Ep 186 - FUTURE of EVENTS?? 🧠 GUEST Kristen Koenig, RVP of RingCentral #1 Event Platform 🎤 Where is Event Tech Heading? 🔮

0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40we are back for do this not that and i have an amazing guest because it's a friend it's somebody i respect somebody i learn from every single day so who's here kristen koenig is here and she is from ring central now you may know ring central as the you know giant multi-billion dollar company that does all the cloud-based communication stuff where you could have your meetings and calls and things. And that is RingCentral. But you may not also realize, but RingCentral is one of the biggest players in event technology for in-person, for virtual, for everything. And this is not a commercial for RingCentral, but I will tell you all of the events in my business, we put on a lot of big events.

1:19We do them on the RingCentral platform. So I asked Kristen to join us because they are leading the industry. They're doing things nobody else is doing. And I want them, I want Kristen to share where it's all going, what we could be doing, what other companies are doing to leverage the data that's out there. So I'm excited that she's here. Kristen, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jay. What a welcome. Happy to be here. Well, it's all true. And the thing about you is that you're always sharing on LinkedIn, which by the way, she's the best follow. And you're always talking about what's coming next, where it's all headed.

1:53And I love that because you're like dragging the event world into this new era. So how did this happen? How did Kristen become Kristen, this event person? That's so funny. I will say my love for events actually started pretty young. And I won't bore you with the full story, but I actually sang growing up. And I always was a performer. I sang, I acted in shows. And this was through elementary, middle school, high school, and through college. And then in college, I actually found my love in nonprofits. And I actually led the largest nonprofit within the state of Connecticut at UConn. University of Connecticut is where I went to college.

2:37And we had the largest state run nonprofit event at the school, which was called Huskython. And it benefited the Children's Miracle Network. And so I actually led the recruitment of all the dancers that signed up, did all the registration, all the event technology, the donations. And honestly, I thought to myself when I was majoring in PR and business, this could be a career. And I really had a passion for it. I had a passion for change. I had a passion for people and connecting people and good causes. And so I did that for Children's Miracle Network. And then I interned for Susan G. Komen and thought that I would be in event services.

3:15And that's really where my love started. After that, I worked for Cvent, which was a startup in the event technology industry, and then worked for a couple agencies. And honestly, the rest is history. So kind of came very young. And here I am. You're like a good person. You came out of this from like all this charitable stuff and doing nice things for people. It's like now I have to live vicariously through you because I feel like you like do nice things. So that's nice. Well, I always think beyond like, this is all we all have a job to do. And we we have, you know, families to, you know, to feed and, and things to provide for.

3:55But at the end of the day, I think about my work as impactful in that manner. And if, if events can change one thing for a business or for a person in their job or career, I think about that at in every point. So I'm not just saying that, but that's how I think about my job. Now I feel better about what I do for a living. I just thought I was a doofus that did marketing. Now I'm like, I'm helping people. You change careers, Jay. Like, I love you. Yeah, I love you as a customer and a partner and friend. I appreciate that 100%. Okay, so let's get into this stuff, okay? One of the things I've heard you talk about is this idea of journey mapping for events.

4:37So you might be listening to this and maybe you put on, you don't put on a big event, a big in-person event. You don't even put on a giant virtual event. You maybe only do a little webinar or even a masterclass or whatever, but something where people gather in some capacity. And so what is this idea of journey mapping and looking at the data that everybody should be thinking about? Yeah, I think this is something that even I learned when I was on the event operations and planning side before technology. But I always have this, you know, keep it simple, stupid. And I think there's so much archaic technology in the industry for decades.

5:12There still is within the market. And you need it to be easy and you need to be able to understand. And I think there's been so much complexity built into tools that it's kind of kind of like been built that way for a lot of customers. And so the customers that I see in this new kind of journey mapping tip that I would give to folks is really understand the behavior that the attendees are going through, not just in the pre-registration where you and I talk about the emailing and the value of how you drive attendance to the events pre-event. But during the event, how are they engaging? What is their behavior, whether it's in person or webinars?

5:51How long do they stay on? What are they clicking on? What are the emojis? When is the most memorable moments throughout any of those events? And that data should be brought back to your team so you can be more prescriptive to your customers, how you can help them or your partners or level up your community. And so that journey mapping of that actual registrant to an attendee and thereafter is super, super important. So when you talk about, let's look at how long they were there, the comments they made, the emoji they use, is that for the marketing people to figure out how to market them to get them to show up to the next thing?

6:28Or is this now moved into more like rev ops and marketing ops, where they should be looking at that data in terms of other types of communications? Yeah. So this has changed really in the last half of a decade. Before, it's been really on the event marketer or the event planner. But now there's been this new wave of revenue operations, specifically marketing operations and sales operations. Usually that is disparate in two separate teams within a company. And what I'm seeing within the industry right now is this kind of partnership and new emergence of how marketing operations is having a hand in the event side.

7:09And there's always been integrations with any tool. You and I know that we work with HubSpot and Salesforce. But for us, those are the folks who are actually mapping the data and the behaviors so we can enrich our experience for these attendees and then ultimately drive more through the community. So if I'm listening to this, is it fair to say that I got people to register? I even got people to show up. If I'm not then digging into who stayed for 10 minutes, who stayed for 30 minutes, who stayed for the whole thing, who left a comment, who rated it, who did whatever, I'm not doing my job. I'm doing half the job of what I should be doing.

7:49100%. Because I think we're always looking at surface level data. Did we hit the average attendance rate? That's only part of the story. When you go into the rest of the event data, that's where the magic happens. And that's where we found value. We just had the AI real talk event that you participated in and spoke. But once you understand how attendees are interacting with your content, then you know what is resonating with your communities, what you should do more of, and what are they excited to see from you. So I think we only really looked at surface level for so long. And there were so many reports out there that the customers that do events or webinars really didn't know how to decipher.

8:32And now it's becoming more well known of how to kind of slice and dice that data for that journey mapping we were talking about. I love this. I never, When you said to look at the emojis, I'm like, oh, my God. Now I got to think about they gave a heart emoji versus the thumbs up. And then my kids tell me a thumbs up means screw off now. So is thumbs up bad? Yeah. Well, you think about your day to day. And I was communicating with my family. My family and I text all day. I'm blowing up with all the chats. And you can tell people's reaction even on the consumer side. So when you think about businesses to businesses, and you and I have discussed this, but B2B and B2C is merging together more now than ever before.

9:18And we need to take advantage of that. A hundred percent. All right. So let me switch gears on something totally different. So the other thing that I think everybody that is out there doing any kind of event, small, medium, large, doesn't matter, is they're thinking about what platform they should use. And this is not a commercial for RingCentral. RingCentral is great, but there's a lot of great platforms out there. All right. And one of the things that I think is super important, and I want your perspective on this, is every platform is really good, but there's only so much that one platform can do.

9:50And what every platform needs is the ability to integrate with other applications that are out there. And some platforms have lots of integrations, some don't. But I think that marketers that are not spending the time to consider the integrations that the platform that you're about to onboard has, I feel like they're, again, doing half the job. Is that a fair statement? 100%. I feel that when we see customers having a laundry list of everything they need, every single little feature, I say, why do you need that? You know, does that benefit the attendee experience at the end of the day, separate from the event management side?

10:30So for me, what I've seen in the industry as like revolutionary is the new development of app stores and app exchanges. We've seen that in the CRM and MarTech world, which is where you come from, Morjay. But in the event tech world, that was not known. I've always been attracted to app exchanges, like how Salesforce and HubSpot and everyone else has built theirs and even like the Apple iPhone, but it really wasn't something that was in the event technology arena. And what's happening is everyone really tried to build everything that they had functionality wise in their platform direct. And that has led to complexity as well as high cost.

11:12But what if you had a platform that can actually complement that? So I would encourage anyone listening on this call beyond choosing it from user experience and really making sure it's as simple as you can for that attendee. It's regardless of who you use, app exchanges to have a kahoot. You can talk about that, Jay, but like trivia or gamification or like a snap bar studio to take photos at the event. It's so much fun. And I know you have, I would love to hear your thoughts today on this, but like a custom area that you can build yourself if you have those skill sets. Like that's never been done before.

11:56A hundred, you're so spot on. And you almost have to, if you're going to be doing any kind of webinars or whatever, you have to think about things in a totally different way. You don't need to look to see, oh, does the platform integrate with my CRM? Okay, great. That does. Everybody integrates with the CRMs. Who cares? You need to think about it like you're going to try to engage with people and like what you were saying, gamification tools, photo tools, polling tools, things that people can actually interact with and look for those in whatever app exchange, whatever platforms you're considering.

12:29And that should be a major element of your decision making process. But along those lines, you know, this whole idea of app stuff is really kind of where things have headed and have been heading. I'm curious because you're living it. where is all this event technology headed? What is the world going to look like in a few years? I feel like you have a crystal ball on what we're going to be doing soon. Yeah. Well, I think connecting the AppExchange to where I think the industry is heading, I think it's all around creative freedom. And I think when you think about creative freedom, it's how do you do something within the lines of the technology, but make it your own?

13:11and that leads to personalization. I talked about the iPhone, but your phone looks different than mine, but it's all within the same infrastructure. So I think about that that way in the event world because every company wants it to be their own community. So what I'm personally excited about beyond just the creative freedom is artificial intelligence. I know it's a buzzword. A lot of folks are talking about it. It's all online. So I hate to say it. But the first thing is definitely AI and how we can be smarter and throughout the experience, whether it's the setup process, whether it's the data analysis we were just talking about, whether it's in the production experience.

13:49So there's so much out there that I'm personally excited for. I just did a session on this at SEMA and more to come, but I think AI is one part. The other part where, you know, we've discussed this at length and curious to hear your thoughts is the content and community that comes for events. I think events have always been this moment in time for decades, right? It's always this part, but what I'm excited about is how events should really be the foundation of the community. And how do you take that and actually repurpose the content from the event, create audio grants, create snippets, create, you know, speaker advocacy.

14:31There's so many things that you can do with that. And I am personally excited for the next generation of event marketing technology that it's truly more experiential than actual just event tech. You know, I really, I hope it goes where you're saying where the community aspect is kind of baked into events and it's a never-ending flywheel of interactions and I could see it and I want that so bad. I will tell you what concerns me is that so many people want a community and they'll start a community and it will last for like 60, 90 days. And then the juice all fades. Right. And then the community is like a big, and so I would, nothing would make me happier than you fast forward two or three years from now.

15:19And every time you do an event, there's a community tied to it and stays vibrant, but, um, it's going to be hard, right? It's going to be hard to keep up that energy. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it's always hard. This is my personal crystal ball, what I'm excited about from the industry at large, but I think it's difficult because there's so many different communities to your point, Jay, out there that people are trying to either fix with a tool that they push or whether it's on LinkedIn, but how can you do a mixture of that? You know, there could be an interesting place where those types of things kind of come more aligned.

15:52And that's personally where I think the opportunity is for so many of us who are passionate about this great industry of, you know, not just events, but marketing in general and how we bring people together. Cause that's what marketers love to do. Totally. I listen, I'm all in. I mean, I would hang out in your community. We'd have a great time. It'd be awesome. You'd sing songs. Speaking of singing songs, let's get into the chaos portion of this podcast. I have a question. First of all, I have a horrible voice. You sang a lot and all this stuff. Did you ever like think about, okay, I'm going to go on American Idol or something like that.

16:27Was that ever like a consideration for you? Yeah, it was many times. Yes, it was. I actually, I don't know, not many people know this, but growing up, I was actually the youngest contestant on the mid-Atlantic, which mid-Atlantic in the United States is, you know, the Northeast region. I was the youngest contestant of the mid-Atlantic, like Northeast Teen Idol. I was 12 or 13 at the time. I sang on stage, but yes, I did all of that. Wait a minute. So were you singing regular songs or some sort of cheesy old song? I'll never know. No, like big songs, like pop songs, musical songs. It runs the gamut.

17:12I used to sing Bach in choir and solos to pop. So it all, you know. So you're with your friends, okay? And you're like, okay, we're going somewhere. We're in Nashville. We're on a trip and we're going to go to this karaoke bar. And everyone's like, oh, I don't want to do it. I go, Kristen, do you want to sing a song? And then you get on stage and they don't know. Everybody in the bar doesn't know. And then all of a sudden you're like, you crush it. Is everybody like, what the hell? Yes. I, my go-to karaoke song, I will tell you, my sister will tell you, we live in Florida and she lives in St. Pete and there's this amazing karaoke place.

17:48I do not get off the mic. Once you hand me the mic, I do not get off the mic. And I want to dance with somebody will always be my go-to. Whitney Houston, she goes down in my favorite all-time singers and just incredible, incredible voice. I love everything about that. And we should all go roller skating. That's the vibe right now. I'm feeling it. Feeling it. All right. A couple of things I want to tell everybody. First off, I'm not exaggerating. And Kristen is one of the best follows on LinkedIn, but her name is not spelled the way it sounds. Kristen Koenig is spelled K-O-E-N-I-G. Kristen Koenig, K-O-E-N-I-G.

18:28We're going to put in the show notes. Please follow her. The other exciting thing, which I'm going to tell everybody, we're announcing this. We are putting out, Guru Media Hub is putting on a new event, free, virtual, massive. It is called Eventastic. And Kristen is going to be there speaking at this event in June 2025, where Pre-Reg is going to be live soon. Eventastic.com. Kristen, are you excited about the world's largest event about events? I am so excited because I was just talking to other marketers and event planners this past week and saying there's not really a big industry event that everyone loves right now.

19:04There's trade shows, there's other events, but it's been missing this vibrant, creative aspect that everyone can learn and come together. And so I'm pumped for this. It's going to be great. Everyone check out eventastic.com. Kristen's going to be speaking there. Follow her on LinkedIn. Kristen, you are awesome. Thank you for being here. You are awesome, Jay. Thank you for being such a great friend and also mentor and industry colleague. There's so many things I can say about you. So thank you for the invitation. I'm happy to join and thank you everyone for listening today. You are excellent. Awesome.

19:39All right, everybody. See you soon. See you soon.

20:09So you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me. GuruVents.com. Check it out.