Article actual date: Dec 28, 2018

It’s the end of the year, and as always it’s a good time to slow down and reflect. At Jublia, we have worked with 450+ events this year, facilitating 683,735 matchmaking requests.

As a leading matchmaking technology provider in the MICE industry, we are well placed in the driver seat to share with you some key event matchmaking trends we can expect in 2019 as observed from the evolving partnership with event organisers.

Deepening of Data proficiency

Traditionally the events industry has approached data collection as a mean to an end; we mostly use data collected in the registration forms to prove and validate the demographics of audiences visiting a trade event.

In 2019, we expect that organisers accelerate their progress in tapping on collected data as an enabler to activate campaigns throughout the life cycle of an event. We expect that business matching, as an increasingly core campaign that organisers embark on, will deeply influence and evolve the types of questions in registration forms. The organisers with deep matchmaking experiences will already know that data is the major precursor to smart matchmaking.

We also expect organisers to start designing data collection throughout the life cycle of an event, and not only rely on the registration form as the only source of data, making it more comfortable for audiences living in this era of ‘goldfish’ attention span.

All in all, we are anticipating an improvement in data proficiency (defined here as the ability to collect and use data) across event organisers.

At this moment though, data collection and handling from our experience, is still one of the biggest challenge faced by many trade event organisers.

Sorry to pop the bubble right away though if you are ever thinking that the current hype in Artificial Intelligence (AI) can allow you to magically skip this data challenge and move direct into maximising matchmaking performance. I am afraid you will be sorely disappointed.

This is because AI’s only diet is data. The better quality the data is, the better the AI becomes. Conversely, low quality data is going to result in poor AI performance. In fact, AI on a poor data foundation cannot be termed AI anyway.

Unfortunately, there is no magic pills here. The best data foundation will be sensibly built through the hard work of data architects, not technology alone.

Matchmaking Game Plans

As we end 2018, we find ourselves increasingly working with more organisers who are crafting their own business matching strategies to fit the unique concept of their events. This they do instead of deploying a generic cookie cutter model across all their shows. We expect this trend to continue and accelerate forward in 2019.

There is no one size fit all strategy to all business events, and organisers are starting to realise and appreciate that winning matchmaking is not all about technology, but an actual craft that has to be honed.

As such, as organisers formulate their matchmaking game plans, we observed that specialised matchmaking teams are increasingly created internally to better deploy and direct matchmaking activities in their organisations.

As any craft goes. getting to the right matchmaking game plans involves trials and errors. Persistence is key as it is rarely a success at the first run.

All-encompassing business matching experience

From our conversations with organisers throughout 2018, we noted — albeit slowly — that conversations are moving beyond simply “I need a meetings scheduler” and “I need a networking app for my event” to understanding how the attendees’ business matching experiences can be designed and unified in the pre, during and post event phases.

This definitely demands much more from matchmaking technology providers to cover all grounds. This is why in 2018, Jublia streamlined all our matchmaking services into a 360° format, covering the pre, during and post event phases, unified by our in-house recommendations technology, RevRank that deliver “smartness” in the full lifecycle of attendees’ experience.

We believe that in 2019 the conversations will continue to evolve. In the past 5 years since Jublia started, we have confronted questions starting from “what is business matching?” to “what can business matching do for my event?” to “how do I scale matchmaking at my events?”. Nowadays, it is more often than not that we are asked “how can we enable matchmaking in pre, during and post event?”.

In any case, regardless of whichever direction future conversations on matchmaking is going to evolve into, we are truly glad that we are progressing forward as an industry.

As always, Jublia stands ready to partner and drive positive, sustainable and real returns on event matchmaking.

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That’s all folks for 2018! I hope to meet you in 2019 if you are reading this!

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