Jodi Morrison

Senior Event Technology Manager, Atlassian

Jodi Morrison, two-time past CEMA Board Member at Large, recently joined Atlassian, working on their event technology. She is initially going to focus on Atlassian Team ’22 Live event in April.

A more than 25-year veteran of the corporate event industry, Jodi previously worked at Oracle for over 19 years, where she focused on event technology and operations before joining Atlassian.

In the last year, while the live event industry was on hiatus, Jodi took the opportunity to expand and update her education and knowledge base. She obtained her DES and PMP certificates. Also, she completed a number of courses on LinkedIn Learning to strengthen areas she felt could benefit from development but never had the time during her previous stint.

Jodi and her husband made the move from San Carlos, in the middle of the bustling Bay Area to Petaluma in Sonoma County in May 2020. It was hard to assimilate into a new community during the pandemic, but they found a very welcoming community and resources to plant new roots. They both are really enjoying the area and the slightly slower based lifestyle.

Jodi and her husband received a call from a rescue agency on their anniversary of 2020, saying they could come in the next day to meet a few of the dogs that they were interested in that were just rescued from Mexico. The first pup, they met Lucy Loo (original Anna) had them wrapped around their finger instantly and they have been loving each other ever since.

Executive of the Month

Carley Gauthier

National Director of Marketing
Live Nation Special Events

As National Director of Marketing at Live Nation (CEMA Gold Member), Carley Gauthier leads marketing and partnerships for the Special Events division hosting VIP events, multi-city road shows, conference receptions, experiential events and more at Live Nation’s 150+ legendary venues. Carley is responsible for developing innovative content campaigns, strategic partnerships, and multi-channel digital marketing that drives profitable growth, client acquisitions and retention across Live Nation’s U.S. venues.

The Live Nation Special Events team is ready to not only host your epic events, but to create a lasting relationship that exceeds your every expectation! Carley invites you to reach out, say hello, and enjoy a show at one of their legendary 150+ unique venues nationwide. You can reach Carley at carleygauthier@livenation.com.

Sponsor of the Month

Wilson Dow, a CEMA Gold Member, is a creative production agency dedicated to uniting and activating audiences through the power of shared experience. For over 25 years, Wilson Dow has cultivated teams of world-renowned creatives, strategists, instructional designers, and specialized production teams to partner with global clients including Genentech, Visa, Pfizer, PagerDuty, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Pure Storage, The Clorox Company, and more. The company designs and delivers live and virtual experiences for audiences that engage around a shared purpose, prepare with critical knowledge and skills, and inspire with meaningful stories that spark change. Wilson Dow Group is headquartered in Chicago with satellites in San Francisco and New York. For more information, visit wilsondow.com.

CEMA CONNECTS

There are still many unknowns about our event industry. When and how do we get back to in-person events? Some of your colleagues are doing just that, while many are planning an event strategy for 2022 and beyond. Now is the time to connect with CEMA members for ideas, learnings, and insights through our new web series, CEMA Connects.

You are invited to our first CEMA Connects with Stacey Kashubeck from Salesforce, scheduled for Tuesday, December 14 at 11:00am PST.

As a reminder, CEMA Connects is a series of informal online episodes where CEMA members will discuss event strategies, industry trends, data analysis, new technology, managing through a pandemic, inspiring a team (and yourself) and dealing with the ever-changing event landscape.

Click here for the Zoom link to join us Tuesday.

Logitech and ProGlobalEvents Take Us Inside the Orchestration of a 3D Immersive Platform

Speakers: Jason Whitcomb, Head of Global Events and Community, Logitech, Max Bickelhaupt, Executive Producer, ProGlobalEvents
Moderator, Casey Cooper, Creative Director, ProGlobalEvents

Click here for the full webinar

In November, CEMA hosted a unique webinar in which event execs from Logitech and ProGlobalEvents showcased Logitech’s Dream Different virtual sales training conference produced using an online 3D immersive mixed reality environment.

Logitech is renowned for its computing products, software and services that support enterprise meeting and collaboration platforms. The company is very intentional in designing event experiences that are tailored to the needs and interests of its various communities. Since Dream Different was a global event, the Logitech event team had to plan for a sales workforce that had almost doubled in the past year, and would be attending the event virtually in more than 80 countries. Both the content and the experience had to be relevant for each of those regions.

The team strategized around four distinct goals: galvanize the sales team, get them caught up with Logitech’s business goals, objectives, and priorities, enable them to develop new skills, and have them leave the event inspired, wanting to do more in the coming year. The events team also wanted Dream Different to stand out from the crowd, so they made the decision to take its sales development event beyond webinars and Zoom meetings.

After evaluating several platforms, the Logitech team landed on ProGlobalEvent’s BeyondLive online 3D mixed reality platform. According to Whitcomb, the big game changer in terms of selecting BeyondLive was the ability to be completely innovative, create an environment that was uniquely Logitech branded, and to create near-live experiences for attendees, presenters and talent using readily available technology.

They wanted the Dream Different environment to allow attendees to “choose their own adventure” and navigate at their own pace and timing – whether it is attending a mainstage session, accessing training content or watching one of the many inspirational and entertainment segments

The BeyondLive platform allowed the team to build and utilize a central virtual production studio that served as the event hub. The mixed reality platform served as a virtual set extension in which presenters and attendees could convene live.

Presenters could enter a digital green room from anywhere at any time. The green room technology allowed the event producers to combine several Zoom meeting feeds into the virtual reality studio to create a main virtual event space. This allowed the presenter and the audience to interact in real time, much like in an in-person event. The platform also had the flexibility to route participants video screens onto the main stage screens to serve as a backdrop for the presentation.

The team was also able to bring in live event elements that people were accustomed to having into the set, including moving lights that helped build energy and multi-angle camera moves that you would see from an award show. This made presentation and performances seem live – so much so that participants would cheer and even dance during segments as they might at a real event. The Dream Different environment had a gamification element that allowed attendees to indulge their competitive natures in fun ways to drive engagement and increase the number of views on training content.

During the event, main stage sessions ran around the clock and attendees accessed the virtual environment 24-hours a day, so having 24/7 support was critical. Any attendee hopping into a training room, a personal development room, or the swag store, could get guidance via a chat feature at the bottom of the site page. Having intuitive navigation was also a factor in driving a positive attendee experience. The team ensured that there were multiple ways to look around and move throughout the space. Instructions at the bottom of the screen allowed attendees to advance through a segment and an overview menu allowed them to easily jump from one environment to another.

Attendee experience metrics from the event were solid. In the post-event survey, 55% of attendees responded and 97% of those gave the event a satisfaction rating of four or five out of five.

From a planning perspective, Whitcomb mentioned that having people from outside of the events organization with diverse backgrounds and experiences at the planning table provided unique inputs, fresh ideas and deeper understanding of how various internal Logitech stakeholders viewed event outcomes and defined success. The planning team comprised members from sale, marketing, PR, and even executive assistants who worked with executive leadership to help the team understand their priorities. Bickelhaupt also shared that having a close relationship between ProGlobalEvents and the event team was another critical factor that fostered collaboration, streamlined problem solving and set the protocols and cadence for in-event communications.

Both Whitcomb and Bickelhaupt emphasized that working in a highly compressed timeframe was a big challenge. They offered sage advice for event planners to build in an extra four weeks on top of what they actually think production schedule will be.

The two speakers also shared a few final insights:

• Draw from diverse perspectives and ideas to push the boundaries of what is perceived to be possible.
• Be willing to work from a blank canvas.
• Refuse to become stagnant, because the cool innovation you’ve just created is already on its way to becoming standard. Think about what’s next, and how you can expand the use of the mixed reality platform to take your event to the next level.

CEMA Summit Ignite Session Recap Tailored Experiences

Sponsored by MC²

Panelists: Rodrigo Espinosa, SVP Marketing Strategy/Head of Brand Experience MC2; Julie Lynch, Head of Global Events F5; Sara Ann Straw, Sr. Event Strategy Manager, Sage (now at F5)

At this CEMA Summit Ignite Session, seasoned event marketers from both brand and solutions provider communities led an interactive discussion on how behavior shifts, amplified during the pivot to digital and hybrid events, have dramatically changed audience expectations and have obliged event marketers to discover new ways to harmonize engagement mixes for audiences and design immersive experiences for multiple channels.

The panelists agreed that today, event participants want event content to be like the rest of their digital content – personalized, digestible, and accessible on their timetable. Two provocative insights framed the discussion:

• We have a great opportunity to leverage all of our channels to engage our audiences intellectually and emotionally to educate, enlighten and entertain them in a meaningful manner.

• We can also fail miserably to accomplish real engagement by overlaying traditional content into a digital environment or assuming a creative virtual element will translate seamlessly into a live experience.

The key to success is to understand your audiences intimately and learn how to shape, personalize, and optimize content delivery based on their preferred mix.

The panel and participants also shared key wisdoms learned in the “pivot:”

• Let your audience inform the best way to structure content delivery: If you are trying to determine whether to go live only, live first, virtual first or omnichannel, put your audience front and center and work back to solution.
• “One-size fits all” approaches do not work. Gratefully that practice is pretty much dead. One could argue that today, it is more important to know your audience than to have great content. By matching content to the needs and interests of your different audience personas, you’ll have a better chance of connecting with them and driving deeper engagement.
• Linear content delivery is boring. Sequential slide decks are so 2010. Coach your speakers away from linear presentations, work with them to spice up presentations with different content pallets: video, pre-taped features, short-take commentary, interactive chat, and real-time audience input. Invest in pre-production and have professional event directors run the show.
• Dare to be edgy – but know your limits. Creative ideas don’t always translate to all audiences. Craft experiences that keep your audiences eager and intrigued but not uncomfortable.
• Take cues from how other industries have adapted the customer journey. Retailers use preference and interest data to introduce customers to new products that align with their needs and tastes. Your live and on-demand digital content can do the same.
• Humanize digital environments. Nothing will replace in person connections, and it’s essential to ensure that you are not isolating or alienating your audience for the sake of digital expediency. “Cameras on” can help participants feel included and relevant. Polls and chats can spark stimulating conversations. Collaborative exercises promote inclusion. Breakout rooms allow attendees to self-select into areas of high interest.
• Give all marketing disciplines a seat at the event planning table. Use their input to determine how your event can be the hub for richer, ongoing customer engagements. Can they hold one-on-one conversations with sales teams or product experts? Are product demos and training available? Is educational or advisory content available post event for continuous lead generation?

Debrief IMEX 2021

Summary provided by Lisa Farano
Vice President, Global Accounts
HPN Global

The meetings industry was reunited last month and the energy was infectious. We had a shared common goal: to learn, share, network, and grow as our industry rebounds!
A few interesting stats:

• 4,500 meeting planners
• 3,500 exhibitors from 155 countries (the US borders opened the Sunday prior increasing international attendance)
• 25% of exhibitors represented international suppliers
• 10,000 total participants
• 50,000 hosted-buyer appointments were scheduled. I attended 20 appointments in just 2 days!
• 200 education sessions

Countless smiles as the meetings industry begins to get back to business! IMEX’s health and safety plan included:
Contactless registration with badges sent in advance for at home printing; mandatory vaccinations required to attend and uploaded on the CLEAR app; neon green wristbands as vaccine identifiers to attend the show each day; masks were optional in the Hall and breakouts, but required throughout Mandalay Bay; outdoor networking events.

Below are findings from a 2022 Global Meetings and Events Forecast:

• Two-thirds (67%) of respondents believe in-person meeting levels will return to pre-pandemic numbers within one to two years.
• In-person meetings and events are projected to grow in 2022, with 81% of events expected to have an in-person element.
• 64% of respondents cited increased budgets for next year, a further indicator of industry growth.

Internal meetings and training are expected to have the largest growth in 2022, reflecting increasing recognition of the value of these in-person meetings to organizations.

As the heartbeat of the global business events community, I am thrilled to have participated in IMEX this month. I learned a ton about new hotel openings, hot destinations, and hotel brand updates all the while cultivating old and new relationships. I’m here to be a resource anytime!