If you are curious, or nostalgic, here is the link.
We bring it up not only because ice cream is one of the recurring thoughts of this scorching summer, but also because at the centre of that advert was a line that stayed famous for decades: “Two [gust] is megl che uan”. It fits the point we want to make today.
With ice cream, a wide choice of flavours is certainly a good thing. But can we say the same of the set of tools needed to organise events, that the more of them there are the better the result? Not always, in our view, and for three reasons.
1. The difference between features and tools, or between vertical and horizontal
In recent years this breadth first came to be seen almost as a defect and then, just as the world grew more complex, it began to win back its role and its position. Because the more complicated the world becomes, the more we need a view wide enough to keep more aspects and more variables under control. And while this does not automatically mean discarding a specialisation that remains absolutely important, it does bring a new requirement to the surface: holding together what look like opposites, the vertical and the horizontal, the sector-specific and the cross-cutting, the specialist and the general. Take an example from the world of events. Specialisation is now the norm: by sector, by sub-sector, by type of experience, by objective. From the first piece of information to registration, from check-in to consuming content, from networking to meeting sponsors in the exhibition area. Each of these experience “stages” is often tied to tools that make it possible and manage it: a website for promotion, software to collect registrations, a database to manage the people registered, a platform to deliver webinars, and that is before we mention running an exhibition area, or the document archive of an international conference, or the access lists for invitation-only events and MICE events. A great deal of specialisation in services and features which, to work well, also needs unified and coordinated management, so that attendees are guaranteed the frictionless experience that is every organiser’s goal. Vertical and horizontal together, then, which we have resolved like this: a single platform with all the features and tools you need.
2. A single point of view
What is more, having a single platform to manage all the many aspects of an event brings another advantage: it reduces the number of people needed to run everything, because it optimises time and activity. It releases organisational resources, energy and time, and it makes every process more accountable, in the sense that the people responsible are easier to identify and to call on, including for specific needs.
3. Energy and synergy: how to make the work scalable
The third reason is to make the work of event organisers scalable, which we expect is what most professionals in the sector want. And when we talk about scalability we mean two things. The first has to do with growth, of course, which can be quantitative (as the size of the event increases) or qualitative, tied instead to more features and a richer event experience. In both cases a lack of coordination between different tools often creates rigidity and friction that then have to be managed and resolved. The second sense concerns the ability to add modules, features and activities without compromising the overall structure and the management of the event, so that the balance between the cost and the opportunity of each choice stays healthy.
In both cases we are also talking about the ability to build on experience, to make the most of your data and put it to use as a tool for designing and planning what comes next.
All these goals are easier to reach if the tool you use is a single one, because all its components speak the same language and are therefore easier to manage.
Letting the event organisers who come to us achieve these three results is what led us to develop SharEvent: a platform that brings several features together in a single tool, one that allows coordination, a single way of working and scalability.
The people using it tell us that it works.
What do you say, would you like to see it?
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