Reflections from EventsAir User Conference, RISE 2022 London

On October 31 and November 1st 150+ EventsAir clients gathered both in person as well as remotely to take part in the EventsAir RISE 2022 User Conference for the European region. Attendees were treated to two days of educational content, networking and plenty of time to connect and meet with the EventsAir leadership team.

This was our first user conference since 2019 in the region and all in attendance expressed excitement about the return to live events for the growing EventsAir community.

“I spoke with dozens of those in attendance, and everyone was extremely pumped to meet our new CEO and connect with the EventsAir team over the two-day event, the energy was palpable, and it was great to see everyone sharing ideas, asking questions and participating in this fantastic event!”

Alec Sonenthal, EventsAir’s Global Director of Education.

Everyone was energized by meeting and hearing from EventsAir’s new CEO Chris Ridd who had recently joined the company as part of the acquisition by Riverside Partners. Chris brings with him over 30 years’ experience in the technology sector, including leadership roles at Microsoft and Xero.

Chris opened the user conference by speaking about the state of the events industry as well as talking about the company’s plans to capitalize on market opportunities, especially the post-pandemic return to live events around the world.

“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 noted.

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 answered many questions from onsite and remote attendees, including conversations about new investments in client support, especially as clients transition from virtual back to live and hybrid events.

Chris also reflected on EventsAir exciting growth in the past few years. He noted that just the past 12 months, EventsAir has run 17,773 events with 5.9M attendees and having trained 4,653 event planners in the product.

Chris also noted that EventsAir is taking a global leadership role in the future events as evidenced by the built-in technology supporting hybrid events, including PTZ cameras and other tools that significantly reduces the cost of producing hybrid events.

Trevor Gardiner, founder and Director of Product Innovation for EventsAir was also a featured presenter, sharing the company’s vision for Hybrid 2.0, a new vision for the future of events.

Trevor explained that Hybrid 2.0 represents a new paradigm for how event planners can approach event production, focusing on live events with built-in and affordable options to add remote attendees and presenters.

“With EventsAir, event managers can add remote attendee at a small incremental cost,” Trevor said. “It’s amazing how you can grow your event profitability with a very small additional cost, truly expanding the business potential of your future events.”

Other sessions focused on different uses and applications for EventsAir, and all attendees were enthusiastic about the opportunity they had to recommend and suggest new functionality that could be included in a future release.

“The product roadmap session is always one of our favorites,” said Tove Rasmussen, a planner with KongresKompagniet of Denmark. “In past years, we’ve seen many of our suggestions show up in future releases, and it is amazing how the team at EventsAir listens and accepts our input for the growth of the product.”

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. For further information, visit https://www.eventsair.com/