How to Plan Events

Interested in event planning and the future of event technology? Don’t miss these insights from industry expert Julius Solaris.

Recorded at APC 2024 and produced by the American Society of Administrative Professionals - ASAP. Learn more and submit a listener question at asaporg.com/podcast.

Leah Warwick: Hi, everyone. I'm Leah Warwick, and you're listening to "The Admin Edge." Many admins are also event planners in their organizations, and my guest today, Julius Solaris, is a leading expert on event technology and event trends. If you're the least bit curious about either of these topics, then this is the episode for you. Now, let's get into my conversation with Julius at APC 2024.

Hi, I'm Leah Warwick, Editor for ASAP, and my guest today is Julius Solaris, Founder of Boldpush, and a presenter at this event, APC. Welcome to the podcast, Julius.

Julius Solaris: Thank you for having me, Leah. What a pleasure to be here.

Leah Warwick: It's a pleasure to have you here. And we're excited because you're presenting as part of our Event Management Summit and as part of our main conference program at APC on trends defining events for 2025 and on planning events with AI, so I'd love to get into that with you. How has AI changed how we plan events today and for the foreseeable future?

00:01:11                     

Julius Solaris: Okay. So it hasn't changed it yet, but it is changing it. The adoption is very clear. I've been doing analysis in terms of event technology for the past [17] years, and I've been exposed to a lot of different types of technology. I've seen the adoption of event professionals through the years. So if you think about registration, engagement apps, and then virtual events in 2020, I've seen it all. I've never seen anything quite like it in terms of the adoption that we're seeing today. Probably 40-50% of event professionals are using it currently, right now. We're doing research. Next week, actually, we're launching it to have better numbers, but the numbers are incredibly high. The interest is incredibly high to get skilled, to understand.

00:02:02

The profession of doing events is actually very exposed to AI. People don't realize this. They think they're in the in-person business and therefore they're secure. Actually, a lot of the processes, the backend, whatever goes into the planning, is being automated right now and will be automated. Probably most of the technology that is being built right now is attendee-facing and it's more the picture-taking, the session summaries, the tracking of whatever happened at a trade show booth and stuff like that, that it's more on the marketing side. Event apps probably will change dramatically, right, because we've had chatbots and stuff like that for a long time, but they were pretty dumb. 

00:02:48

Right now, with AI, they're getting smarter. So we will see now literally a way to create context and relevance immediately when you are attending an event. A lot of opportunity, very exciting times to be in the events industry. What I can tell you is that the event technology space is going to be disrupted big time from this. 

Leah Warwick: Yeah, so in hearing you talk, I was seeing and hearing upsides. I was like, yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if things could happen in a snap and we didn't have to put all these manual hours into making these technological tools. It would be great for the customer experience, right? But then a lot of people also talk about – and you did allude to it – a negative aspect of AI, which is job loss, which is uncomfortable changes and people having to evolve with the way a profession is going. I know that's something that a lot of our admin professionals feel uncomfortable about is: Okay, how can I stay relevant in this changing landscape? What would you say to that?

00:03:42                     

Julius Solaris: Yeah. So here's the sort of equation that I make every time we're talking about using AI strategically. The problem that we have today – and we're early days. We're, what, year two of ChatGPT? We're just getting started. It's getting into the tool, sending basic prompts to it, taking the output, [and] use it as your output for work. That's a big problem right now. I would say that if you use that tool as an output that that will be problematic. You want to use it as a feedback mechanism for now. You want to use it to analyze data, to compensate [for] the skills that you don't have. That's what I love to do. I'm not an expert in negotiation and contracts, and so when I go into AI and I immediately get a feeling of if a contract is reliable or not. What should I improve on that? That's immediate value to me. That's feedback that is given to me on something that I would usually pay someone to get help with. That, to me, is incredible.

00:04:48

Also, tedious tasks that you kind of force yourself to do all the time, like, I don't know, structure a whole business plan for your freelancing business, if you're a freelance EA of sorts. At the end of the day, you want that sort of tool to do the hard work for you. You don't want to pull those hours. But you have a starting point for you to start putting your creativity on. 

Leah Warwick: I want to bring it back to the event planning process. Any sort of advice? I know it's very blanket, but any sort of general advice that you would give to an admin or EA planning an event of, let's say, more than 200 people?

Julius Solaris: Interesting. I love how practical it gets. I never get to speak about these things in the events industry. I love how we're bringing it back to the actual planning process. I feel we're not in the event planning business anymore. I like to call it the "moment planning" business right now because it's literally, to me, about breaking down all the experience that you have – you are designing, whatever it is.

00:05:55

A CEO summit of 200 people? Well, where does it start? It starts with the registration, then with the website that you have, then it goes into the airport and the hotel and the reception. So all of these moments have to be broken down. They have to be analyzed. And you have to ask yourself: How can I surprise and delight? Or at least, at minimum, make sure that these moments are perfect? Every single moment right now can really make or break an event. Event planning is about details. It's about making sure that everything is taken care of. Literally, whenever you walk around, you're thinking like Disney, in a sense, where you're moving people into experiences. I think about modern events like theme parks, so you are – right now, we're in Tomorrow Land, doing a session. Then you move to Frontier Land next-door where you have exhibitors' booths. 

00:06:51

How is that experience? How is that delivering? That goes into the data piece that you were talking about, seeing where people interacted, having the data to tell you if that moment went right or wrong, not just based purely on three or four people that come on and say, "Oh, I love that." That's not feedback. You need to have the data to actually know whether those moments are going well or not, and so building those feedback mechanisms into the planning is so important because if you're just doing it and you're leaving it to the world, you'll never know if it works or not, and you're missing those breakout points of where you can say – or breakthrough points, rather, where you're saying, "Okay, we can build on this. This can become a thing. This can become the next…because people loved it so much." If you don't know if people loved it so much, if you leave it in their heads, you will never be able to act upon it. 

00:07:40                     

Leah Warwick: Yes, and I love the magical moment. I think Disney does those, finding those moments and saying, "We're not really in the events business. We're in the moments business, and creating these surprise and delight moments everywhere." We love doing that, too, so that's great to hear. I could talk to you about this all day, but I do want to get to our listener question that we have for you. They wrote in: "What is your advice for handling demanding executives or clients who frequently change plans or expectations in the middle of event preparation?"

Julius Solaris: Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a very common thread, especially in the events industry. There's clients that think that they know events and they can do events. There's, again, this perception about the work that we do, that everybody can do it and anybody can do it. Why not? I'm so smart. Some vertical stack is one prime example of that. With a lot of tech C-levels now being on social media and thinking they can control the world, that they can control events as well – it doesn't work that way.

00:08:45

So I feel it's a personality battle more than a work battle, so my advice is it's on your skills and your interpersonal skills more than anything. It's about being assertive about the fact that this is the plan, and communicating boundaries. The boundaries cannot be broken. It's not just the experience that's at stake. It's the safety of people. Anything could go wrong. Like a bad F&B choice can impact hundreds of people, and security and the choice of venue. "Oh, why don't we do that in that quirky venue just right outside that has no security at all?" 

Knowing when to say "stop" is very important for what you're doing. Again, the health and safety of people comes to mind as top of mind. That could be an argument. That could be used to scare away a little bit the egos of those that want to get in the way, but then it's also about saying, "Listen, you're paying me for this. Otherwise, you do it yourself." You have to be able to have that conversation. I have it with my clients as well. 

00:09:49

Whenever we're working, I work with people that have been in the industry for 15, 20 years. They've done hundreds of events. You can imagine how they've seen it all and know it all. But for me, it's like, "If you're here, talking to me, you clearly have a challenge, so you leave that challenge to me. I'll give it back to you and then you work on it. But for the time being, that's my agreement." 

Leah Warwick: Yes. I remember you said earlier [that it's] the people business. For a long time, events have been a people business. Technology is infiltrating. At the end of the day, it's about people who are here and serving them. That's kind of our north star, too: Is this in the best interest of the attendee? Is the attendee going to like this change we're trying to make? And you really have to bring the focus back to the people.

Julius Solaris: Probably you gave a better answer than I did. [laughter]

Leah Warwick: No, but I think it's worth mentioning that people think, "Oh, I'm in the people business in events, so I'm safe from any sort of AI disruption." And that's not necessarily true. But what is true is that a good people person is a good events person.

00:10:45                     

Julius Solaris: Very true. You've got to be a people person. That's why I don't plan events. I like to stay in my little room and talk. I feel that, yes, it is true. But what I find as a common trait of event professionals that are at the talk, literally, they're never satisfied. They're always hungry to learn more, to see what other events are doing, to find inspiration, to innovate sometimes – actually, the very top ones, they don't find inspiration. They are thinking like, "How can we do this in a completely different way that's going to blow people's minds away?"

Again, even when you walk into a property, they're going to start sort of trying to move you to those templates that have been done again and again and again. And once you're in a template, once you walk in a room, you see a speaker and you know really what to expect, you kind of already disconnect 50%. So you've got to create something different; otherwise, people right now, in the age of social media and dopamine overstimulation, it's just not going to be enough. 

00:11:51                     

Leah Warwick: You have to stay innovative. You absolutely have to. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure talking to you.

Julius Solaris: Thank you for having me.

Leah Warwick: I learned so much. So where can our listeners find you online?

Julius Solaris: Yeah, so Julius Solaris on LinkedIn. That's my first sort of social network that I use. I have a newsletter with 20,000 event planners subscribing at Boldpush, so boldpush.com. You'll find it there.

Leah Warwick: Perfect. Thanks so much. This was fun.

Julius Solaris: Thank you.

[music playing]

Leah Warwick: Thank you for listening to "The Admin Edge," produced by the American Society of Administrative Professionals, original music and audio editing by Warwick Productions, with video and audio production at our events by 5Tool Productions. If you like this podcast, please leave us a nice review, five stars, and subscribe. If you'd like to submit a listener question, you may do so on our website at ASAPorg.com/podcast.