“Event planners have mostly embraced the shift of thinking about attendees as passive audiences to engaged participants,” says Brent Turner, vice president of solutions at Cramer. “The expectation for attendees is that they can be engaged. From the easy stuff — polling, contests, social curation — to environmental changes, such as how IBM has changed their product-demonstration approach at events, or a recent augmented-reality experience we created for UPS … to nuances like RFID tags that personalize digital signage, people expect to see themselves as part of an event.”

“Invites to breakout sessions can be hyper-focused on the interests and demographics of individual attendees,” says Turner. “We may even start to see the decline of large events in favor of multiple, smaller events that focus on key data-informed segments.”