Newly named Swapcard Head of Engagement & Marketing Julius Solaris has been at the intersection of event planning and technology for the past 15 as founder and editor of EventMB, a trade magazine covering the global event industry which he sold to leading travel media company Skift when he was hired.
The Las Vegas-based Italian executive joined the event technology company, which has evolved from a networking app to navigate live events to a platform by which conventions can go virtual, including last year’s South by Southwest, IBM conventions and Informa Markets, among others.
As restrictions clear, the big word in the burgeoning industry is a hybrid model, a combination of live and virtual which stresses the benefits of that infrastructure, including the online equivalent of exhibitor booths, networking sessions, roundtable panels, keynote speakers, all powered by Artificial Intelligence.
“We make that connection between the remote audience that maybe cannot travel to an event and in-person attendees,” says Solaris. “We bridge that gap by creating a way to interact with each other or to add to their experiences.”
Swapcard’s speciality is powering through the data, analytics and algorithms via AI to recommend to each participant those individuals they should concentrate on meeting or presentations they should be attending.
Solaris has been brought in to form a “community” among the event planning industry, launching an event series (Evolve), podcast (Inside Event) and training program (Swapcard Academy).
The move towards virtual conferences had been building for years, according to Solaris, but the pandemic kicked it into overdrive.
“There will always be a place for the in-person gathering,” Julius insists. “Just as movie theaters will continue to co-exist with streaming films at home. But there are many advantages to the virtual convention, from the economics to its ability to provide content even after the live portion of the event concludes.”
For Solaris, going virtual allows users to measure the value of the in-person event long after it’s over, often a problem for organizers with only a live session to go on.
“Now, you have a whole set of data and information,” points our Julius. “That is now available to capitalize on to improve your business.”
As far as the bottom line, Solaris admits the economy of the entire geographical area is affected by the loss of an actual in-person event, but the expenses are so much lower, it’s inevitable virtual confabs are here to stay.
“You have to rework your business model, become more invested in sponsorships,” says Julius. “The volume of business won’t be the same, but you have the scalability of doing more events and your reach is massive at a small fraction of the cost. There will be some combination of the two moving forward, and a continued level of growth in this area.”