Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to your first HubTalk of 2019! It is the turn of the century friends! That means the future is already here! In Back to the Future we dreamt of floating skateboards and tacky metallic clothing! Today, however, we dream of electric vehicles and getting from one side of the country to the other in mere minutes! (Yuck, commuting.)

At Hub 925, we are big fans of events, and even bigger fans of technology! How would I get any work done without my laptop!? In the events world, there are a growing number of technological advances allowing for events to go as smoothly as possible. Here are a few things that we look forward to seeing be used in the future!

Projection Mapping

With the advent of 3D modeling, we are entering into an age of things we only saw in movies! Projection mapping is one of those big things coming to us soon! Projection mapping is augmented reality using projectors. Projectors nowadays are a necessity for any meeting venue! Many meeting planners know that their clients will be doing presentations that need to be shown to their team, and a projector is going to be one of the things they are going to look for when booking a venue!

Photo by kevin laminto on Unsplash

With projection mapping, you may now look at things in the 3rd dimension! What many engineers dreamt of in Star Wars with “Please Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope” is now a “If you’ll just pinch the corner here, you can zoom out from this part. . .” This allows us to see objects in viewpoints that we would have had to draw out individually. For event planners, this could be the difference between a printed-out map of their convention space, to a whole interactive map at the entrance, and for venues this could mean a whole new world of décor!

Guest Tracking

Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash

As scary as it may sound, someone knowing where you are, and when you’ll be where you are going is a revolutionary practice that will make your life easier! Guest tracking means that there is no longer a need for guests to go to a front desk and verify who they are! Evolving tracking technology like those cool little wristbands you see at Disney World will allow venues and event planners to keep track of who is coming and going into their events. The possibilities with these devices are endless! Some things we look forward to seeing are:

• • Guest Check-in

    • No need to have a check-in desk if guests can just tap their device to record they are there!

• • Guest Movement

    • By tracking a guest’s movements, one could find out what booths at an expo are performing well. This lets companies record a booth’s performance, possibly leading to an increase in volume if properly monitored!

• Guest Interaction

  • Seeing how guests interact at an event very much determines how a planner’s event is performing. At a networking event, companies like Loopd are using their devices to allow for guests to tap their devices together to share contact information! No need for the hassle of pen and paper!

Venue Placement Apps

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Venue placement apps are a tried and true technological trend that quite simply, just makes management easier. You would think that knowing where and how to place things is pretty much self-explanatory, but it can be very challenging, and easily forgotten. Planning apps like AllSeated allows planners and venues to create accurate diagrams within minutes! Many customers before booking a venue want to have a nice tour so that they can plan inside their heads how they want their event to look like! With placement apps, one could place it all virtually and then have the venue completely setup by the time they show up to the venue! This isn’t a new trend, but it is definitely a solid one! At Hub 925, we have accurate blueprints and diagrams on our site to help meeting planners see where that snack table that all the guests crowd around will be (in the corner so that no one can judge you for eating all of the cream puffs right?)

Well that’s just 3 of many wonderful technology trends we look forward to seeing in the events world! What are some things you’re looking forward to? Anything that you want to see eventually come into play when planning that rad party for your work mom’s retirement? Hit us with your comments down below! Thanks for joining our first HubTalk of 2019!