One of the presentations that highly inspired me to think differently about event design took place in 2019 at the MICE Forum at ITB Berlin (Organised by VDVO). Even after all these years, and a pandemic in between, these principles remain extremely important when we want to create a seamless attendee experience at events, be it live, virtual or hybrid, and put the human in the centre. I want to re-share this article that I wrote back in 2019 and was initially published on VDVO website, because the principles of event design remain the same, the human is in the centre of every experience that we want to design for our events and technology should enhance this experience, and not replace it.
In 2019 the ITB MICE Forum theme was ‘The Human Factor’. The conference programme was designed to highlight the importance of the individual who is the centre of every live event. In the connected world we live in today, the personal needs of each attendee have become even more important, and technology should enhance this experience, and not replace it. One of the talks that impressed me the most was ‘Participant experience design – how do we create meetings which move people more deeply?’ given by Felix Rundel, Co-founder, futurehain (at the time of the presentation Executive Director of Falling Walls).