Embracing the future of meetings -reflections on RISE22 – Las Vegas

Yesterday we had the pleasure of hosting many of our US customers at the EventsAir’s annual Rise 2022 User Conference here in Las Vegas at the famous Delano Hotel. As a precursor to the #IMEX2022 conference, it was awesome to see the EventsAir team in action and we had an enthusiastic turnout from across the US, including a large number of customers joining remotely in a great showcase of our hybrid event format. It was so good to have live events back again as it has been 2 years since we had an opportunity to connect and share experiences, best-practices, and ideas to help one another excel in the events space post pandemic. 

One notable change since we had last come together was the presence of a new CEO for EventsAir, Chris Ridd who had only recently come on bard with the company back in August, having spent 32 years in the tech industry with stints at Microsoft and Xero. 

Chris spoke about some of the challenges facing the events industry and how EventsAir was investing to capitalize on the market opportunity with a recent investment from Riverside partners (Private Equity) to help take advantage of post-pandemic bounce back in the events space.

“We’ve started to see live come back in the second half of this calendar year, albeit with lower in-person attendees due to lingering concerns about COVID and high costs of travel”.

Chris Ridd

Chris also spoke about some of the skills shortages facing many events planning and professional conference organizers who had seen experience staff members leave the industry during the COVID pandemic.

Chris reassured customers that EventsAir was very much investing to support customers through the transition back to pre-pandemic levels, sharing some compelling statistics from EventsAir in the past 12 months. Specifically, EventsAir has run 17,773 events with 5.9M attendees and having trained 4,653 event planners in the product. Of note was the showcase of EventsAir’s hybrid event capability with the use of PTZ cameras to very simply and cost effectively allow remote attendees to join at a fraction of the cost than most would expect. 

Trevor Gardiner, founder and head of innovation for EventsAir, showed off our soon to be released Remote Attendee portal which provides users with an immersive “YouTube-like” content experience which was used on the day with fantastic feedback from customers. Best of all is the fact that this capability comes at a small incremental cost and Trevor took customers through a practical case study to show how the addition of remote attendees could help drive over $50k worth of additional profit for an event planner. Coupled with EventsAir’s unique pricing model, described by Chris as “Unlimited events. One price. No surprises”, the session made for a compelling story that will be at the centre of EventsAir’s IMEX pitch over the coming days.

About EventsAir

EventsAir has been at the forefront of Event Technology and Innovation for over 30 years, continually pushing the boundaries of what an event management platform can do. Built by event planners for event planners, EventsAir is a secure, scalable, cloud-based solution that can manage everything from virtual, hybrid to live conferences, meetings and events in a single online platform – anywhere, anytime and on any device. Used in more than 50 countries by multinational corporations, professional conference organizers, government departments and tertiary education institutions, EventsAir is also used in global congresses such as G20, APEC, CHOGM and ASEAN, as well as sporting events like the Olympic Games, World Rugby, Commonwealth Games and Pan Am Games. EventsAir is trusted by event professionals around the globe.