We’re going on a digital (event) journey!

As a live events business, Covid-19 has affected our 2020 plans significantly. 

However, we are likely in a much more fortunate position than many of my fellow organisers! As a small, dynamic team, the next few months and beyond represent an exciting challenge for us to learn and develop as individuals and as a business.

We start in a place of limited digital experience. We have planned to integrate digital initiatives into our live events for the past 18 months, but these were simply plans and brainstorms, untested due to  the pressures of our annual event calendar. 

We come to this with a straightforward strategy - to be as open and inclusive as possible. To work with stakeholders who are also on a similar journey, who recognise the value of events, the potential value of digital events and can give us the feedback we need to make significant steps forward over a short period of time!

No digital event will be perfect this year - that's a fact!

We have evaluated many of the platforms out there and sat down (virtually of course!) with other organisers to share ideas.

This has resulted in a very engaged team, the opportunity to approach events in a way we could only have hoped to be able to do 6 months ago,and a huge amount already learnt. 

But it has also brought the knowledge that there is so much further for us to go.

We now have a bi-weekly, interactive (un)webinar series - Fintech Friday - which is proving to be a real asset in getting feedback from our audience, in our marketing and digital delivery.

And we have our 1st significant digital event - MoneyNext Online - taking place across 4 days from the 18th - 21st August.

The premise behind MoneyNext Online: A 4 day, free-to-attend, digital agenda designed to complement our attendees' working day, rather than fight against it!

Since homeworking became the norm, there are just not enough hours in the day! So taking part in a digital event might not be top of our audiences priorities. 

MoneyNext Summit Online represents a digital programme of over 30 free hours of discussion covering Banking Transformation, Payments & Transfers, Blockchain, Open Banking, Insurtech and Lending & Finance, with insight from some of the industries most visionary speakers and all delivered in sessions lasting no longer than 45 minutes!

Spread over 4 days, attendees select their agenda highlights and build them into their working day.

A quest to provide attendees with the most interactive sessions possible has seen us ban PowerPoint and ensure our content provides opinion, insight and addresses as many of our attendees' questions as possible.

How will we deliver it?

We have moved away from the new, costly platforms on offer for this 1st major event. We will instead concentrate our investments and energy on delivering great content and a relevant audience for all the partners who have backed the show and our vision.

This is the right approach for us. There is no denying the merits of some of these platforms. But our priority is to understand our audience and partners as best we can to then integrate into a platform or build our own to match these objectives.

Will it be perfect? No. Will there be problems along the way? Absolutely. But I'm certain that come the end of August we will have worked our hardest on behalf of all of those involved, we’ll have learnt a significant amount to take forward and we will be in an excellent place to follow up on our successes.

Digital events are here now and we see them being part of all major plans in the future!