—you will be running one of those.
This is really something that might be a great start for the future. Because we plan also additional content around that. Having one event is not enough, as you said. We need to follow up online, we need to connect the online digital world with the offline world and make it in a proper way. So there will be a community, as you said, to exchange thoughts and exchange content for event professionals online. And then this could be an offline meetup like we three of us talking right now together, and perhaps we can meet for a drink and continue with our discussion.
Adis: What We No Longer Do Manually
Adis: Right, I mean, I would like to remind the discussion a few minutes into the past. Since you asked the question, you put your motive there—that AI will not replace you, but somebody with AI will. I think you are very generous with that sentence.
When we started our event in 2012, I was just—since you were talking—writing down all the things we don't do manually anymore for the past thirteen years. I came up with a list of seven things now. I'm just going to read them without comment. I'm just going to throw them on the table and we can discuss what is going on.
Number One: Analytics. Every year we used to take our time to actually analyze the numbers—who came, who didn't come, what the attendees were, especially when we were in third or fourth year, how that was going on, how it was predicting. We were using a lot of Excel sheets to do that. A lot of hours spent on that. We don't do that anymore. We have that out of the box the day the conference finished. We know that information without putting any work into that.
Number Two: Matchmaking. In the very beginning, when we were still much smaller, when we were a couple of hundred attendees, we never had hosted buyer concepts. Stefan is now going to smile a bit because we discussed that a few days ago. But we tried to manually matchmake attendees with sponsors and exhibitors because we knew who would come and said, "Hey, those people are really good. We have three sponsors really good in Microsoft governance, and we know that you are into that topic or that your company is investing a lot in Microsoft—you should maybe talk to them." We don't do that manually anymore. We have much more adequate and accurate information about that than we could ever have manually, because our manual matchmaking was based on me and a few other colleagues actually knowing everybody in the community and actually doing the matches. Now with three thousand plus people, that's completely impossible. I mean, that's not even viable.
Number Three: Content Analysis. What we always did—we were analyzing content. How many people were visiting which sessions? And what topics those were. And we could see when some topics would start dropping down through years or start rising. We could even predict how a lot of trends would go in the next years. We don't do that manually anymore. We have that on the day of the event. We have next week here in Bingen am Rhein—we have all three content teams, fifteen people here in the beautiful Rhein deciding all the content of the next ECS in May. All those data and predictions for the next year are already done without any manual effort.
Number Four: Growth. We would see which companies were visiting our events and say, "Okay, we have five companies from the aerospace industry. Obviously they were interested in A, B, and C. So let's call another five companies from the aerospace industry, because obviously there is a match for them. There's an interest for that side. Let's try to invite them to come." We have AI doing that now. We have AI spotting similar types of customers, both on the attendee side and on the exhibitor side, actually finding similar companies and similar people, and even writing invites to them.
Number Five: Website. Our website—everybody thought it was really nice—collabsummit.eu, has been implemented within hours by an AI tool. We ditched our web agency. We literally ditched our web agency. We don't need them anymore.
Number Six: Design. It's very similar for design. Many of you who registered to run.events have got half an hour, an hour ago, a reminder to come to this meetup. That email and that design have been created by AI. It does look really nice.
If I would think deeper, I think I could come up with another six or seven. But those came first to my mind when we were talking. So while you stand and say "AI won't replace you"—I think it's way too gracious, to be honest. Things are happening.
The Changing Job Market
Damir: Yeah, well, there's one thing that you mentioned that really happens more and more right now. Last year I did not have so many requests over LinkedIn from small companies all around the world for very simple development tasks. Now I get it every three hours. That means it's getting harder to get simple jobs.
So you said you ditched your agency. This is what happens for simple tasks—you can't really pay anymore because it can be easily done by AI. But if we look at Stefan, it means that we do not need juniors anymore. Stefan is producing juniors. So we need to say to Stefan, "Please produce senior event managers."
Adis: I would not agree. I was actually talking to Stefan three days ago, asking him to give me some recommendations for some people because we are hiring. And I know that Stefan's got a pool of people going there.
I'm saying that stupid work is falling away. I will not call it stupid work—I'm sorry, this was wrong for me—because web design was never stupid. But a lot of mechanical work is falling away. But then again, we did use to have people to do these mechanical works.
So what is now the role of Stefan's faculty, of similar institutions in Germany and worldwide, to create people who will then be employable and employed by ECS events?
Stefan on Education's Role
Stefan: Well, yeah, I think we have to do both. And that's the approach we have at our university because it's a dual study. So the students are already working during their study time. So during their three years until they graduate, they spend one and a half years in a practical environment. So they work.
So they learn from—how to say—simple things, like to prepare the bags for the participants. Yeah, so they have to do that. And of course when they come back to the university they have to think about: Do we need those bags in the future? Is it possible to do an automation process? Can AI or can the robot do that for us? What about the environmental issues, sustainability, looking at those bags?
So I still have around me stuff I don't want to talk about—that's crap—but I still get that on conferences in my bags. And I think that's important—to understand, to fully understand.
On the other hand, we—and that's sometimes weird for the students—we teach them not to focus on events only. We try to teach them to understand communication. So an example: if we introduce a new car, yes, they should be able to do the concept for a roadshow, but they need to understand what marketing and what communication does. So that they are able to switch between the different channels, to understand social media in addition to event management, live communication in addition to print campaigns, and so on. So to see the whole process.
And the third dimension we have to differentiate into: Is it now an event concerning product or brand management? Or is it a launch of a new car? Or is it an internal kickoff for the sales team? And so on. And that brings me back to what I said before—the aim, the purpose. What is the reason for that? And we always have to question that. So do we really need that event? And is it the right tool for that aim, for that purpose? And what should be the outcome?
And that's quite a lot. And part of it is definitely to do things with hands-on, to understand that those bags need to be packed.
Adis: Just because the bags—we ditched them two years ago totally. And a few sponsors did complain. We always used to put our bag inserts inside. Three years ago I took a photo of the pile of garbage we had after the event. Because so many people are taking those bags and just throwing everything away in the paper bins or whatever. So we had it in one pile, then we threw it all together in front of one container, and there was this photo of this pile of paper in front of that container, which I always send to our exhibitors when they ask, "Why don't you have bag inserts anymore?" Well, this is why. We are definitely not doing that.
But Stefan came a little bit—because I'm always thinking how we can improve this stuff. Why not have AI do the sentiment analysis in exactly those topics? Because it's not only environmental. For us, it was primarily environmental. But it's not only environmental. It's really lots of people have this old feeling: "I want to go from booth to booth and I want to pick up my brochures and maybe a chocolate and a pen."
But things change. And before coming to the event industry, I was in a different industry, and this different industry was a lot related to consulting. And after COVID, I had a very good discussion with a CEO of a fifteen hundred people company focused on consulting. He said, "For the past two years my people were at home, were a bit frustrated. They did not go to any educational seminar or whatsoever. We tried online—did not work well. And now in the third year I noticed that my people have a gap. They somehow missed those two years. They should be consulting others but actually they need to educate themselves."
And the second industry I noticed that also had this skills gap was hospitality, tourism—everything around hotels, restaurants. Because people had no jobs, they went to a different job, and then there was not enough skilled people. And now when you go to the restaurants, some restaurants have amazing staff, some not so amazing, depending how they do it.
What Should Young People Study?
Adis: So my sister has a son who is now eighteen. He was going to apply for university next year, and she asked me—he could study everything, but what should he study? It's a very good question.
Damir: Well, you have a son as well. In two years, I think, you will also ask yourself this question.
So we have those two things. One thing is that education is key, but also adaptability—how to learn to adapt and to develop yourself after you finish the study. Because it seems that now we are all required to do this.
So Stefan, what is your take on this?
Stefan: Yes, well, you know a study program is always of course based on a curricula, and that's a definition of content. But we have, or we try to, enable students because they're young, they have to work for forty years or so, and they have to work in different areas—those we don't know about today sometimes, they don't exist at the moment.
So we have to teach them also very general stuff. One thing is how to think. One thing is how to solve problems. And exactly in that area, we have, I think, AI. It's more than a tool. And it's, of course, more than what I heard a couple of days ago: "Ah, that's a new Google, right?" No, yeah, definitely not.
So we have, of course, to teach them how to use it, and not necessarily very specifically for event management or for event creation processes. But in general, because that will be part of their lives.
And I think then we are in a good position. And then you can recommend any program to your relatives to say, "Yes, that's fine," as long as it's not with a limited-out date—to think of three years or so. "In three years you can just trash that because then it's irrelevant." Not so easy. Things are changing quite fast at the moment.
Adis: I'm directly back to what Stefan said. We will need more generic skills, we'll need more communication, more understanding, more independent thinking. Because what does learning mean in a world where all the knowledge—or a lot of the knowledge—is accessible within seconds?
That's more than an event technology question or event management question. That's a fundamental human question, if you want.
And I'm circling back to what I said. All those hours we saved with the growth of the event to three thousand—we would definitely need to hire people to do those things. Now we don't. So if we don't need to hire those people, what does that actually mean for all of us, for the industry, for everything? Do we do more with less people? Do we do better quality with the same number of people? And then back to what Stefan said—what type of people and what type of skills do we need?
The Need for Diverse Perspectives
Stefan: That's right. I was just smiling on a chat I read concerning the three of us. Yes, I would be happy during our next conversation to bring in a smart young female student, maybe experienced with two or three years in that industry. Would be happy.
So, that's by the way one of the expectations from the younger attendees—to see not only the CEO or C-level people discussing, but also those who are, let's say, project managers, female, in a smaller environment, and so on.
And we have to listen. Again, and that is what you said as well—not to focus on a tool and to learn five tools inside our toolbox. We have to think about what could the toolbox look like in five years from now, what are the requirements, and where are the sources where we can ask about those tools, and why do we even need the toolbox.
Adis: Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, I also smiled at the question. I answered it also in chat half-jokingly, because I am actually in a woman-led company. Our CEO is a woman and I'm one of the rare men in our company, which is totally fine. But it did come up so Damir and I started a discussion. So we were called three old men. Then again, I said I don't like being called old—so this is ageism, which is as bad. So I'm not accepting that either.
AI in Practice: Transforming Event Experiences
Adis: But yes, I think we should get back to the actual topics of this, because we are really on the verge of changes here. We see tools, we see platforms, we see ideas, we see things that AI is bringing to us. But the more we see how it changes approach, how it changes the things that we are thinking about our events—I think I get more ideas in the past two years. What can we do more? What can we do better? How can we make it work better for our exhibitors and sponsors? How can we make it better for our attendees?
Now, let's not talk about software tools. Let's not talk about everything which we use to achieve those things, but more fundamental questions. How do we do that?
I can tell you, we had never a better sponsor and exhibitor satisfaction rate as last year. The thing we did really was AI-powered product spotting for the attendees and attendee spotting for the sponsors. Of course, all the GDPR and everybody agreed that those things were there. But that was a huge addition to what we were doing before for the sponsors, which was not possible before on the scale that we are doing now. I can only imagine how it is for really big events.
I mean, imagine, Stefan—we were talking the other day—how my wife and me, we are kind of religiously going to the Leipzig Book Fair. Five halls, seven, eight thousand exhibitors. There is no way I can do that in two days. Where should I go? And especially there is no such thing as a complete program because a lot of the program happens actually in the booths. So you need to look at the different buckets and baskets to actually find to put this program together for you.
If you start looking at events of the day to say, "Hey, now we can actually solve that problem. Now we have actually got the tools and the skills and the knowledge to actually tackle that in a proper way. Better than we did before, before we had those tools."
This is, I think, what will be changing. And this is, I think, what Stefan's students from tomorrow and from today—this is the way of thinking they will need to bring in.
A Writer's AI Experience
Damir: But the capability of doing something was always the key. If you look back—I have a very good friend who is a writer, and he approached me last month. And we had a really nice discussion about the future of writing.
He said he trained his LLM—Claude from Anthropic—he created a writing profile, provided all his books, and discussed a lot with AI. And now AI is capable of writing in the same way like he's doing. And then he tried something and AI came up with a sentence. He said, "This is simply beautiful. I don't think I will manage to write something like that."
And then we had a discussion. He was really frustrated. He said, "I spent years learning how to do this and now this thing is doing my work even better."
And the question was: was it really better? It's just different. I asked him, "Why is he using a computer? Because he can write by hand." He said, "It takes so much time." Okay. So you became a faster writer using a computer. So you changed. You improved yourself. So with AI, you need to improve yourself as well to be able to use it properly.
And coming back again to this topic—adaptability and learning—you need to create a better version of yourself with soft skills, with everything that a human can provide, and utilize the AI in a way that is useful for the events, useful for the job, and for automatizing everything that could be done. Those, as you said, not stupid but mechanical work that we actually don't want to do.
And in most of the case studies when you read it—successful events means event organizers were able to focus on their actual work and not to work with Excel and everything else. This is a long-standing dream of all event managers—not to deal with five hundred vendors and tools at the same time. So for the first time ever we might be able to do this.
However, knowing us—you know, we have thirteen standards, let's create one to unite them all, and then we have fourteen standards—we never can agree on something.
Comments from the Audience
Damir: But I see that we have a lot of feedback on the topic of adaptability. And Stephanie McLean, who I met at IBTM, had an amazing discussion about that. She was just writing: "I think we are going to have to learn to use AI as a tool to engineer more human experiences. Hyper-personalization, matchmaking, and putting together agendas, helping sponsors, real-time flag pipeline and meeting effectiveness would not replace the human moments that make live events work."
That's exactly the point I was trying to make, which Stephanie just said. So we need to use the tool in the toolbox, but we need to bring two things. We need to bring understanding for that—that it's possible that we are doing that. And we need to be aware that we don't need all the manpower that we used to need in the past to do this.
Stefan: Yeah, but there's always this big question. If we only focus on creativity, how many creative people do we have? And how can we...
Damir: Yeah, Stefan, I would like to add one thought. It's just a thought. Because we are talking about higher quality, gaining more outcome for participants and so on. And I think if we do it the right way—and there AI is definitely an important, more than a tool, thing—we are going to get some spare time, some free time, some flexibility for not new formats but those like open space.
So why not just meeting somewhere? Or let's meet at the fridge, or let's meet at the coffee machine. And then, what do you think? What do you—do you have any issues? And so on.
And that's, I think, that part of creativity which is not concerning the generic format of an event, but it's the content. And if you come back from events like IBTM or other events and you say, "Why, that was great!" Because accidentally we discussed a topic that's so important for me, and now I found some people with the same issues and we have an idea of a solution on that, and so on.
So I guess that's what Stephanie pointed out in her post—the face-to-face communication. I guess that's the important part. We can write, we can do things online pretty much. But if we have the ability to get this free time...
Adis and myself and his wife, we found that we didn't have an agenda the other day and we couldn't stop talking. And that's it, finally, that's it.
And I guess there is—and I come back to that matchmaking thing—I'll prepare that for Düsseldorf. I have a matchmaking tool that is twenty years old. And we have much more, now much better tools in the meantime. And I think with AI, we have a totally different world for matchmaking. And then we bring the people together and then we have that outcome and then we have successful events.
Sam Altman's Perspective
Adis: Exactly. I'm sorry, Stephanie, I quoted you again. I'm just reading the comments here on the side. Stephanie wrote: "On top of that, I believe face to face will become even more important in the GTM toolbox."
She's completely right with this. I would just say that something very similar, a bit formed differently—Sam Altman, the CEO and the founder of OpenAI, said... They asked him, "What do you think, which industry has a future?" He said, "Anything face to face, anything live, everything around events. Because with so much AI-created content"—let's remember he's the CEO of OpenAI, the largest AI company out there that we have—he said that if he would be doing something, he would be focusing on something which is focused on face-to-face, which is based on face-to-face.
That was the moment when I smiled and said, "Okay, the things we are doing, they are right. So let's just keep doing them."
Stefan: Yes, it really will be the truth. You don't know—today we have, I have a few musician friends and they say right now, if you speak about some basic music genres like punk or whatever, you actually cannot differentiate anymore AI-produced music from human-produced music if you just listen to it.
Adis: And Damir said about writing. But AI will never be able to replace that lunch we had with Stefan three days ago or four days ago. That's just the thing.
Authenticity in the Age of AI
Damir: The big topic that is discussed around this is authenticity. With AI, literally everyone is capable of writing proper text, which is also of good quality, but somehow is missing something. And this "somehow" is—if you statistically learn all the knowledge and you just look for the next best answer, you always get those perfect answers. But perfection is not human. Humans are not perfect. So all those small mistakes, all those small pathways we take left and right, that actually create the result that defines us as human is completely missing.
And you can see it on LinkedIn. LinkedIn a few years ago was a quite interesting place. There was really good content, there was really crappy content—well, everything was there. But now you have ninety percent plus AI content which is written in the same way. Doesn't make any difference if someone from India, from US, or from Germany—all is the same English.
And what people are missing there is the actual authenticity of the writer. Is it true or not? And everyone keeps asking me, "How should we know if this is real or is it just AI?" Just assume it's AI. Yeah, mostly it's AI. Google said that already today half of the websites on the internet are created by AI, even today. So this is really crazy.
Adis: That's a fundamental question for you. If there's a truth, and it is—I believe that to Google—what is the web worth?
Damir: But it's worth for AI.
Adis: What is it worth? If the AI is creating webs which humans will definitely not be reading at some point in time, it will be again read by the AI, by different MCPs or whatever. And what's the point? Why are we having that then?
I think that very soon we will need to rethink and re-question a lot of things, a lot of things we are doing. And believe me, I'm not saying this easily. As you know very well, Damir, I built my first web CMS software in 1998. This is almost twenty-six, many years ago. So I'm questioning the function of web if half of it is written by AI in the meantime.
The Need for Substance
Damir: Well, information source. But the question of authenticity is really a good topic. And so if you go to an event, what is your decision based on? The quality. Decision based on what? You want substance, you want to get something out of it.
And as Stefan said, real-life meetings are providing this substance most of the time—not always, sometimes it's also not very useful—but most of the time, interactions are bringing much more than all the information. You learn people, you get connections, you get inspired. This rarely happens when you just use computers, and in this case, just AI.
So events could also be in a way, as Stefan said, "I will send my agent and Stefan will send his agent and they will discuss, present everything." And why should I go to the event?
At Event Tech Live, one booth was empty and they had a two-meter screen with a virtual Einstein answering questions about the company. There was nobody at this booth, just AI. And it was really nice to see this idea, but somehow people are just interested how it works. There was no meaningful interaction, because there's no substance there.
And I believe that people will wake up in the sense that they will distinguish between mechanical work and those meetings face to face that really provide added value. So my belief, if I answer my own question, is that face-to-face meetings have a big future, but they need to be combined with online. So those hybrid meetings. And definitely all unnecessary, annoying stuff should be done by AI because people will request it in the future.
It's going to be, "Why can't I use this? Why does this event not have this and that?" So we can't really avoid it.
Government Responses to AI
Adis: One of the nice things—before I pass to Stefan—it happened last week actually. Our company is registered in Germany and in Estonia, two very different countries, even if we say that both are in the European Union.
The Estonian government changed all the forms for the reports to put a maximum number of pages. So remember all the reports from before: "Describe as long as possible, minimally twenty-five pages. What are you doing? What are your projects? What is the purpose of your company?"
And somebody will say, "Oh God," and somebody will spend five days writing meaningless text for five days. And nobody would read it at the end. But you had to fulfill the form. Now the form has changed. Because "write me twenty-five pages about my own company"—it takes me twenty-five seconds.
This is what changed. So I think some things will also be changing. I'm saying this from the governmental perspective, but I'm also thinking that this will be coming more and more into all industries and especially into our industry.
More concrete, more meaningful, more substance—because fluff can easily be generated by AI. And we are back to face to face.
Damir: Oh, that could be also a question for Stefan. Do we need to study anymore?
Stefan: We do. I think we do, but different things.
Learning How to Think
Damir: Yeah, we need to learn to think, how to think, and so on. So of course...
Stefan: But we need—that's what we experience—we need these case studies, these examples. And not only the good ones, also the bad ones. What went wrong? WWW—yeah, that's the translation: What Went Wrong.
So we need that. And I would like to add one more word, which is called reliability, which is also in that context of authenticity important.
So I know a study from the German Convention Bureau a couple of years after COVID, after the pandemic time. They said, "Why are people traveling to conferences, to events? What is the reason?" And it changed, because now we experienced the online side. We know that we can do that with Teams or Zoom or however.
So why should we allocate time to travel to that place? And that's then much more than just to listen to a speaker—that can be done via YouTube also. And in order to fulfill that requirement, the changed requirement, I guess, to generate meaningful events—we can use AI. Of course, that's it.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Damir: We can use it, but the question is always how. That's a very big and interesting topic.
I think what we tried with InControl Summit is to define three tracks that are really important for the people. And at the end we defined three areas.
First: New Experiences. We discussed this—business matchmaking. This will change how you experience events, how you enjoy events, how you manage events. This will be different for the person who is involved, thanks to AI.
Second: Data-Driven Decisions. I mentioned at the beginning, the decisions were mostly based on experience and human feelings in the past. "I am already twenty years in this industry. I did it a hundred times. I know how it is done. I will do it." And sometimes people also used some data-driven proposals. But today every decision can be data-driven because you have all this data provided by AI. You can question and do everything you want.
Third: Automation of Mechanical Work. A lot of experience—I'm seeing so many event organizers—they don't have data. I mean, they do sometimes some Excel sheets, sometimes a note, sometimes their paper notebooks, which I'm also still using. But that data is useless for anything more than doing an Excel calculation.
Adis: So you say this in a way as if everybody would have unified data. Which, in my experience, for some reason our industry is so much holding on pen and paper and Excels, which is, on the end of the day, the slow death.
Damir: I agree with you. And this was also one of the discussions at IBTM—that decision-making without having a proper system to help you decide is really challenging. And it gets challenging with time, because you now compete against people who are using data to decide. So it's no longer an equal fight.
So if you're not having this data, your decisions will be less reliable. And what Stefan said also—reliability is really important. But as I said, if you focus on different aspects of event management, you see that not only the way how we manage events is changing, but also what we do, what kind of events we will have in the future also might change.
So those experiences when you're using AI on-site—for example, sentiment analysis, what you said—when someone is speaking, you can analyze the audience and provide the speaker proper feedback. Is it okay or not? If I'm boring to the people, I should really change it and be more entertaining.
But this feedback is very hard to get if you are in a room like one of your conferences. I was lucky to speak. I did not see the audience because there was so much light for the speaker on the big stage. So basically I was speaking in the light. So I was really hoping that someone at least laughed or clapped so that I know what's happening. If I would have some kind of feedback, I would say, "Okay, everything is going well. Let's just continue."
Adis: On purpose that you don't notice that nobody's clapping.
Stefan's Closing Thoughts
Stefan: Thanks, Damir and Adis. I would like to add that maybe as a final kind of quote—to get things sorted. Because sometimes we have time in the evening with a glass of beer or wine and we read a book. And then in the morning we do our first phone call and then we have, like I had before, a short meeting.
And so we try to get things sorted. What is the best channel, the best time, the best way, the best technology?
And about ten years ago, Kolja Dams and myself issued a book that's called "Hybrid Events." And that was light years before we discussed hybrid events how we do that now. But we just said, yes, we have a pre and a post phase of the live event, of the face-to-face event. And we can use that for communication reasons as well.
We know that from conferences for organizational reasons. So we can already decide about the session we would like to attend. We can already book the hotel and the flight in advance, and so on. And that's why then finally we can focus in the remaining time on things like the personal conversation.
And I think Stephanie mentioned again something that is so great: data silos. People know a lot, and sometimes machines know a lot, but we have to bring that together.
I know that from one of my lectures where I speak about siloing in companies. They sit next to each other, but they don't know from each other's experience, knowledge, and so on. And that's something we can maybe support with AI. Then the walls we can break down. Maybe.
Stephanie's Final Comment
Adis: It's a good thought. It is. And right, maybe we're getting to a quarter past four, what we thought, and I've just got a few minutes in the end for the presenting of InControl community.
I will also finish with Stephanie's comment: "We absolutely still need to study and experience. AI is not infallible, which it isn't. We need to go into the AI as a junior helper." And this is very much true.
I didn't comment on "AI can help you write better." What I see is that people who were not really into writing before—AI doesn't help them be a better writer. It helps them maybe with grammar. And if we are writing in a language which is not our native language, it will help us with things there. But it will not make you better, right?
If you were a lousy writer, you will be a lousy writer with AI—you'll just be writing more lousy stuff. If you were a lousy software developer, your software developed with AI will be bad.
So I'm kind of leaning on what Stephanie said here. It is a junior. It's not going to make you Albert Einstein. Maybe it'll make you sound like Albert Einstein for a few seconds until you start speaking longer.
It will, however, bring the challenges. How do we see this in the future and how do we do this stuff in the future? And how do we treat juniors? And we are back to education. Definitely.
The InControl Community Platform
Adis: With that, with face-to-face and through community—and Damir mentioned LinkedIn—can I share the screen right now? How does this work here? I've worked with computers all my life and I don't know how to share the screen. That's what I always find super funny.
Damir: You are a computer scientist with thirty years of experience and then you can't do simple things because...
Adis: It got so complicated sometimes. It got so complicated and now it asked me to restart my browser. So I'm going to drop off for a second and get back in. I'm sorry for it, I will be back in a second. We can finalize because—Stefan, do you have a final thought?
Stefan: Yeah, one thing is—I don't know how many did attend—and I'm happy to be part of that. I would like to see plenty of you in June in Düsseldorf. And I will—that's the plan—have enough time for individual chats face to face.
And if there are other ideas or concerns or so on, drop me an email. But I hope to see you. And of course, Damir, thank you very much for your moderation and for the input you gave up front. And it is great to see you again.
Damir: Thank you, Stefan.
[Adis returns after browser restart]
Adis: Just ask me to stay for five more minutes before we are going to wrap this along. I'm just going to ask our visitors to visit the site incontrol.events.
So what you see here is just a screen where Stefan, Damir, and I were talking. It's the InControl community.
Many of you know our physical InControl magazine. All the articles which are in the InControl magazines are also going to be part of this new portal which is InControl community. The address is incontrol.events.
So what can you see? All the previous webinars which we have been having here—they are all saved. And you see immediately this new webinar is immediately there. There's a webinar with Orla. The other ones, all the articles—if you have been publishing. I did have my author article "AI versus Excel Sheets: A Battle That AI Can't Possibly Win." This is about data silos and stuff.
So it is a combination of news and conversations. We have started—there was a nice conversation during this meetup here—and we can immediately continue working on this conversation and have this opportunity to be here.
However, we also have AI—Owl Wonder—to ask ourselves. For example, Adis, what is a good question?
Damir: The good question is: Why is accessibility important for events?
Adis: And if you ask our virtual assistant Amal here, she's going to take a few seconds to answer us. She gets her answers from this database—from our articles, and also from our webinars. So you see, she found a lot of answers from what Orla was saying in the last webinar, and you're immediately getting that answer and immediately a link to the webinar with Orla.
So it's a whole knowledge point, but also a community point. The reason for this is what Damir mentioned, and I was on our side the person who was driving this the most. I will be very honest—LinkedIn became pretty much useless for me. When I opened the listing, the first ten posts are from people whom I don't know. I don't know why I see those posts and I don't see why I should see that as first. And when I finally get to some posts which might be from people who I know, they are mainly AI generated.
So we are trying to make a safe space for the event community, for the people to share knowledge, to discuss—discuss maybe even passionately but with respect and with being nice to each other, and with as little fluff as possible. If you go to our community rules, you're going to see: Be respectful, don't be salesy, and let's just have a safe space for the event professionals community for all event professionals out there.
What you are seeing right now is just the beginning. Very soon we are coming with the people database, with the company database, where everybody will be able to put their profile and to say, "Hey, I'm the master in audio-video for events." So if I, for my event, would need an audio-video magician, I would go here and I would ask here, "Can you tell me who are the people who are into audio-video?" And they will be here. The same will be for the components, for the products, and everything.
It's just basically our try to escape the noise of LinkedIn and to have a community where the event professionals, when they are not meeting face to face on the events like IBTM, ICCA, Event Tech Live, or whatever, would then meet here. Come and join us. This is all that I can say. This is what we have right now. It's functional. In the next six to eight weeks, you are going to see much more in this place. And then this place is going to also become much more fun than it is. But I also think it's not boring such as it is right now.
Damir: Yeah. And things happen—like Stephanie has been commenting a lot. We had an amazing discussion. So I would love to have the next webinar with Stephanie here in person.
Adis: Exactly. Inviting Stephanie next time. I already invited her. And this is actually how the community should live—you provide value.
Damir: This is exactly what we want to achieve, yeah. And we already have from another person here the idea to invite Stephanie into the next webinar. And since both Damir and I know Stephanie in person, I think that's not going to be that difficult to achieve.
No, but yes, thank you, Stephanie, for the really valuable insights. I feel like Stephanie's comments are like we just continued our discussion from Barcelona.
Adis: Exactly. No, but at that point, I think what we want to do differently is we don't want to have this personal profiling—"I was doing this and that." This is not about me. This is about the community, about events, the event industry. And the content should be actually useful for the industry. And perhaps this will be a kind of small place to meet with like-minded people.
Damir: And I was really enjoying the whole discussion. And as Stefan said, we don't have an agenda. We start speaking and then it's hours later. And that's what happens.
But thank you so much, Stefan. I think people will really appreciate your advice. And it's not only just advice, but based on experience and knowledge that rarely people can have in this country. So I'm really happy that you joined. And thank you so much for your insights.
Stefan: Thank you very much. I look forward to InControl Summit, but I hope we will do fun stuff before.
Adis: Yes, we definitely will. And thank you as well.
Damir: Talk to all of you. Thank you everybody for joining in the chat.