One of the last bastions of "doing things the old way," live events were ripe for disruption when the pandemic hit in 2020. Fast forward 18 months and we've all learned a lot - but what about the future of live events? Where do we go from here?
Join Ben Chodor and Marco Giberti as they discuss how to reinvent live events and what an always-on event community could look like. Adopt a "beginner's mindset" with us and explore the future of online-offline-online events.
One of the last bastions of "doing things the old way," live events were ripe for disruption when the pandemic hit in 2020. Fast forward 18 months and we've all learned a lot - but what about the future of live events? Where do we go from here?
Join Ben Chodor and Marco Giberti as they discuss how to reinvent live events and what an always-on event community could look like. Adopt a "beginner's mindset" with us and explore the future of online-offline-online events.
Good morning! Good afternoon! Good evening, wherever you are! I am so excited for this edition of Insights with Ben Chodor. And as you know, every episode that we've done so far is authors of books that, you know, I either knew the author, and I love the book, about business, about management about building your own brand. And this one is kind of really close to home for me, because
Marco Giberti:I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.
Ben Chodor:First, I love your book. And I got to tell you a funny story. Normally, at this point, I hold up the book. But I got your book a couple weeks ago, and I was reading it in my apartment in New York City. And now I'm in the Hamptons, and I forgot my book last week in the city. So I am booklist but during the video, when they show this they'll pop up an image in a book, everyone should go
Marco Giberti:Look, thank you for all kind words. And I wish that it will be true. But honestly, I have over 30 years around media, events and technology. And that's one of the few things good about being old, you learn some lessons, right? And hopefully, if you have a good memory or process, you write those lessons and you try to skip making those mistakes again, and I honestly believe that our
Ben Chodor:So let me ask you a question because I am so on with that. Right? You know, the question I was going to ask you is, you know, why are events so ready for change? But I'm gonna turn it around a little bit. Why hasn't the industry changed? In 20 years, events artists have always been the same. You show up for two or three days long. You go to breakout rooms, General Sessions, a
Marco Giberti:I honestly think that the main reason is because the business was doing fantastic. Very well. Super profitable, double digit growth. You know, 30-40% EBITDA. And when you have a business that is doing well. your appetite for deep innovation and romantic change is pretty low. And I remember I sold my events company to Reed which is one of the large event organizers and and I
Ben Chodor:But you know, and he just looked at other industries, like the brick and mortars who didn't build an online, look what's happened to them, right? You know, radio to television. I mean, the list goes on. The newspaper; physical newspapers not getting into digital fast enough. They all got disrupted. Didn't they see it coming?
Marco Giberti:Yes. Well, look, I'm around media for three decades, as I said, and I saw the media disruption and revolution happened in B2B media. And I was thinking this is going to happen around events very fast. And it didn't, it took a long time. But I saw magazines basically disappearing. And we also saw newspapers changing dramatically their business model. And as you said, every single
Ben Chodor:Alright, so let me ask you a question. And so obviously, nothing good came from the pandemic, I mean, outside of being able to spend more time with your families, but the event industry was forced to change. And they did change drastically. So now that world's slowly opening again, and going back to normal, will the event industry take note to what happened over the last 15 months?
Marco Giberti: It's a great question. And I'd have my own opinions. I don't know if I know the answer. But I think that we're gonna see two cases:some organizers going back to a denial mode, and life is beautiful again, and face to face is going to be everything. And some organizers are going to say you know what, we learned some valuable lessons, we need to innovate, we need to change our value
Ben Chodor:Right? I like that. I think [that with] digital, the genies out of the bottle, right? We're always going to be delivering now to faces in two places. But I am scared you're going to you're going to lean on, you know, the way they did it before. And it takes time, right? So I don't think it's going to happen overnight, or they're going to get it but hopefully they've learned something.
Marco Giberti:Yeah. Like five or six years ago, I started meditation as a way to you know, try to slow down and take perspective on some things. And as a geek, I started meditation. So meditation with Headspace and Calm, which are two pretty famous apps. And I remember in one of the sessions, they said that in meditation, a beginner's mind mindset is very, very important because it keeps a
Ben Chodor:Yep. I mean, listen, the best idea hasn't come yet. No one's perfected what this new world is going to be. And you got to experiment, you got to go out there and you got to be open to it. Another part of the book that really, really struck me is you say, today's organizers need to adapt to being more than just organizers. They need to become communicators. And okay, when I'm reading
Marco Giberti:I think that they must. I think that three or four days is no longer enough as the value proposition from an event. I think that if it's true that, as event organizers, we're part of a community, we're part of an industry, that industry stays long active way more than three or four days a year. And if we just touch that value proposition for three or four days, our relevance in the of that opportunity.
Ben Chodor:It also keeps the conversation going. It's the part that I never understood. So you do everything to drive everyone to attend. And then once they attend, your best matrix you had is, hey, we wanted to have 5000 people and 5500 people showed up or 6000 people showed up. This many people might have stopped by my booth, or you know what kind of engagement but if everyone rushes to be
Marco Giberti:Absolutely, I think that virtual should curate the right audience for face to face. And should provide added value from a different angle. I believe that the event, the face to face event, is going to be the annual celebration for some specific part of that community that should be there or meet face to face. But there is a way bigger community that probably will stick online on
Ben Chodor:I agree. I think if it's done right, more deals happen when you're going to be at the physical element. And it won't be where you're going to come and kick the tires and look around, you're going to come so much better prepared to the conference. And like you said, it is about the annual; it is about the one time a year to get excited! It's the Super Bowl of whatever organization,
Marco Giberti:It was a small conference, not a big trade show. I'm looking forward to go to a big trade show, honestly, probably during the second half of the year. I think that small conference, hosted conferences, very curated conference, are gonna be still significantly relevant because you want to be there because you need the face to face time. And it's a different value proposition. I'm
Ben Chodor:Yep. And the CFOs are going to get involved too. They're gonna go Okay, we didn't do it for this point. Now we're back to doing it. Do we do any more business? Do we make any more revenue? And how did that change? And I think you're 100% right on that. I also think I'm excited to go to I've done small things. I love doing it now to attend 15% dinner. I love that. I love the networking
Marco Giberti:Absolutely. And technology is part of that solution. technology should help you to start the event experience way in advance and curate which meetings do you want to have? Which sessions Do you want to attend? Which communities do you want to interact? And technology should also help you after the show. I keep talking about post show depression, which is the show happens. The
Ben Chodor:Yeah, and the definition of hybrid isn't there, you can't just go to Webster and see hybrid what the definition is. We haven't invented yet what the definition of hybrid is. When I got into hybrids in 2000, to 2003, it truly was taking what was happening at a physical event, and allowing me to voyer it virtually - that is not what a hybrid event is. In the future, hybrid could be
Marco Giberti:Yes. And that's a fantastic challenge, and opportunity because sponsors are becoming more sophisticated on their expectations about live events. And sponsors during the last year and a half or two years, they have a crash course on digital evidence for their own events. I interact with corporate organizers a lot. And as you know, they're sophisticated, and they really want to
Ben Chodor:Well, listen, if there's this uprising of employees are like, hey, I just worked from home for the last almost two years. And now you're gonna want me to come into office, there's got to be some sort of, do I come in a couple days? It's got to be it's a hybrid world, right? Am I gonna come in sometimes and not? Well, if that's gonna happen in the workplace, you got to make sure that
Marco Giberti:That's exactly what I what I tried to say on my article is if you're talent and your company's telling me it's nine to five, okay, I don't care, it's nine to five, probably some talent is going to walk away, okay? Because they have options. And some companies are saying, you know, what, work whatever you want, and just deliver results or work two days at the office and do whatever
Ben Chodor:Oh, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of tombstones - and a lot of new ones, Marco. This is an opportunity to create new conferences, new programs, new summits. I mean, it's an really exciting time. Alright, so I got I got another question for you. Go on first and I'll ask you to question.
Marco Giberti:No, no, no, I want to say something that one of my mentors in this industry said that I think we put it on the book as well. Mike Rossbridge - he was the guy that basically built Reed during the last two, three decades. He said that COVID was affecting people with pre existing conditions. And those people with pre existing conditions were having a really, really hard time. And he
Ben Chodor:That's right. I mean, I love that thought, which then leads me to the next question. Okay. You talk about engaging with clients by asking them what keeps them up at night? Right? What do they lose sleep over? And I know, I started in the, in the physical event space producing like music, and then corporate events, and then obviously streaming. And I know what used to keep me up at
Marco Giberti:I'll answer from two different angles from the event tech company and from the organizer. And from the organizer. I think that the relevant topics that are basically keeping them up at night are: is this going to be a real unsustainable change, or this is going to be just a year and after that, we go back to normal to those old beautiful days. That's one of the questions. And day I receive, I don't know, 100 new decks from from event tech founders. This is a super crowded space from an event tech perspective. The smart founders, what they're telling me is, I need to find my unique differentiation angle in order to survive. Because if I want to be just another event tech platform, I'm probably gonna die because guys like you and many others are very successful, very
Ben Chodor:You have to have a good business. I mean, end of the day, right? I mean, I've said this, I grew up during the dot com bubble, right, I worked for them, I invested in them, I saw a collapse. You know, I saw what happened when Subprime happened, right? I've seen it and the end of the day, when I mentor, I always go to every founder, you know, it's not the hardest thing to write a
Marco Giberti:There's some good news with a bigger TAM, smarter founders are paying attention to event technology. Smarter investors are paying attention to event technology. If you see the cap tables on event tech startups, you will see the big names from an investment perspective. They're all you know, the Andreesens of this world and Sequoias as are all the big guys who invested in the
Ben Chodor:Right? Well, this conversation isn't about young entrepreneurs. But I'd love to talk to you another time about that. But I also always say that everyone thinks the moment they raised their two and a half, five or $10 million, hey, we're done? No, that's when the clock starts ticking. The table stakes. And that's when everyone a lot of people forget to that's not the sign of success,
Marco Giberti:Yeah, this is another interesting conversation that I had with Denzel when we start thinking about this leads as a service concept, the concept was pretty simple. And it's related to the 365 instead of three or four days - if you honestly believe that you're not helping your customers with just three or four days per year, and you honestly believe that there is a way bigger
Ben Chodor:You are preaching to the choir, building community, planet afterwards. I am madly in love with that. Alright, I'm running out of time with you. But I want to ask you one more question about the book then I have a couple personal - well not personal about you. But some questions that have nothing to do with the book, right. So you promised to publish a second edition 12 months into
Marco Giberti:You're touching a nerve because our publisher call us to coordinate a call for start thinking about the second edition. And I still need a detox from the first one, which means, you know, it's a lot of work and brain power to do something like this. We still have a little bit of time because the book was published, if I remember, in December, January, we still have another,
Ben Chodor:I can't see - now I can't wait to read because I love the case studies, right? The stories and then when you just mentioned is like, who wouldn't sign up and go, it's like having a reseller. I mean, you're gonna give him a piece to bring in new customers. That's what it's all about. And that's when I tradeshow started was like I need to get in front of customers. That's where it
Marco Giberti:Now I'll be happy to share my opinion. And you can disagree or people could complain if they don't agree. I have a bold opinion. Don't forget, I sold my business to Reed. Reed is part of Relix. Relix is a very sophisticated software company. And I remember having this conversation 15 years ago about data privacy data ownership with Reed. And when I started investing in early stage industry, visitors, speakers. If I'm a speaker, I want to be sure that my data is protected or exhibited. Now, this is becoming a massive issue in the industry. As you know, you probably saw the Ofii conference with the top CEOs over there and some tech players, I'm so happy to see this conversation in such a relevant conversation, because it's about time for the industry to have a standard, to
Ben Chodor:I'm with you. And I think the key that you mentioned, it's about transparency, just let me know, I mean, and then I make my own choice. And I kind of always like,
Marco Giberti:Let me give you an example. But I'll be very brief. If you said to your customers, look, if it's your own data, you're gonna pay $100,000. And if it's common sharing, you're gonna pay$10,000. Okay, that's transparent. I can do whatever I want, but be transparent and don't use my data when I'm not fully aware about that.
Ben Chodor:I agree. And I think you're spot on. All right. So with a couple minutes left, what advice would you give an organizer out there as they start to think about going into 22? And beyond? Just like any pearls of wisdom for them?
Marco Giberti:Look, I'll go back to unlearn and learn again, don't think that because you did it well, in the past, it's going to be successful again. I'll be very, very focused on understanding what changed during COVID on that particular community and have a beginner's mindset, again, trying to reconnect with that community and add value. I don't think that it's going to be business as usual.
Ben Chodor:So if you and I, were going to go to CES this year, right? And let's say there's 40,000 people or what's going to be whatever it's gonna be, what is the one thing you're really looking forward to do there? Right. And what's the one thing you're not so excited to do? I'm only using CES as an example as a huge conference.
Marco Giberti:As a visitor, I will be excited to see if CES is talking with me from a different angle, and helping the customer journey that you said before, to make it more productive and efficient. As a visitor. As an exhibitor, I want to see you CES is helping me to understand return on investment better, and helping me to connect with the people that is critical to me. And as an organizer, if
Ben Chodor:I agree with you and and one other thing that I'd be looking forward to is, I love the random encounter. The guy he just ordered a woman you just happen to be sitting next to whether it's on the plane there whether it's at a restaurant, whether it's a bar or just someone you sit next to at a session. That is the one thing that I think virtual never takes the place of and I'm a virtual
Marco Giberti:Absolutely.
Ben Chodor:Alright, my friend, I cannot wait to share a glass of wine with you in person. Enjoy the rest of the summer. Stay safe. And thank you and you've been watching Insights with Ben Chodor. Marco, Thank you.
Marco Giberti:Thank you for having me.