Support channels for events: 5 essential ideas

Even before you’ve sold your first event ticket you will have people asking for help. That’s why you need a support strategy and the right support channels for your event.

There are dozens of things your customers need in terms of support. Some of them are obvious while others are surprising. What you can do to insure an wonderful experience is set up the right ways for your visitors to interact with you and be open to questions and suggestions.

I’ve put together a list of the most used support channels, the ones you should really focus on. Some of them can be really easy to set up. For example opening a Facebook account to receive requests directly on Facebook Messenger. Other examples include setting up an email address or publishing your company phone number.

Others require a little more work and a better understanding of your customer’s needs. Examples include setting up an event website, installing a live chat extension or setting up a helpdesk for real time support during your event.

Let’s start with the basics:

1. Answer event requests using a support email

While email may seem outdated it is still a very powerful tool if you can use it right. As smartphones have become ubiquitous the number of emails sent and read from mobile devices has grown quite a lot.

A recent research by Litmus showed that 56% of visitors are reading their email on mobile phones, 27% by webmail and only 17% are reading the emails on mobile desktops. This shows an increasing appetite for mobile mail consumption and a great opportunity to interact with your future visitors using an age-old technology that is still extremely powerful.

Email reading proportion

Visitors will ask for details on your upcoming event by email. Do keep in mind that their attention span is quite limited while reading email: just 8 seconds. Try to be brief and clear and keep in mind that your email will be opened on a mobile device so stick to readable fonts and not many images.

As your event will grow, you will need to start implementing ways for more of your team members to be able to answer your emails.  Customer messaging platforms like Zendesk or Intercom perform really well at this task.

2. Event planners: pick up the phone and answer

One of the best ways to interact with your customers, especially visitors that have never interacted with your event, is to open a phone support line.

Voice is still one of the best ways of interacting with your customers as it provides a way to forge a deep and strong bond, as well as answer questions.

As stated in a Microsoft customer experience report, phone is the most used support channel in the US, followed by email and live chat. Customers would rather interact through a phone support line (74%) than email (62%).

However – keep in mind that phone support should be a human touch point. More than a third (34%) of US consumers answered that the most frustrating part of trying to get help via telephone is “Automated Telephone System (IVR)/inability to reach a live person for customer support.”.

Which is better for event support - phone or email

3. Help event visitors via social media

As social media has become so widely used and most social networks now have some form of messaging and/or interaction between visitors and brands, Social Media couldn’t miss from this list.

As events are inherently social, support on social media channels can answer questions for future visitors but also convert others to buyers.

Here are a few stats you should consider when figuring out your support strategy:

  • 71% of customers that receive positive customer support on social media channels are likely to recommend your brand to their peers. Source: NM Incite.
  • Over four out of five millennials (81%) would most likely engage a brand via social media for customer support. This means an increased appetite for social media support for younger generations, as only 63% of Gen X’ers and only 44% of Boomers would use social media support. Source: Sprout Social.
  • Take care of complaints on social media: Over 72 % of people who complain on Twitter about a brand expect answers within one hour. Over 70% of complaints go unanswered. Source: Aspect.

To put it simply – social media support is increasingly important for brands and especially for events because of their social nature and reliance on word of mouth.

 

How to improve your social media customer care?

So – how can you improve your social media customer care channel?

Here are a few ideas:

  • Encourage your visitors to connect and interact with your brand on social media.
  • Follow brand mentions on social media and answer whenever possible, especially when complaints are expressed. Here are a few apps that can help you do this: Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Agora Pulse and Social mention
  • Try to keep conversations authentic and friendly. Basically – try to make your event’s voice sound human.
  • Keep it simple and allow visitors to explore more on your owned media (blog, website, knowledge base).

When trying to find the right social media channel to focus your customer care efforts, here are the most popular channels for event managers, as stated by Event Manager Blog:

Best social media platforms for event customer support

 

4. Live chat support – interact with event visitors and answer their questions in real time

Your event website is a great place to allow visitors to interact with you and ask questions. Rather than email, phone support or social media outlets, some visitors may want to interact with you in real time.

Live chat apps work on your website, give you insights on your customer’s web journey and allow you to offer contextual support.

They’re easy to set up (usually signing up online and copying a script line on your website) and can prove to be very powerful. At Oveit we rely heavily on live chat support to answer event planners’ questions in real time as they are using our event management app.

Most live chat support apps allow you to set up idle messages, “usually answers in” estimates based on historic data and allow multiple users to answer visitors questions.

They can prove very helpful when event goers check the agenda, try to find the right tickets and registration options and need to get in touch with you. As Intercom’s research shows, just exchanging a few lines on live chat does wonders for sales:

Live chat increase in conversion rate

5. Help your customers where they need it most: during the event, in the real world.

Notice a pattern on our previous support channels? They all focus on digital ways to engage and help your event visitors prior to the event. However the place where most people need help and where the real experience is built is during the live event.

hello sign

Photo by Pablo Gentile on Unsplash

Here are a few things to consider in order to make your customers feel welcome:

  1. Set up a help desk: If you have a registration section or a ticket scanning area, make sure to set up a help desk for your visitors near it. Your visitors might need directions or maybe their registration details (tickets, badges) are not working. Give them a way to reach out and sort out their problems. Make sure the desk is staffed with well qualified professionals that are able to answer complicated questions and have the ability to act on solving problems.
  2. Set up easy to understand signage. Where is the main stage? How about the cafeteria? Where are the toilets? “I can’t see the trash cans”. Where’s the bar? Sounds familiar? Sometimes the support channel should be built into your event design. Good signage can go a long way in directing your visitors, especially when there are many of them. Visual, intuitive customers support is the best support channel you can have on live events.
  3. Does your event have a mobile app? Use it to answer visitor’s questions. Many conferences and festivals are now using event mobile apps. While the apps usage is mostly focused on live content, agenda information, visitor generated content and networking, it can also be a great way to answer your visitors’ questions and offer customer support.

These are my suggestions. Do you have any special support trick you’ve found is quite useful? Share it below:

October 12, 2018 Events No comments yet

User Generated Content for Events – How Does it Work?

Guess who’s the biggest driving force behind your event, besides you? Your visitors, of course. They are the single best critic and the most powerful force that can drive your event up. There’s also something about them that you should be really interested in: they are trusted by their friends, colleagues and family. This post is about how you can get user generated content and improve your event’s experience and increase your exposure.

What is Visitor/User Generated Content?

Visitor generated content is a term we’ve derived from “UGC” or User Generated Content. You’ve probably heard about UGC as the content that is generated by users on all sorts of digital outlets. It may be for example a social media post, images uploaded on Instagram or Snapchat or videos uploaded on YouTube.

In the event business this type of content is generated by visitors to your events and distributed either through social media or on specialized outlets – for example your event’s mobile app, your website or a digital wall.

Why is User Generated Content important for events?

Your influential visitors drive the success of your events. They do this through their shared opinions and the way they create a bridge between you and their friends, peers or followers. Consider these aspects:

What’s even more interesting is that when it comes to millennials, the data is even clearer:

  • Consumers ages between 18 and 24 are the biggest content generators out there, generating over 70% of all UGC;
  • 86% of Millenials note that the User Generated Content is a very good indicator of brand quality;
  • User generated content beats professional produced content for Millennials in at least three categories: Travel (74% of Millennials prefer UGC over professional photos), Consumer goods (83%) and Fashion (85%)

How can User Generated Content help your events?

As shown – all data points to the fact that UGC is a great way to improve your event’s exposure and improve visitors’ experience.

Among other things UGC will help you:

  • Increase ticket sales and improve conversion rates: Purchase anxiety is a really strong factor when your visitors purchase tickets to your event. If you happen to host a large event that has an awesome track record the purchase anxiety might very well be reduced. However, if you are just starting out your happy visitors’ opinions may generate additional traction. Purchase anxiety is a very strong factor in any digital purchase but with events it’s even more so. Buyers pay upfront for an event that will happen sometime in the future. They have little control over what is actually delivered and the experience is definitely subjective. Other visitors’ content might provide some insights on what they are actually getting.
  • Attract social traffic and use social proof to convert it to sales: When visitors post content on social media – this attracts new traffic to your event’s website. This traffic is already pre-qualified as it has been referred by a reputable source (a peer) on an interesting subject (your event). By adding social proof from UGC you can add event more power to visitors’ content and generate instant sales with lower costs.
  • Improve your social media campaigns with user generated content: social media users love social media (Doh!) but they hate social media ads. UGC adds that extra spark for your ads. It adds authenticity and today’s event goers love an authentic review. When using UGC in social media ads Yotpo shows that online shops see:
    • 4x higher click-through rates;
    • 50% decrease in cost of acquisition;
    • 50% drop in cost-per-click;

All in all User generated content is a great way to improve exposure for your events, decrease marketing costs, engage your community and attract new visitors.

And now … for the actual work – how do you make your visitors generate content for your event?

Here are some ideas:

1. Just ask your visitors to create content

The first, most simple and often not used way of helping your visitors generate content is to ask them. You can do so by including a “Call to create” in your owned media, during the event and after the event.

Here are the main areas where your “Call to create” should work best:

    • After purchasing tickets or registering for your event: Include a thank you page that allows visitors to share the fact that they are attending the event. Maybe add some extra sauce to it by asking them to share with their friends “WHY” they will be attending their event. Catalyze this by adding an extra perk for those that are willing to share this with their network – maybe a free t-shirt, special access to the event or even free coffee would do.

During the event:

      • Create special photo booths or photo walls after the registration where visitors can take an interesting selfie with an interesting decorum or installation;
      • Setup special interaction areas between your visitors and speakers / artists where they can chat, take photos and post them online;
      • During the event ask your visitors to create special moments that are posted on Snapchat or Instagram and reward those that use your event’s hashtag;
      • Engage your visitors on social media by following their posts on the most popular Social media sites;

After the event:

    • Follow up with your visitors in an email and ask them to post an event review either on your Facebook profile, on your website, in a comment on your Instagram post and others. 
    • Stay connected and post photos of visitors on your social media profile (however – be careful to cover this with your registration terms and conditions. Privacy is not to be taken lightly and consent is a must given data protection regulations, especially if you operate in the EU);

2. Create a branded Hashtag for your event

This is UGC 101. Set up an event hashtag and encourage your visitors to use it when posting updates about your event. It doesn’t have to actually include your event brand but make it something that stays out and allows people to mentally connect it back to you.

Let’s see some examples:

#AdobeSummit:

As I was writing this post one of the trending hashtags was #AdobeSummit, a hashtag regarding the Adobe Summit – The Digital Marketing Conference hosted by Adobe in London, UK.

Visitors would generally be sharing either interesting slides from the sessions that interested them most, articles regarding the event or interesting conference gimmicks – such as the big, colorful disco ball:

hashtag-articles-slides

#Coachella2018

Twitter tag from one of the most influential music festivals in the world. Visitors would mainly post selfies showcasing their style and outfits. As Coachella is one of the go-to entertainment brands for personal style and fashion, that was bound to happen.

Fashion and style ruled the social media streams. Both the Twitter #Coachella2018 and Instagram’s #Coachella2018 hashtags were full of fashion photos from people attending:

coachella2018-instagram

Over 260 000 Instagram posts showed the festival’s hottest people, outfits and trends.

These are just two examples that you can use as a starting point for your next event hashtags. Encourage people to post it using a Social Media Wall, offering prizes and special access credentials or just showcase the community in a special page on your website.

However – it doesn’t have to be your exact brand name as some visitors might not be that happy to promote your event right from the start. You can choose a hashtag that outlines your values and what your event stands for and just create a special tag from those.

3. Make your event interesting for content creators

Instead of asking visitors to create content sometimes it’s better to encourage them in more subtler ways. For example:

Create “shareable” moments and decors

Burning man instalations

Burning man instalations

As the big disco ball in the Adobe Summit example above shows – people are willing to share interesting decors in your event. Many events do this quite well but probably the best at it are large festivals.

For example, the Burning Man festival hosts a series of arts installations from various artists that can attract visitors and encourage them to share these moments with their fans and followers.

Start a flashmob

One of the most interesting ways to make your event stand out is through flashmobs, where groups of people create specially choreographed moments. These are artistic moments in themselves so they have to be carefully planned and delivered at a moment of maximum exposure.

Here’s one example from a concert from Black Eyed Peas that went heavily viral some years ago:

Use colors to make your event stand out

Color can really set the mood for your event, making your guests feel part of a greater community. This really helps creating shareable moments.

Probably the best example is the “Color Run” series of events, where runners that cover a 5km run have only two rules:

  • Wear white at the start;
  • Enjoy being fully colored at the end of the event.

Throughout their run, they get covered in color. At the end, they get a special party, photos and a great chance to share their crazy run with their friends.

color-run

Call in the robots

When all else fails – call in the robots. One way to encourage your visitors to post content and share it with their friends is with the help of entertainers. One special type of entertainment is Titan the Robot, a mech-like exo-suit that is quite interesting and fun. As you see below people are eager to film and share their interactions with Titan:

Obviously – it doesn’t have to be a robot but something that is novel, attracts attention and is at the same time amazing and hard to understand. By the way, I’ll let you in on a little secret – there’s a man in a suit in that video 🙂

4. Other ideas to encourage User Generated Content for your event

This is of course just a starting point and your creativity is the best tool to use when thinking of ways to make your visitors generate and share content.

Here are some other ways you can incentivize them do that:

  • Create special contests for visitors that create and share content. It might be a raffle, a special discount sent to each participant or access to the coffee booth by those that pay with a tweet;
  • Set up a special UGC page on your website where visitors can post photos from the event and receive a special discount for next year’s event;
  • Set up social media hashtag walls where you display content from those that posted about your event. A great place to start is Walls.io, an app that helps you generate social media walls that can be shown at the event.

I really hope this helps your event and makes it more engaging than you thought possible. Remember – these are just some ideas and guidelines. Let your creativity help you help your visitors create content. It’s the best advertising you can get.

May 8, 2018 Event management, event marketing, Events 1 comment

Why and when to use conference apps? Partner spotlight: mReady Meet

For the past years we’ve worked with some of the best minds in mobile app development: our partners at mReady. Given the rise in mobile apps usage at conferences, we’ve asked them for some tips. In this interview you’ll find out how and when should event planners use conference apps.

1. How and why did you start building Meet?

Six years ago, when mobile apps were just on the rise and we were just beginning our journey as mReady, we thought would be a good idea to build an app for a conference some of our friends were organizing. So we did.

Over the next 3-4 year we have been constantly improving it, based on the feedback we got from the conference attendees and organizers. A couple of years ago someone approached us to request a similar app for their conference. Shortly after we did that, other requests for event mobile apps started popping up. It was a sign the time had come to take the next step and bring Meet to the market.

Mready meet team

2. What was the toughest challenge in building a product that fits the event planners’ needs?

The main challenge in building Meet was meeting the users’ needs. How do you manage to offer an outstanding event experience to the attendees, while also giving organizers the proper tool they need?

You cannot only focus on one aspect of the product, because if attendees don’t like it, they won’t use it, hence the organizers efforts won’t be paying off. Likewise, if the organizers can’t see the benefits for them and their attendees, they won’t know why request it.

3. Is there an event size where you would recommend conferences to start using mobile apps?

There are a few parameters to take into account when deciding whether to use a mobile app at an event. Some of them are the number of attendees expected, the number of days, stages and locations.

For a 1 day – 1 stage event dedicated to less than 100 people, there is very little to no need for an app. As the number of days, stages and / or locations increases, so will the necessity for an app, in order to better and easily structure all the event information and pass it on. At events larger than 150-200 attendees, even if it’s a one day event, the networking component of a mobile app becomes super useful.

Mready Meet app

4. Where should event planners look for Return on Investment when launching conference apps (visitor satisfaction, loyalty, increased interaction etc.)?

Because of the relatively high cost for a mobile app, it’s good to make sure it will have a positive return on investment. Since we’re not talking about an ecommerce app, it can be difficult to identify the right metrics to take into account for ROI.

However, there are a few elements that are worth considering. Since the smartphone is usually at an arm’s reach, it’s easy to get real-time content feedback from the attendees. By being able to communicate in real time all the event info, a mobile app contributes to building trust towards the event brand, increasing brand awareness.

For recurring events, an branded mobile app can also be turned into another promotional tool. Still, the most important element to focus on is the community. By facilitating meaningful connections between event attendees, a mobile app is addressing the very need for belongingness, which is one of the five primary human needs, and has become increasingly important in present times.

5. What should any event planner know before requesting a mobile app?

With the ROI in mind, it’s worth mentioning that a conference app, just like most of the other mobile apps, is not a loyalty tool in itself.

Just because you own a conference app it doesn’t mean that people are going to fight to get it without any communication effort from your behalf. It is the event organizer’s job to promote the benefits of using the event app to their attendees. In order to help it meet the ROI goals, the app has to be intensely promoted. And this can add to the marketing effort event organizers already have.

6. Why are customized apps better than off-the-shelf conference apps?

When talking about the difference between an off-the-shelf standard mobile app versus a customized or branded one, there is no better or worse. It all depends on the organizer’s needs. An off-the-shelf app is usually less expensive, less customizable and could require more persuasion skills for the attendees to adopt it. Nonetheless, is can be a very good option for low budget event organizers who want to offer a mobile app experience. The are some very good options for non-branded event apps available.

On the other hand, a customized conference app is focused entirely on the event’s brand identity, with many options for customization. At the same time, it becomes an integral part of the event experience and would be adopted more easily by the attendees. The need to explain the benefits of using an app during the event to the attendees is still there, however it’s simpler to be integrated into the overall communication plan.

Here you go – 6 great tips from a great team. If you need to get more insights, be sure to visit their app page and ask for a call. They will be happy to walk you through the app’s features and you can get a feeling of how your event would benefit from it.

February 6, 2018 Event professionals, Event tech No comments yet

Event spotlight: Mind the Product

Today we have the pleasure of interviewing James Mayes, CEO and co-founder at Mind the Product. You can follow James on Twitter to get insights on Product Management and how to build products that people love.

Mind the Product started in 2010 in London and now consists of more than 50 000 members and the event traveled the world, being hosted in more than 100 cities.

Let’s see what are the secret ingredients in building such a great community for Product Managers.

James Mayes - Mind the Product

How did Mind The Product start? What helped you decide on the topic and vision?

Three product managers at London startups were looking to meet others – to share war stories, learn more about approaches and generally get some therapy from other professionals facing similar challenges at work.  Nothing much was available, so two events emerged – ProductCamp London, from Simon Cast and Janna Bastow, and ProductTank from Martin Eriksson. The three teamed up, and Mind the Product was born. The vision then was very much as it is now – to further the craft of product management by bringing together product people of all stripes.

What makes the events and community so vibrant?

I think the accessibility goes a long way.  The free meetups under the ProductTank banner continue every month, now in 140 cities; videos from the larger meetups are posted on our media site (no paywall), and we have a slack community with north of 10,000 members around the globe.  When we talk about conferences and training, there are obviously budget and location constraints – but there’s so much we support that’s free and location-independent. The diversity that has attracted is certainly high impact.

 

What do visitors love most about the Mind The Product events?

We keep a strong line between commercial and content decisions.  Anyone on a stage of ours is there because they were invited on merit alone, we don’t sell stage time for marketing activity. So many conferences use that as a hook to fill out the budgets, but it’s almost always a substandard experience for the delegate. We also have a high number of Product Managers on the team here – we don’t just know our audience, we are our audience.  There’s a relentless focus on the delegate experience. Of course, things go awry occasionally, but the effort we put in does show through, and we hear a lot of appreciation for that.

 

How do digital communities (the website / Slack channel) improve the event experience?

There’s a definite sense of community in the Slack channel, and you can see excitement for the conferences building weeks or months ahead, as people start discussing speaker announcements, places to stay and so on.  It continues long after too, as we release the videos – people coming back together online to break down certain talks or messages.  Many conferences are a one or two day event, with a pile of marketing email before and nothing after.  We’re aiming for a wider experience.

 

What were the greatest challenges in scaling Mind The Product internationally?

Navigating timezones and international tax laws is always a challenge!  Aside from that, the problems faced by Product Managers are remarkably similar around the world.  That helps the content travel well, which builds our reputation ahead of us.  That said, much of our content has come from the main firms of Europe and the US so far, so I think our next challenge will be unearthing the stories behind some of the tech giants or rising stars in the East.

 

What are your plans for the future?

We want to keep a tight focus on the conferences and work more on that delegate experience, there’s plenty more we can do! We also launched a formal training business in 2017, expanding our operations into developing bespoke product management training for delivery to major corporate clients.  We closed out the year with some amazing feedback from clients around Europe and across the US, so I’ll be looking to ensure that has the support it needs to attack 2018 with vigor!

January 30, 2018 Event management, Event professionals, Event spotlight, Events, Featured Events No comments yet

Techsylvania: hotbed for tech innovation in Eastern Europe

As part of our Event spotlight series, we decided to interview the team behind one of Eastern Europe’s leading tech events: Techsylvania. The event started in Cluj, a city Techcrunch named “The Silicon Valley of Transilvania“.

Let’s see how the event started and what are the team’s plans for the future:

Tell us a bit about yourself – how did you decide to start building tech events?

Vlad Ciurca: My background is a mix of economic studies, marketing, IT – product management and business development. In the five years working in IT I also got involved in organizing events. One of the first was Romanian Managers Cluj. The purpose was to create business networking events, something rather new at the time.

Then I met Philipp Kandal, one of the co-founders of Skobbler, currently Telenav and together we analyzed the start-up scene in Cluj-Napoca. We wanted to do something in this direction, so we developed Startup Weekend. Practically, this way at the end of each event some new projects were born. In the next four years five teams received funding from international accelerators and the event grew from 90 participants in the first year, to around 150-160 participants in the next years.

Techsylvania conference

How did Techsylvania start? What helped you decide on the topic and vision?

Vlad Ciurca: Organizing Startup Weekend, me and my co-founder, Oana Petrus, realized that there was clearly a lot of interest in this area of startups, technology and entrepreneurship. In the same time, we saw that all the IT conferences from that time were not really oriented in these directions. Also, they did not have international speakers. So, we can say we had our work cut for us.

In 2014 I started working with Oana on a new concept: Techsylvania. We built an international event where founders from all the world, investors, various experts and entrepreneurs meet in the same location, chat and discover the steps needed to create a technology company.

Techsylvania started in 2014 with 380 attendees and grew to more than 1500 attendees in 2017. Apart from this, the event features a connected devices hackathon where developers build creative projects, as well as a startup competition that featured early stage companies from 9 countries.

How did you manage to develop the wonderful community around Techsylvania?

Oana Petrus: From the first edition we wanted the conference to be an educational course for people who want to discover everything about how a technology company is being born. Our community was built step by step. More and more people joined because we provide a place where they can learn firsthand from the experience of successful entrepreneurs, tech leaders, investors and founders of startups listed to the stock exchange. Also, they can meet other people starting a new project and exchange information.

These are strong reasons for attendees to wish to come back and for others to join the community. In 2017 our conference grew to 1.500 attendees from 1.316 participants in 2016 and 830 in 2015. Our community is strong, and this is clearly shown by the fact that 96% of the 2017 participants expressed their wish to attend Techsylvania in 2018.

In its essence Techsylvania seeks to provide answers. The fifth edition, taking place June 9-12 in Cluj-Napoca, will once again gather key stakeholders, tech leaders and curious minds from all over the world to explore the technology opportunities across Eastern Europe.

What do visitors love most about the event?

Vlad Ciurca: The vibe of the conference, the people they meet, the knowledge they acquire and the speakers they listen and learn from.

Every year we bring international speakers, literally from all over the world and this makes people love our conference. The chance to see new experts and tech leaders every year, all with a vast experience.

Its a rare opportunity to see many of our speakers and guests in this part of the world and even more so to actually be able to interact directly with them. Don’t mind me saying but its an amazing networking event.

“If you want to get a pulse of tech innovation, ecosystem, talents in Eastern Europe, Techsylvania is the gateway. Cluj is one of the most exciting places right now and the event draws the who is who from the erupt tech scene”, Joyce Shen (Thomson Reuters).

What were the greatest challenges starting and developing Techsylvania?

Oana Petrus: The first challenges we faced? We wanted to make the event a great one from the first edition, so a real challenge was the line-up. We knew that if we wanted true knowledge for our attendees we had to convince international speakers to join us as well as people from the Romanian ecosystem.  We succeeded I’d say because we had 19 speakers and among them were HP Jin, Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer at Telenav, Andy Piper, Developer Advocate at Twitter, Johannes Reck, CEO at GetYourGuide and many more. And this was 2014.

Also, another challenge was organizing the hackathon. The focus was on new wearables and connected devices but many of them were not accessible at that time, as they weren’t sold on the market in Romania. Regardless, we have managed to get them to Romania by collaborating with the manufacturers and out them in the hands of the developers to see what creative projects they could develop.

What are your plans for the future?

Oana Petrus: What to expect in 2018? First off, an inspiring speaker’s lineup that will talk about some of the most recent technical developments, product related topics, as well as funding and entrepreneurship trends & best practices.

But the most interesting part of all is that we plan on expanding the Techsylvania platform in the following directions:

  • Satellite events – we want to take advantage of the buzz surrounding Techsylvania during those 4 days and to create more opportunities for those who join us. Explore various fields of know-how, meet new people outside your circles of interest and join us for new experiences
  • Q&A sessions – a lot of you mentioned that you’d like to address specific questions to the speakers, but don’t have the opportunity. As timing is something we care about a great deal and the mainstage design does not allow it, we’re going to take some of our speakers on a dedicate stage, where you’ll be able to ask all the questions you want for 30 minutes
  • Roundtables for executives – we will host topic-oriented discussions for 10–12 executives, moderated by an industry expert. The goal is to stir collaborations and get insights that can help you drive your business forward.

 

Vlad is the Co-Founder of Techsylvania (leading technology event in Eastern Europe) and Codiax (Deep Tech Event).

Previously, he was VP of Business Development at Yopeso, Product Manager at Telenav (working on creating navigation solutions for mobile devices and auto manufacturers), as well as Operations Supervisor at UPS and Ceva Logistics (where he managed a 100-person team (starting from a 4 person team).

Vlad is passionate about building events and communities, having been a Startup Weekend Organizer and Facilitator and co-founding one of the biggest online and offline communities of managers and entrepreneurs in Transylvania, Romanian Managers CLUJ, with close to 900 members.

In 2011, Vlad was named a Technology and Entrepreneurship Expert in the “Young Romania Forum”, a project organized by the League of Romanian Students Abroad, with the aim of getting the younger generation involved in the future of Romania. In 2015, he was invited to speak about the ‘Born Global’ topic during the Romanian Business Leaders Summit, an exclusive event with over 200 top managers and entrepreneurs from Romania.

 

Oana Petrus is the Co-Founder of Techsylvania (leading technology event in Eastern Europe) and Codiax (Deep Tech Event).

Working now in Paddy Power Betfair Cluj as Office Manager, she brings her extensive knowledge of processes and administration, from being in charge of Processes and Quality at Sykes Cluj-Napoca to coordinating teams in Cluj, Cairo and Shanghai.

An experienced manager with over 12 years experience in retail, business development, telecommunications and event organizing, she put her vast know-how to work for brands such as Paddy Power Betfair, Sykes, Orsay, Motivi, s. Oliver, Startup Weekend Cluj and others.

 

January 7, 2018 Event professionals, Event spotlight No comments yet