From Excel to AI: How Mash Media created a hosted buyer event with facilitated meetings that participants love

Over 180 years ago, Ada Lovelace’s ground-breaking algorithm was published, cementing her place as the world’s first computer programmer. It seems only fitting then that the Conference News Global Event Tech Summit takes place at the Horsley Estate in Surrey, Lovelace’s marital home. 

The Global Event Tech Summit is an exclusive hosted buyer event, where event organizers (the buyers) have meetings with event technology suppliers (the suppliers) and listen to talks from various industry experts. At the show, they discover the latest event technology and understand how to make the best use of that tech. The event takes place over two days with a mix of meetings, talks and product demos. 

The event was originally launched during the pandemic as the Digital Events Summit, helping organizers learn how to put on engaging online events. Post-pandemic, the focus (and name) changed to cover live, virtual and hybrid events, all of which benefited from leveraging the latest technology. 

This change led to a new mix of sponsors, such as AV equipment suppliers, interactive screen suppliers and in-person event apps.

Going back to basics with facilitated meetings

As an event about event technology, the tech fueling the summit needed to be faultless. However, the event management app Mash Media were going to use at the original event fell through at the last minute. That meant Jack Newey, Group Portfolio Director at Mash Media had to manually organize the event with his team. This resulted in all of the meetings being organized using spreadsheets in Excel and post-it notes. “It was catastrophic,” said Jack. “We were in the office till about 11 o’clock at night for three days in a row trying to get it done.”

Thanks to the high quality of the participants and the unique event format, people still got value from the event and were keen to rebook. However, Jack was determined to bring the latest and best technology to this year’s event, ensuring that Global Event Tech Summit operated at the highest standards and led by example.

Creating better connections with pre-scheduled meetings

Meetings are a core part of the summit, connecting organizers from a wide variety of sectors with the technology suppliers they need to ensure their events are successful. 

The summit had set times for quickfire meetings on both days, with additional breakout times for people to carry on those conversations if they wanted. Along with the main meeting hall for scheduled meetings, there were also plenty of free networking rooms that people could use at any time. 

To ensure that meetings were a success, Jack decided to select Grip’s award winning event management software to power the event. By leveraging Grip’s MustMeet product, attendees could easily provide their preferences about who they wanted to meet in advance.  They received a list of participants and then selected who they wanted to meet using three options: ‘Must meet’, ‘Meet’ and ‘No thanks’. The data from these preferences helped Grip’s AI algorithms match the right participants with each other so the most valuable meetings happened and deep business relationships were formed.

By arranging meetings before the event started, both the event organizers and buyers could decide the type of people they wanted to meet. Rather than relying on guesswork, a clearly defined, AI matchmaking process ensured that the pre-scheduled meetings were as high quality as possible. 

For Jack, the most important step was opening up the booking process to the buyers before it was available to the suppliers, so buyers could choose who they wanted to meet first. 

“Because we had that initial engagement, every meeting we arranged between buyers and suppliers worked because they already had a vested interest,” explains Jack. “Our buyers, the event organizers, are already looking for that type of solution, which made the meetings so much more valuable for suppliers because it was a qualified lead for them.”

Getting the right people in the room

To ensure that MustMeet had all the information needed to facilitate meaningful meetings, the Mash Media team requested information about the attendees such as the type of events being organized, the number of events carried out and budget responsibility. 

“Having a budget responsibility was actually one of the qualifiers to get into the event,” explains Jack. “We keep it quite an exclusive event, so we only had about 50 spots available. We turned away another 70 potential delegates because they didn’t meet the right criteria. If they’re not talking to the decision-maker, then it’s not really worth their time.”

As well as ensuring the guests were of the highest quality, this sharp focus on criteria made it a lot easier to enter the information into Grip’s platform. People could then pick the type of organizers they wanted to meet with and enjoy a worthwhile meeting.

AI meeting management with a human touch

Once the doors opened, the next step was to ensure that all the planning paid off and that the meetings took place as efficiently as possible.

On previous occasions, delegates were sometimes unaware of who they were meeting with or when and where those meetings were happening. This meant more staff were needed to keep things moving. 

By using Grip’s Event App, there was a lot less pressure on the team. “Grip gave us more coordination and solved these problems,” says Jack. “With the mobile event app, delegates could access meeting details and be instantly notified of any changes. The app also automatically synced to participants’ calendars. This was a big win for us as it gave participants lots of visibility of when and where their meetings were happening.”  

Jack still feels that the human element was important, but having a robust app with participants’ meeting schedules meant they could be in the room focusing on key tasks, rather than looking around the venue trying to find people. “Technology is never going to completely replace that, but it can make it as smooth as possible, so you’re doing the least amount of effort on that side. I think that’s the perfect scenario.”

In the end, the meetings went so well that the biggest challenge was keeping people moving along. “You’re almost having to drag people away from the meetings,” says Jack. “No matter how many times you asked them, they still didn’t want to leave the meeting… The Grip event app took that to the next level. It made the event experience so much more professional and seamless for everyone. Our main objective was to showcase tech working well at a tech summit. We definitely did that.”

Plugging into new possibilities with a new mindset

From the unique setting to the high-value meetings, Jack and his team take every step to ensure the Global Event Tech Summit is a hosted buyer event where everyone wants to be there. 

While having to book meetings with sponsors might be a bit of a chore at other events, that’s not the case here. Thanks to the selection criteria and AI matchmaking, the participants are actively interested in meeting with new suppliers and securing the latest technology for their events.

“We’ve changed our mindset,” says Jack. “We’re enabling attendees to meet with the sponsors relevant to them. Using AI-powered matchmaking for our meetings has really changed that dynamic, giving them a purpose beyond just being put up in a hotel and listening to some content. They’re there because they want to seek new suppliers to help with their role and Grip’s platform makes that happen.”

“In addition, we saw better quality meetings as a result of using MustMeet,” explained Jack. “This was demonstrated by the fact we had over 10 deals happen at the summit, which is a record for us.”

In the meantime, Jack and the Mash Media team are already looking ahead and planning ways to make the next Global Event Tech Summit even better and more engaging. “Next year, one of the main changes I want is to get people more hands-on with the tech. I want people touching, feeling, and playing around with all this great tech.”

With the right technology powering the event, the Global Event Tech Summit is certain to be the highlight for event organizers for years to come. While for Mash Media team, using Grip ensures meetings happen seamlessly, freeing up their time to make the show bigger and better next year.