Building the Perfect Event Tech Stack: Tools, Tips, and Traps

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Tess Vismale, Keith Johnston

 Announcer  00:00

You're listening to the event tech pull up the show that brings you the good, the bad and the ugly of event technology with your hosts, Tess, wittmeil of isocial x and Keith Johnston of i three events.

 Keith Johnston  00:12

So Tess, yes, the episode that we're working on about WordPress and the challenges that people are now facing with WordPress got me thinking about the whole tech stack

 Tess Vismale  00:27

The whole tech stack,

 Keith Johnston  00:29

The whole damn thing. And, you know, it kind of was making me think of, you know, any organization. It doesn't matter what size your organization is. It doesn't matter if you're for profit, nonprofit, you know, whatever it is, that whenever you have to change a major piece of tech, it's changes your whole tech stack. And there are a lot of challenges in doing that, and I kinda thought, we might actually want to talk this one through.

 Tess Vismale  00:59

Okay, I think that would be good. But you know how I am, I need to define stuff for people. I want people to be clear about it, because in our world, there's so much content and then there's so much jargon. Yes, and you know, I hate marketing terms, right? Jargon sucks Exactly. So can I define a tech stack first, and then we go into it,

 Keith Johnston  01:24

Yeah, and I think, and I beyond the people that are listening. I mean, it's even good for, like, even you and I might have a different version of what's in a tech stack. So hit it.

 Tess Vismale  01:35

So I'm going to define a tech stack in general, and then Keith will kind of employ that to event tech, in a sense, so it's a tool box filled with digital tools and platforms that help you plan, run and measure event success. These tools work together to make your event run smoothly, engage your audience and give you valuable insights. How you like that

 Keith Johnston  02:06

That was good.

 Tess Vismale  02:07

Thank you.

 Keith Johnston  02:09

So is there anything that wouldn't fall under our tech stack? And I'll throw out an idea of what I'm thinking. So when we're talking about your your event technology stack, it's just for the things that are powering the event. We're not going to be talking about office 365 or Google workspace, where you do your everyday work. Nope, it's just those. Okay, fair enough.

 Tess Vismale  02:32

That's what we're talking about. So within that because with the WordPress thing, we were talking about event websites. So take me through the journey of things that you we should be considering we think about

 Keith Johnston  02:46

What's in the tech? Yeah. So I think we're gonna go with your event management platforms, your all in ones, right? The awful word that doesn't really mean all in one. So those types of platforms, your badge, printing, your registration, your website, your polling software, engagement software, engagement software. Now we might even you know that technology would even bleed into some Microsoft Office, because PowerPoint, right? PowerPoint is going to drive 95% of what is seen on a screen.

 Tess Vismale  02:46

I'm a Google Slides person. You better not just say PowerPoint, and it is not a PowerPoint, it's a presentation deck.

 Keith Johnston  03:29

Yes, ma'am, but

 Tess Vismale  03:31

And the tool you choose to use it with,

 Keith Johnston  03:32

As the guy that sits at the AV table, I'd honestly rather have PowerPoint.

 Tess Vismale  03:37

I wouldn't. I prefer Google Slides.

 Keith Johnston  03:40

It's only for the slickness with what you can do up on the screen right when, when Google, although Google's getting there right now, you can pop out,

 Tess Vismale  03:47

I still open up my PowerPoints on Google Slides and run it from there.

 Keith Johnston  03:51

But you can, well, now you can pop out the speaker notes, I mean, and haven't that. So now it's getting there. It's, they're almost the same, and I'm just giving it a razz, because you are. I'm a production guy, but anyway, so So let's get back to talking about the challenges you're going to face. And I think that between the two of us, we should be able to come up with enough examples. So for example, the first challenge is going to be that integration and inner operability, right then the tech you're bringing in, or the tech you're bringing on to add to something needs to play well with all of your other integrations. And a really prime example of this is one of the clients that I work with has to do simultaneous interpretation for all of their sessions, both in person and remote virtual. And they have always relied on Zoom to deliver that, because zoom, by far, offers the best experience for having interpreters, right, being able to translate from English to Spanish to Thai, from Thai to English, from Thai to Spanish, right? We literally run a crazy number of translations, and zoom can handle it all well. Someone in their organization saw a demo of a large event tech company's webinar product. I'm not going to say who it is, because you know what their product is actually really nice, and I don't want to make it sound like it's the product's fault, because it's not so saw a demo of their of their webinar software, and the client was like, oh my god, this is the best thing ever. And they went out and signed a multi year contract. But what happened is they never thought about the simultaneous translation. So now the event team finds out, they call me up, or they zoom me up, and they're like, What are we doing? Gonna do? And I'm like, Well, you can run the English in the pretty webinar product and we can port it out into zoom, I said, but that's kind of a ridiculous situation. I said, or you can just abandon their webinar product and call it a sunk cost, you know, or you can get something out of it and use their registration system, but then drive people to the Zoom webinar, and so for the next three years, that is what we're going to be doing.

 Tess Vismale  06:15

Wow, wow. All because of lack of communication,

 Keith Johnston  06:19

All, well, yeah, or all because someone didn't ask a question,

 Tess Vismale  06:23

That's right. Lack of communication. You know, which? Again, so for which is, what happens? They don't ever ask the events team.

 Keith Johnston  06:29

No, they never asked the and the first thing the events team would have said is, does it offer simultaneous interpretation or a way to do it? Now there are webinar products out there that allow you to do it, where you have to bring in a third party service, but now their cost just jumped, you know, eight bajillion dollars. So, you know that's so make sure whatever you want to bring on plays nice with others.

 Tess Vismale  06:52

Okay, yeah, that means you have to have a strategic way of examining your tech stack to do so. So let's talk about this data security and privacy piece, and I would call it integrity.

 Keith Johnston  07:04

Yeah, I have a little belief on this one is I only look for software or for pieces that are GDPR compliant if Europe is good with it. You know, are they the be all and end all and, you know, is it perfect? No, but I think that the Europeans are doing the most, the best job with data privacy and security. So I simply look for tools that are GDPR compliant.

 Tess Vismale  07:30

And that's simple to do, right?

 Keith Johnston  07:31

Yeah, yeah. And then what you'll find so here we actually did run into something. So we were bringing on a piece of event tech. We look for things that are GDPR compliant. Then this was a fortune 100 company we work with, and they it had to go to their IT department, and then they had to actually vet it to make sure that it would meet their security requirements. And literally, because it was GDPR compliant, it or was California compliant? It was this compliant right out of the gate. They just took it took them about 15 minutes, and they were like, No, we're good,

 Tess Vismale  08:08

Perfect. I like that.

 Keith Johnston  08:10

Yeah, no, it's easy way to solve that problem.

 Tess Vismale  08:12

What's the next one?

 Keith Johnston  08:14

Ooh, and you can talk to this one. User experience and accessibility. If you're bringing on something new,

 Tess Vismale  08:21

It better be accessible. I should be able to go onto every website and click in the bottom right corner this little, cute little button that pops up and asks me what I want. Do I want it in different sizes? Do I want it in different colors. How do I want this particular site? How do you want me to read this, to make it good for me? Is there audio enablement on your site? Is am I able to translate it? Am I

 Keith Johnston  08:54

Wait? Did you hear that? What that was the sound of designers heads all over Chicago, exploding. Because accessibility is a designers. They can't design for every so they get all they get all up on it.

 Tess Vismale  09:10

There are companies out there that will literally do it for you. I know. oh my god, it's not that hard, if that's not the work and the business you're in, give your little pennies to the people who do it all day and do it extremely well.

 Keith Johnston  09:28

Yeah, I will say, though, and if you're bringing on a new piece of technology, absolutely, it should be accessible. But I do know the struggles that, like a lot of our clients, are going through, they're all trying, right? But they're, you know, they're finding they're having to rebuild things from scratch in order to make it work. So we'll cut you so Tess and I will cut you slack on technology you already have. But if you bring on any new technology, it has to be accessible out of the gate.

 Tess Vismale  09:56

Yes, yeah, it needs to be out of the freaking gate.

 Keith Johnston  10:00

Right? And by cutting you slack, it doesn't, it means you should be working on it exactly. You can't. You can't be stalling it. Like all of our clients that we operate, their conference and event websites, we're actually going through all of them. We have been for a while. You are making sure that they're all accessible. Yeah, it's important.

 Tess Vismale  10:17

It is. It's very important. And the UX, please come on. I think it's time where we need to realize that you're not designing and creating experiences for your dang gone self. I was gonna curse,

 Keith Johnston  10:35

you know, this is a podcast. You can do that.

 Tess Vismale  10:38

Oh, fuck

 Keith Johnston  10:41

exactly.

 Tess Vismale  10:43

I should be able, anybody should be able to have what they need throughout that process. And the user experience needs to be flawless. You shouldn't have it really should be easy to move through and logical, but it doesn't always happen, right? So you're the money man,

 Keith Johnston  11:02

Cost control. It's important, if you're looking at a new piece of event tech, you've got to keep you got to know what the costs are going in, and you have to know what the costs are in the worst case scenario. And a prime example. And this, actually, I guess this actually, I guess the client did look at the cost control version of this, but they didn't read the fine print, and that's what got them in trouble, where they were using event registration system. Again, I'm not going to mention any names here, but the speakers were registering, and they were putting in CO speakers. I don't know why, but they were and the CO speakers they were adding were the people who co authored their scientific papers. And what the client didn't realize was that those co speakers ended up counting against their registrations, so they ran out of their registration credits like literally, in the first two days, and and, and the event registration company didn't tell them, just go ahead and delete the CO speakers. It'll take care of the problem. What they started with was you need to add more credits. And so the client ended up spending another 5000 another 4000 and so now something that was slated to cost a couple a few $1,000 ended up into the five figures because A, the tech company didn't just say, Oh, if you delete the CO speakers, you'll get those registrations back. No, they said, add more money. And so the client in a panic because registrations were coming in, was just throwing money at the problem that ended up costing them a lot of money.

 Tess Vismale  12:49

They're not going with them anymore. Are they?

 Keith Johnston  12:51

No, and I have actually made it my passion in life to warn every single person about this company, whenever I'm with someone in person, I will not do it over the airwaves.

 Tess Vismale  13:00

Oh my gosh, ouch, ouch, ouch, yes, so let's take a look at what's next.

 Keith Johnston  13:12

Data quality. And this is one. And I know, you know, we have a list, and we we plugged everything in here that we thought it was important. And after the PCMA thing we did, not too long ago

 Tess Vismale  13:29

Thing, what thing

 Keith Johnston  13:31

We did, the Tech Bytes, where we, where we, where we walked through eight different solutions. You know, there were 20 minute little vignettes on each of each of these companies, and then we ask questions. And we actually saw a few different, many different companies who did, who would take your event data and give you actionable insights. And I think that anything that you add to your tech stack needs to be able to provide good data back so that it can go into one of either you can look at the data directly in their dashboard, or that data can be ported out to another solution to give you actionable data.

 Tess Vismale  14:10

Well, how else can it happen more successfully?

 Keith Johnston  14:17

I can tell you how it could happen more badly. Wait more badly? Is that more? More badly that coming from a guy who studied English? It's more better. So here's how it can get the I guess the bet you need to be able to get data out of whatever tool you're choosing, even if it's something as simple as a plugin, by the way, for WordPress, because so many things, so many cheap software solutions don't allow you to get your data out. You might be able to look at it in the system, but you can't extract it. So I guess the short version of this one is make sure you can pull the damn data out. We'll just make sure a CSV file would be. Great, just so you can download that data and then actually do something with it. Okay, that was a lame ass answer. It's bad, but I'm sticking with it because it because it does make sense.

 Tess Vismale  15:13

Well, at the I would say that also the most important part is that we've been talking about it for a number of years. There's dashboards. Let's hope that the text that you are choosing and you're analyzing is giving you the information that you need as fast as you can get it, and that is a dashboard that can give you an overview so you can make the decisions you need to make, and be able to report out quickly and easily

 Keith Johnston  15:38

Well and that actually you're that gave me a great thought on that. And, you know, Tess and I just recently went to monday.com. they had an event here in Chicago, and we went and watched some great speakers. They were talking about event marketing and things that you can do with the Productivity Suite monday.com and they have an open API. And so when I was talking to the Monday people. I was like, Well, you know, if you're using WordPress and we're using gravity forms, and Gravity Forms has an open API, can we push data from WordPress into Monday the registrations so that it could be used in Monday's CRM system, and we could then tag people with what events? And they were like, Oh, yeah.

 Tess Vismale  16:18

And you can email too,

 Keith Johnston  16:19

yep. But now, if you're using a different form builder for WordPress, and I'll just use Elementor, has a built in Form Builder, you're not, that's, there's no API there. You're not going to be able to send that data over to Monday, you know, you'll have to download it, and you'll have to, you know, can you get it in the CSV? Okay, I don't know if you can. If you can, you know, can you upload that to Monday? So again, make sure you get good data and you can get it out.

 Tess Vismale  16:48

Yeah, getting it out is the key, and being able to put it in. So liability and support. What is that about when it comes to the tech stack?

 Keith Johnston  16:58

Liability, reliability.

 Tess Vismale  17:00

I said reliability, reliability like, I don't want to be liability. You're

 Keith Johnston  17:07

holding me liable. I should, well, yeah, your shit should work. But the support thing is actually huge, right? And I rarely, I don't like to talk about actual event tech companies, just because I don't want to show favoritism or whatever. But you know, lately, two companies that stand out, one we're actually involved with a little bit, which is Joi. Their support is second to none. When you hit when you go into their chat bot and you ask, there's actually human on the other end that answers, and it's usually Colin or rob or right, and they're up at all hours of the night, and they'll give you your answer. The another one is whova, right? You know, I have a client that uses their solution for event app and other things, and I've had questions before, I pop right in there and then bang, that. I mean, the support is like instant. There are some other ones, and it's another registration company. It's the same one about the credits I talked about earlier, where you would put a note into support and you wouldn't hear for four days.

 Tess Vismale  18:11

Four days, yeah, four days. It's over by four days.

 Keith Johnston  18:16

It's, if it's mission critical, it's, it's infuriating. It's, you know, and especially me, if I'm managing the event for the client, right, or my team is managing the event, we're not. How stupid do we look when we're talking to the client and we're they're like, you haven't heard back yet? Well, no, it's been two days. Okay? I've called, I've emailed, I've done all these things. You're making me look bad to my client.

 Tess Vismale  18:40

They need to be bought. That's all I can say, is they need to be bought.

 Keith Johnston  18:44

OOB, O, B,

 Tess Vismale  18:47

Other people's business

 Keith Johnston  18:48

Out of business. Oh, I mean, honestly, they that company has made me so mad.

 Tess Vismale  18:53

Yeah, that's a shame. It is,

 Keith Johnston  18:56

and it's hard to make me mad, yeah,

 Tess Vismale  18:58

And it actually is a nice tack too. But yeah, nonetheless, let's move on. So support. I think people should be looking at how easy is it for the support that you're getting. Let's say you're going to have external support, or you're actually hiring the support to help with the tech stack, not necessarily the company itself, where people are able to get in and out of it easily. They can have their own logins. They can you can allow them to have the flexibility they need to be able to support you properly.

 Keith Johnston  19:34

You just mentioned something that actually I didn't think you keep looking over your shoulders because I'm staring off into the trees as I think so people don't know Tess and I are actually in person recording,

 Tess Vismale  19:44

can we believe it? For the first time, I usually do this, and it started raining out of nowhere. I was like, what?

 Keith Johnston  19:49

And then I'm staring at the leaves. And so she keeps looking out the window. You mentioned third party support and like, if you look at an individual like Leanne velkhi, do. Who does Cvent support for people third party, where she'll go in and help them, that's actually a really good option. You know, we had a client. They had just gotten into Cvent. It was a question that I know Cvent pretty well, but I don't, I'm not an expert. So I was in there and had a question, and the client had a question, and I said, You know what? I know the perfect person, yeah, and zip, you call that person, and they can actually help you with the workarounds. A third party person, like, sometimes you have to do a workaround, and the company itself isn't even if it's a great product you still made, like, with Cvent, it's the product's fine. There's nothing wrong with it, and but it had to be a workaround. And so she was like, oh, you know what? Here's what you want to do. Don't listen to them do this, and this and this, and it works. And it did.

 Tess Vismale  20:42

Yeah, yeah, you definitely. And you need to think about that and how that can actually happen. And the very last one, which a lot, I keep getting emails and messages in the DM from people about this particular term, which is called scalability. They're always trying to help me scale my business. Well, what does that have anything to do with your tech stack?

 Keith Johnston  21:03

Well, I'll give you an example of how can I give an example?

 Tess Vismale  21:06

Yeah, please. They need it.

 Keith Johnston  21:09

So we had a client that needed registration for an event, pretty straight. No payments were being made. It was corporate. So we built this really awesome setup where people went in and registered, and then the client said, Holy shit, that thing was fucking awesome. We want to do it for all of our events, and that's like 60 events per year. Well, Stupid me, that's kind of exactly I went, huh? How am I going to make that work, right? Because how we had done it was, you know, it was beautiful, and it was custom, and it was right all this. Now I had to sit down with with Matt and a couple other people that I work with, and we had to go, oh, how can this scale, right? How can, how can we make this and by the way, we did it, you know, I mea culpa on that one. I had to eat a little bit in development costs while we figured out and how to make it work, you know? But it did work, and it's fine, and but now going into it now, the next time I face a situation like that, I'm gonna go, Okay, if this is super successful, can we scale this up to 100 right? And so you've gotta, but I'm, my brain is racing now. Now I'm gonna say sometimes scalability doesn't matter, and that's in a case of, if you are a nonprofit, and you do one charity gala a year, and every year it's at the same place, and you have room for 250 tables. Scalability doesn't matter,

 Tess Vismale  22:45

no, right? You're just when your audience size may, may vary very you're

 Keith Johnston  22:50

you may change event type or style. You know, we, you know, we've had one client that, you know, we've seen their numbers go we've been working with them for a few years now, and when they one of the first iterations of their conference, it was like 300 people. Then it was 400 and it was 500 then one year dropped a little bit, but then it went up to 700 and now this year, I think we're going to be in the 1400 range. You know, that was one we've always known is growing, right? And so everything we choose, we're like, okay, is this gonna last at least a few years?

 Tess Vismale  23:23

Well, so think about scalability too. In my favorite areas, which is called, which is in the blended audience area, I've chosen this particular tech stack because it served my purpose for live events. But we are in the next six to 12 months, or maybe 18 months, really considering about doing different types of content. Do I have that ability to be able to do both with it, right? So it's not always just Audience

 Keith Johnston  23:52

No, that is true. It's not, it's not. There are a lot of a lot of things that go into scalability, not just audience size, right? So, well, those are our words of warning,

 Tess Vismale  24:02

Warning. And then get someone to help you look at the stack what you currently have. Sometimes you don't have to be changing to something. You might just need to evaluate what's going on and where you are, right?

 Keith Johnston  24:15

I got a story on that too. Uh oh. So had a client, had a client that they were using product X, and product X, when they got it, was their registration system, and they went along, went along, went along. Well, now they needed to do something else. So they're like, well, we've got this, and this is perfect for registration, so let's add this one, because it does this. Well, they never went back and actually looked into their original registration solution, which had grown in the years that they were using it, and now actually offered all the things, all the things that they went out and got another piece of software.

 Tess Vismale  24:51

So what did they end up doing?

 Keith Johnston  24:53

Uh, well, that's goes in the sunk the sunk cost bucket. So they use that one, the new solution, for a year. Yeah, because they realized it once they had finally finished setting it up. Then at the end of the year, that went over the side of the boat, and then they just incorporated it all into the one

 Tess Vismale  25:07

okay, oh yeah. So then yeah, Word to the wise is sufficient,

 Keith Johnston  25:11

And don't panic. That's always the number one thing when it comes to tech, anything can be fixed. Anything can be so just make smart choices.

 Announcer  25:22

Thanks for joining us this week on the event tech pull up. Make sure to visit our website. Event. Tech pullup.com and find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify and other podcast platforms so you never miss an episode while you're at it, if you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating, or simply tell a friend about our brand of crazy interested in becoming a guest. Check out the application on our website. If you would like Tess Keith or both at your next event or in house training, please email us at Tech, at event, tech pullup.com,