You’d be forgiven for thinking that current signals around Artificial Intelligence are mixed.Is it an over-hyped ‘new tech thing’? Or is it going to somehow Take Over Humanity As We Know It (like in the Terminator or Matrix movies)?The reality is not quite so dramatic. Where it does get exciting is how Artificial Intelligence is shaking up processes that are currently inefficient or simply very random, such as networking in the events space.And that is where Grip comes in.Event matchmaking is currently a tedious data-entry process, usually only available at the biggest events. There’s plenty of legwork for organizers, getting through thousands of registrant’s names, often manually matching them for relevance. Attendees have reams of paperwork to get through to indicate their interests. And that’s before the meetings are scheduled.Attendees who aren’t matched and scheduled, aren’t the meet-and-mingle type, or don’t already have an established network, may turn up at a large trade conferences disoriented and disengaged, despite organizers’ best efforts.
Using social media data from established networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, Grip offers attendees from the newest conference delegates to the seasoned old-hand a personalized networking experience, without the drudgery of form-filling. (Some of our attendees have called it ‘revolutionary’.)Pre-event meetings with Grip happen after both parties have indicated a mutual interest in each other’s areas of business, and agreed to a timeslot to meet. This can keep changing as often as both parties need it to.At the event, our AI takes attendee preferences and curates suggestions from the attendee namelist, based on mutual interests. So no one has to scroll through 5,000 names to find, say, 5 that they might want to meet. Attendees also network in real time. That means that, in the midst of the event, they can ‘swipe right’ (that’s a ‘Yes’) on individuals on their personalized list whom they’d be interested to meet. Depending on how they interact with that list, a fresh set of contacts could be suggested. Everyone, including celebrity attendees and speakers, has as much privacy as they can handle, with a curated list based on their indicated networking preferences, ensuring that only the right business prospects get connected. (Get the details here. And when we mean AI, we don’t mean the lipservice stuff. We mean the game-changing stuff.)
Under the hood, Grip’s Artificial Intelligence Matchmaking Engine combines algorithms, contextual vectors and natural language processing to interpret data from multiple sources including social media profiles and usage patterns.Data is used to suss out networking intent, and how well that was satisfied. Users are anonymous to each other until and unless they indicate they are both ‘Interested’ to meet. And private messages between attendees are private. When we provide insights -- at an aggregated level -- to event organizers and sponsors, it enables them to know which parts of their program were the most effective, and where they got the best return on their investment from.
Artificial Intelligence won’t replace human-to-human interaction. Grip doesn’t replace the random serendipitous encounter by the snack bar. It enhances it. Not leaving networking to chance means -- no attendee will have to wonder if they’re in the right place, at the right time, to meet the right person. Ever.
