Hello, everyone.

Hope you're doing great today.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to Event Different, a digital event presented by Swoogo. My name is Mark Kilens.

I am your host for the next ninety minutes. Hope you're doing great.

Love to see so many faces in this digital event. I got the chat open, so let's get the chat fired up. Hello, Stephanie. Nick Hamilton. I know a lot of folks are just joining us right now. Welcome.

Cannot wait.

For this event to get started in just a couple minutes, I'm gonna do some housekeeping, set the stage, set the table, if you will, and then let this amazing lineup of people take over.

Background of the Event

So just some backgrounds to start with. This event has been four months in the making. Can you believe that four months in the making?

We started working, with the the Swoogo team, myself, and my partner, Nick Bennett. We both come from the event space I used to run event teams. And we started working with Swoogofor about four months ago on something that we're unveiling today. Today's a big day.

And this thing that we're unveiling is something that I have deep passion four. Because after living in the event space from my days at HubSpot, to Drift, to now owning my own business. I really feel that events are one of the best ways to help your business, a business, go to market.

Excitement about the Event
So I'm so excited to have Chris, the CEO of Swoogo, and Katie come on very soon, and talk about this brand new event maturity model that's gonna transform how we all plan execute, join together, and embrace the power of events. Who's excited about that? Come on. Let's not go in the chat.

Are you excited about this? Events are gonna get elevated and you're gonna think different today about your events. We wanna do this with you all. Again, we're gonna make this a very engaging interactive ninety minutes.

I see a lot of people stoked. I see let's go. I love saying giddy up. Giddy up today's the day.

So, yeah, a lot more to come. We're gonna make this very engaging to break the ice as part of getting the conversation started in the chat, you can also, by the way, direct chat with people. I'll show you that in just a moment.

Engaging the Audience

I wanna have you drop the a question or an answer to this question.

What is your event superpower?

What is your event superpower? Drop that in the chat if you don't mind. I wanna know we have people from all over the world joining us today, people that have been in the event industry for a few years, a few decades, what is your superpower when it comes events. I'm gonna try to read some of these off right now as you folks put them in the chat. And if you're not sure where the chat is, bring like minded people together, love that, If you're not sure where the chat is, now on the screen, you can see we're gonna have chat, q and a. We're gonna do a couple polls. It's really simple.

Can see that on the screen now. Just wanted to orient yourself around that. But again, I wanna know your superpower when it comes to events, building relationships, white glove service, quick and solid decision-making, action-oriented. I love that.

Top level service, pivoting, registration guru, shout out to Swoogo for that. This is amazing. Yeah. I mean, keep the keep the answers coming.

What is your event superpower?

And also before I get into the agenda and turn it over to Chris and Katie who are gonna unveil the event maturity model.

I wanna just say thank you to everyone who took the time to answer some of those questions when you registered this event. Those questions helped us shape this event specifically.

Event Trends and Agenda

The agenda, the speakers, the content, the education that we're gonna share with you all. So I just wanna unpack a couple of those right now for you. And there's four trends that really stuck out to us when we were planning event different. This event that you're in right now, and they're they're all related to the maturity model that we'll be talking about today as well.

So first, the first big trend that we saw was We feel like everyone is trying to create more inclusive, more enhanced, more premium, if you will, attendee experiences. You could almost think of them as attendee led growth, if you will. How do you grow the quality of your events by putting the attendee at the center of those experiences that you're trying to design. So that was one big theme that we picked up on.

And you're gonna learn today a lot about how to do that using data. The second theme that we picked up on was this idea of integrating technology together. How do you use technology that comes from your event stack to then your CRM, to maybe your marketing automation, how do you use things from your registrations, you know, data and use that to curate the event like we did today, right, using the questions and answers you gave us to help us make this event experience that more specific and personal to all of you. So again, big thank you for that.

Third was new event formats. I love events. If you couldn't tell, I'm an extrovert. I'm a huge, huge extrovert, but I I love both intimate events and large events.

Some of my favorite micro events, love that new style of event type, festivals are coming to life more and more. So the style and theme of event is something that's really new and different that you're all thinking about. And we got some ideas for you on that today as well. And then lastly, data.

How do you better collect, use action and share that data across your go to market teams?

And for me, events are such a powerful way for the human connection to happen, but it's also such a powerful way for a business to better understand its customers, its buyers, its partners, and use the data for good. Of course, to generate revenue and profit, but also to create that sense of community and connection.

So Let me stop talking. I'm gonna turn it over to Chris and Katie. Before I do that, here's a quick look at the agenda. Take a look at the agenda.

We're gonna have Chris and Katie come on right now. Do some welcome remarks from Chris, the CEO of Swoogo and Katie.

They built this event maturity model in deep collaboration with Swoogo's customers, with event leaders, folks that are in the audience today. This was not built in isolation. It was built four months deep partnership with people just like yourself. So thank you to everyone who helped do that.

We're gonna then have Nick, Stephanie, and Steph talk about how to give your attendees a voice. How do you use data to make the event experience that much better? Then we're gonna have Nicola talk about how do you go beyond just the registration and attendee data? How do you think differently about your events when it comes to the data collection, how do you get that to the revenue side of the conversation?

And then I'm gonna get back on stage joined by Katie, we're gonna talk about how to take events and weave them into the fabric of your go to market teams. Super excited about that conversation. And then there's gonna be a game Thank you, Patrick. He's gonna come on stage. Patrick is with Swoogo, and he's gonna come on stage and play a very fun game with a chance to win a brand new set of Apple Airpod pros. So stay tuned for that. Lots of things to happen throughout the event.

Blow up that chat, ask questions, meet one another. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Chris and Katie to talk all about the event maturity model.