Every year, the event industry comes to meet in Frankfurt. IMEX is the largest trade conference: filled with top business leaders, entrepreneurs and 3,500 suppliers from 150 countries.
We were thrilled to be at IMEX again this year, where we also officially announced the relaunch of the ZEUS Innovators Club!
IMEX was a great opportunity for us to learn about all the exciting developments in the MICE industry. We ran, hosted and chaired some great educational sessions, and covered everything from young consumers in tech to the challenges faced by women in MICE.
In case you missed Spacebase at the ZEUS Innovators Club, we thought we’d do a roundup of our favourite talks by the incredible ZEUS speakers.
Tuesday 21st May
Robotise and trt:labs opened the ZEUS stage, talking all things AI, VR, AR and robot technology. trt:labs explored the functionality of immersive experiences, while Robotise showed us how robots can make us better marketers.
LineUpr and Airfinity then moved things along mid-morning to discuss the best innovations of the EventTech industry. Airfinity looked exclusively at how to accumulate high-quality, useful data, while LineUpr concentrated on the underestimated importance of web apps.
In the afternoon, Slido illustrated why we should rebel against the rise of the virtual meeting, and how we can push the boundaries of meeting design to enhance the experience of conversational presenting.
Lastly, fellow ZEUS founding member, MATE, closed the first day of IMEX with a discussion on the benefits of automation in event planning.
Wednesday 22nd May
Our very own Patrick Henrici kicked off Wednesday morning as part of a panel about EventTech for young consumers. The panel also included speakers from Eventmobi and LineUpr, and detailed everything from how to appeal to digital natives, to differentiating technological fad from innovation.
After this, we announced the official relaunch of the ZEUS Innovators Club along with Eventmobi, ucm.agency and MATE. The reception we received was fantastic! Hall 9 was filled with attendees, and the atmosphere was electric.
Spacebase is proud to be part of such a necessary and supportive organisation; united by the shared ambition to embrace technological innovation in the event industry. The ZEUS Innovators Club has worked hard to provide engaging, useful opinions and insights regarding all things MICE. We occupy an important space in the industry, and the feedback from IMEX attendees only confirmed this further.
The ZEUS Innovators Club is the leading members-only digital community within the MICE industry. ZEUS combines the innovative perspectives of young EventTech entrepreneurs with the wisdom of its industry experienced founding members, and as part of our mission to become a Germany-wide endeavour, ZEUS will now be taking applications from outside of Berlin.
After the relaunch, we welcomed Doo CEO Michael Liebmann to the Innovators Club, where he discussed personalisation in tech. Liebmann approached personalisation from the angle of an event planner, and delved deep into the issues of cost, convenience and competition. You can read more about Liebmann’s speech here.
Mathias Sondermann, Senior Director of Global Events at SAP, discussed the challenges of working in the event industry. Using case studies, Sondermann demonstrated how technology and experience data can create real, credible solutions.
In the afternoon, Danny Stevens, CEO of fielddrive, took to the stage. Stevens’ talk used his own personal journey to map the biggest technological shifts in the event industry.
Finally, we saw eventsofa’s Head of Sales, Stefanie Jarantowski, present an incredible session about bettering your sales tactics – 13 Sales Rules That Are Guaranteed to Lead to Success!
Thursday 23rd May
In the morning, Spacebase Head of Marketing, Catherine Huang, chaired one of the most important panels of IMEX 2019. Women in MICE was an opportunity to understand the different challenges faced by women at the top. Every woman has a story, in some way or another, that attests to gender inequality in the workplace. We decided IMEX would be the perfect platform for some of those experiences to be heard.
The panel included Editor in Chief of tw-Tagungswirtschaft, Kerstin Wünsch; Nelly Mukazayire of Rwanda Convention Bureau; founder of China Star, Ping Liu; and CEO of IMEX group, Carina Bauer. All panelists also participated in the feminist initiative, She Means Business, created in partnership with tw-Tagungswirtschaft. You can learn more about She Means Business here.
Later, Head of Business Development at Spacebase, Patrick Henrici, walked us through the effervescent relationship between the sharing economy and the MICE industry. You can catch the full speech from Patrick here.
Finally, our week at IMEX finished with a bang: Eventbrite taught us how to harness the true power of social media, PurpleX helped us widen our net when it comes to data sources, and ucm.agency tackled the challenges HR faces in the modern EventTech industry.
A huge part of our IMEX journey, and perhaps our favourite highlight, was celebrating the relaunch of the ZEUS Innovators Club. ZEUS is committed to providing a space where leading German EventTech companies can come together and exchange information, experiences, and resources: all with the aim of reforming and revolutionising the industry for the better.
The ZEUS Innovators Club founding members are as follows:
Spacebase: a worldwide venue booking platform, specialising in directly bookable design-driven workshop locations and meeting spaces.
Eventmobi: an integrated event experience platform that covers the entire lifecycle of an event.
MATE: a digital guest management platform to manage events from invitation to admission.
ucm.agency: a professional agency specialising in the sourcing of event staff for all occasions.
So, to finish up, we had a great time at IMEX 2019. It was incredible to see how much of a success the ZEUS Innovators Club stand was, and it was even better to hear some of the outstanding innovations, advancements and technological research going on in the industry. We exchanged ideas, learnt a lot, and met some amazing people. See you at the next one!
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