Episode Summary:

Brandt Krueger and Will Curran return with a lively breakdown of the latest trends spotted while judging the Eventex Awards, offering a behind-the-scenes look (within NDA limits) at where event technology is headed. From lightning-fast badge pickup and GDPR-compliant facial recognition to hyper-personalized attendee journeys and the resurgence of event bots, this episode unpacks the innovations shaping conferences, registration, AI, and event apps. The conversation also explores the tension between niche solutions and global platforms, the creative uses of Generative AI, and the growing importance of deep integrations between proprietary tools and third-party event apps.

Since recording, the winners of the Global Eventex Awards have been announced, so be sure to check out the winners!
https://eventex.com/winners2025

Discussions Include:

• How AI is transforming attendee journeys, reporting, and real-time event analytics
• The rise of hyper-personalized registration flows and niche event tech providers
• Creative uses of generative AI for art installations and next-gen word clouds
• The return of event chatbots and the push for deeper, more meaningful event app integrations

Quotable Quotes (Should you choose to share):

“Speed, right? That was one of the things- it was all about how quickly can we get thousands of people registered, get them their badges and things like that.” – Brandt Krueger

“Most of these high-end registration platforms have the ability to really customize the journeys that your attendees will take. We’re used to having a few different buckets for attendees… Well, now you can have 50 buckets.” – Brandt Krueger

“Let’s be honest, no one in planning space wants to learn to be a data analyst. That was the thing that I looked at for so long, especially when we were doing Klik and like there’s so much data available to planners who just don’t want to look at data.” – Will Curran

“I just couldn’t believe that finally, two years into this AI blooming that we’re seeing, we’re finally getting back to having good, decent event bots that can help us out with these things.” – Brandt Krueger