Start with the experience, not the platform

Issue 04

It is easy to think event technology decisions begin when it is time to configure the platform. In reality, some of the most important decisions should happen much earlier.

Before choosing a registration platform, event app, check-in system, or engagement tool, the event team should understand what the event needs to accomplish, what attendees should experience, and what operational requirements need to be supported. Those decisions help determine which technology is actually the best fit.

If a platform is chosen before these decisions are made, its features, structure, and limitations can begin shaping both the decisions you make and the experience you create.

Instead of first deciding what the experience should look like and then determining how technology can support it, teams may find themselves changing the experience simply because a platform handles something a certain way.

Across the attendee journey

That can affect the entire attendee journey.

Registration

Registration questions may be structured around what the form builder allows rather than what the event really needs to know.

Pre-event

Communications may follow the platform's available triggers instead of the moments when attendees actually need information.

Onsite

Check-in may be designed around the hardware or software rather than the arrival experience.

Event app

An app may be filled with features because they exist, rather than because attendees have a reason to use them.

The better approach

Define the experience first.

Before getting too far into technology selection or configuration, consider a few fundamental questions.

What should attendees be able to do?

What should each part of their experience feel like?

What information do they need, and when do they need it?

What does the event team need to manage behind the scenes?

What data needs to move between systems?

What exceptions or special scenarios does the technology need to support?

Ideally, those answers help determine which technology is selected. A platform does not have to satisfy every imaginable need. There will always be tradeoffs. But knowing what matters before evaluating the technology makes it much easier to distinguish between an acceptable limitation and a limitation that will compromise something important.

What if the technology is already chosen?

Of course, technology selection does not always happen in an ideal order. The platform may already be purchased, included in a larger contract, or standardized across an organization. Even then, you do not necessarily have to accept the platform's default way of doing things. Experienced event technologists understand:

01

Where a platform is flexible.

02

Where features can be configured in less obvious ways.

03

Where another tool can close a gap.

04

Where a workaround would create more problems than it solves.

Technology will always have limitations. The goal is to understand those limitations, work creatively within them when it makes sense, and keep them from unnecessarily defining the attendee experience or what the event needs to accomplish.

That is all. Carry on.

Josh Power

Co-Founder | Event Technologist
Power Event Group