In this episode of Event Experience by Bizzabo, host Rachel Moore welcomes Adam Parry, co-founder of Event Tech Live, to discuss the evolution of event technology, the integration of AI, and the growing importance of sustainability in the events industry. Adam shares insights on the challenges faced by event planners, the significance of upskilling in technology, and the need for supporting small but mighty event teams to ensure long-term success and avoid burnout.
The conversation also explores the impact of generational shifts on sustainability priorities, the necessity for events to measure and reduce their environmental impact, and the value of attending Event Tech Live for exposure to the latest innovations and expert thought leadership. Adam highlights the importance of creativity and adaptability in leveraging new technologies like AI, and recommends practical tools such as Wispr Flow to boost productivity for event professionals.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
Rachel Moore: Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo, the podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events. I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host. In this episode, friend of the pod and pillar of the events industry, Adam Parry joins me to discuss the significance of Event Tech Live, its evolution over the years, and the challenges faced by event planners in a technology driven landscape.
Adam shares his perspectives about the integration of AI in the events industry, the challenges of event planning and registration, and the importance of sustainability in event management. This year, as with every year, Adam and I are right here with you in our collective event experience.[00:01:00]
Today we are welcoming back a friend of the podcast, someone we welcome back on a regular basis, because quite simply, he has his finger on the pulse of event technology, event sustainability, and just generally the industry at large at all times. He's in his 12th year as the co-founder of Event Tech Live, and so I am delighted to welcome back Adam Parry to Event Experience. Adam, thank you for joining me yet again here on the podcast.
Adam Parry: Absolutely. Rachel, thank you very much for inviting me back. It's always a pleasure speaking to you about these things. I thoroughly look forward and enjoy these recordings. So yeah, highlight of my day for sure.
Rachel Moore: Well, thank you. It's always, yeah I, whenever it's like, ooh, it's that time of year again. Let's have you back on. I know we have a couple regulars too. I mean, there's just some of these, particularly some of these events that are pretty crucial, kind of almost the backbone you might say, of the events industry.
And so they're very vital to keep the pulse on. [00:02:00] But of course then you go to the person who's behind it and you know, it's just always so insightful to have you on the podcast and for those of our listeners and viewers who are like, yes, I'm familiar with Adam. You know, they're like, yay, I'm glad you're back on.
But I would like you to introduce yourself a little bit for those who may be new to you. Maybe they're like, I'm sorry, who's Adam Parry and why do I need to know him? So could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with Event Tech Live?
Adam Parry: Absolutely. So Event Tech Live is part and parcel as an event of a publication called Event Industry News. Very briefly, we cover the whole entire spectrum of the events industry . We really publish news, information, reports, statistics, insight around what's happening in the global events market, hoping that everybody can learn from each other.
Technology and sustainability are two of those passions that we take a big look at because in our minds, they're kind of the things that are moving the events industry forward and changing the way that we design and deliver events. And Event Tech Live [00:03:00] started out very much as a passion project and has grown into this beast now being the place where people really come to upgrade. In all honesty, they, they're taking their journey on event tech to the next level. They want to either implement other technologies to enhance their event, the attendee engagement, drive more revenue, drive more visibility, understand their audience more.
Or they might just be getting started and they're kind of like at the discovery stage, or they kind of trying at the moment figure out aI and where that sits in the business and where does it sit in the event and how do we do all of this stuff? And it's overwhelming and we try and help people kind of make sense of it all.
But as you said, 12 years in the making, we now see around 3000 attendees from around 50 plus countries. We hope to scale that up. And yeah, if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of where technology's going in the event space or as a an event business, I wanna be very clear, it's not just about the technology that takes place at the event for attendees and things like that.
[00:04:00] It's about technology as an event business as well to support the business, to generate new opportunities, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, we'll have about maybe a hundred plus 115 plus exhibitors this year at the show. Looking forward to it.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. Well, and I think that's crucial too for you to bring that up. I mean, we all know our lives are pretty much dominated by technology, whether we're talking about events or not. I mean, right now you and I are corresponding across many thousands of miles because of technology.
You know, we have these systems and things but so much that they all talk to each other. Let's do a couple get to know you questions. What are your go-to on the ground shoes all day at Event Tech Live? What are you wearing?
Adam Parry: I am a Nike fanboy. I used to be Nike Max 90 exclusively. I am now a Pegasus 41 Easy On guy. I dunno if you've come across Easy On you, don't, you just literally slip your feet into them. You don't have to like tie shoe laces and things like that. And I have just bought a pair of Luna Rome because I kind of find that [00:05:00] like a reboot revival.
So I am, I'm the just do it guy. Unfortunately.
Rachel Moore: Excellent. I know you're not alone or a lot of people like Nike as well. Is there anything you're listening to, watching or reading these days that you can't put down? I.
Adam Parry: Oh, that's a really good question.
Rachel Moore: Doesn't have to be events related.
Adam Parry: No. That's a really good question. Not specifically at the moment to be honest with you. I think the most amount of reading and things that I'm doing, or the most knowledge absorption is around really two topics. One is technology and AI and stuff.
I'm just fascinated by how things are moving. So I'm doing a lot of online reading and documentation and reports and all that kind of stuff on that. And then I hit 40 this year. So a big change for me has been kind of like my own health and wellness and fitness and things like that. So I've always been generally into that, but I'm taking a real hard look at that now. Like I really wanna have my DNA that I am done. I have had my DNA done before, but then I want the [00:06:00] DNA code and I wanna put that into ChatgPT. See what it can assess about me. And I think that's what the future of medicine will be, kind of things you have, like you do a, I can see this, you do a finger prick in the morning, you put it into a computer and your AI assistant will say, Hey, you know, this is what you should think about over the next kind of week.
Or you know, kind of those health assistants and stuff like that. So I'm fascinated by that kind of stuff as well at the moment.
Rachel Moore: That's cool.
Adam Parry: But I'm a big, I'm also a big sci-fi guy, so anything sci-fi, I'm really looking forward to taking my son to watch the Roblox movie
Rachel Moore: Oh, that'll be so cool. Yeah, my kids have been talking about that too, so it's definitely around. And having had the privilege of being able to go to Event Tech Live a few times there, there is a lot there. I'm talking about it from personal perspective, but I wanna hear from you as well, particularly about what the plans are for this year, because I believe you're on is this year 12 of the conference.
From the trade
Adam Parry: It is. Yeah it's gotten in a flash. It's I don't look old enough though, Rachel.
Rachel Moore: No, you look lovely. Yes. I would not be
Adam Parry: [00:07:00] Definitely re has here now than I did before. Yes. 12, 12th year of the show and we did launch a US event a couple of years ago. We delivered that for two years. We're taking a break this year because we're actually relocating that event to the east coast for 2026.
But we're only a small team. We're not a big mammoth trade show organizer. We like to take our time and do things properly, so we're taking the Glastonbury Fellow year this year to do that. And touch wood, everybody that we spoke to about relocating to the East Coast has been super excited, super positive.
So for anybody listening in that region, either head over to London in November, or we'll see you maybe in 2026 in the East Coast environment.
Rachel Moore: Absolutely. Let's touch on one thing. You brought up, you know, you have a small team. I think pretty much everyone who is an event planner can relate. They're either a party of one, a team of one or they do have a very lean team. Or even if they're working with an agency, you know, it's always like a small group that does [00:08:00] mighty things.
And so. I love that it kind of is reflected, like you're almost reflecting the audience, right? Saying, look, we get, you're working with small teams too. Let's bring all these things together that are meant to help us accomplish the impossible, which we do every single time we put on these big events.
So I think that's so great that you provide that.
Adam Parry: Very much so. Yeah, I think it's, we have a great team. They're mighty and they're powerful, but I think sometimes we can get caught up in just. We had that internal conversation. Here's a bit of behind the scenes of like, oh, we need to do something. We need to do it quickly. We need to do this. And you know, organizing events is already stressful. So we didn't wanna add to that stress, and we also didn't want to add to our stress of our exhibitors, our participants in terms of planning and moving things and all that kind of stuff. So it just made a lot of sense from a longevity perspective of that brand and that event, and our own sanity to take that year out.
Now, don't get me wrong, from a business perspective, that's a huge hole [00:09:00] in revenue, but more sustainable. That's what we believe in the future, at least. Anyway.
Rachel Moore: Well, thank you for bringing that up too because I'm sure you know something that we've been talking here at Bizzabo about. We, you know, we have webinars every month. We have panelists on those webinars. We have topics that we're trying to really make sure we're keeping things at the forefront for what is top of mind for an event planner out there, an event team.
And with this new year. It's been really interesting because there's, there seems to be a lot, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this too, what you're seeing. We did an event industry report where we're seeing, okay, events are important to business, they're important to strategy so let's do more of those, you know, so event teams are being tasked, okay, well, can you do more of what you were doing?
And. Hopefully we are seeing in some areas where they're having an increased budget as well. But I think it's so key you bring up too that sometimes you've gotta say yes, but longevity wise I think any event planner might say, oh, well goodness, we're [00:10:00] gonna, we're gonna skip, we were gonna pause.
You know, we're gonna pause the momentum and not do something. But you always have to have that long-term goal, that strategy in mind to say, yes, but this is for the benefit in the long-term, it's gonna be okay. And you know, I would love to hear what your perspective is too. Are you seeing that people are like, feeling the pressure more saying, oh, events are important to our business, and now they're oh God, I gotta perform more, I gotta do more.
Adam Parry: Absolutely. You know, let's look at it from business use case. It is great to hear and see and the reports reflecting that companies wanna invest more in in-person as well as digital as well. They go hand in hand. I'm still the, a big believer in that. That's only good for the events industry as a collective.
I think I was reading another report this morning myself, which was indicating that in the Asia Pacific region, they reckon they're gonna have to see a 54% increase over the next couple of years in-person events. Which is huge, even considering how big the events industry over there is at the moment.
Now. But what does that mean? Well, it could mean one of two things on a negative. We do things [00:11:00] less well. Because we're stretched. We do things for the sake of it, not thinking about the objective of it or we just wanna bring people in a room because our sales team love that. And our marketing teams love that.
And we feel great about it. And it's, woo, it's amazing. And wouldn't we like to go to this great destination and all that kind of stuff, but what is the underlying objective? And I think actually sometimes the negatives within events come from people who do them so regularly, they become very lackadaisical in their approach to them.
Almost like, oh, we know how to do this. We know how to do this. We don't really have to think about extracting every dollar from it. It'll kind of just happen and roll. But the biggest challenge there I see is while there's a keen interest in people doing more. Are those teams getting the support that they need from a hiring perspective?
Like you start out with your first marketing person, don't you? And they're the jack of all trades. They do everything social, email, web. And as you grow that, those marketing efforts, you end up bolting in other [00:12:00] disciplines around that person so that there's somebody dedicated on social, there's somebody dedicated on email, there's somebody dedicated on web, because you do more, you need more eyeballs and the machine to make all that moving.
I don't see that happening all the time in the events industry. And I think while there's more budgets to do events, I think part of that budget needs to be allocated to recruit and to support those existing teams, because if your event person's burnt out and then leaves. Where does that leave your event program?
It's decimated. Right? So you start on all that knowledge, that key person knowledge, that experience, the vendor relationships, the venue relationships, the speaker relationships that, I don't know, the health and safety guide relationships like that one person leaves or those few key people leave your business has no event program anymore.
Rachel Moore: Everyone listening to this is like, yes, please take care of us. You're right, because this is actually such a human thing to talk about because it's like what is that adage like, you can only pour out so much as long as you're getting filled.
Like you are a [00:13:00] cup of resources, and if you're running on empty, how are you pouring anything out? You can't and there might be increased budget. There might be a push to say, let's do more events. But then you need to look at your team, be like, okay, well we're adding onto what we're expecting you to do.
Do you have what you need? And you know, taking a look, that's super important.
Adam Parry: Yeah. I think it's something we forget in the events industry, unfortunately. And this is something we still have to do in the industry as a whole, is advocate for the value of these positions within these organizations, right? Yes. The SVP of sales always gets patted on the back for bringing those big checks in and woo, that they're the key people.
They're the key people, but they forget that events and marketing, they're all touch points. They all help the sales along. They all have value and things like that. Actually, in my opinion, the most highly valued people within the business because they're really hard to replace really hard to replace.
It's not like there are tens of thousands of new [00:14:00] event planners coming through the doors every single month.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's so interesting. So now I wanna pivot over here because you're bringing up, we brought up a couple things just now. So, burnout, event planners are feeling burnt out.
You're also talking about the need to, okay. How do I maybe learn who are event planners out there? Not only who is an event planner, but who's hiring event planners. So, so there's that aspect of it, of possibly connecting people, connecting the dots so they have those resources. So now I wanna ask you, so let's swing back to Event Tech Live.
Because your team creates a central event. Again and I love that you are really, you know, thinking through, saying, well, let's make it as accessible as possible. We've got London, which is obviously, you know, a major international thoroughfare. And you do it at Excel London, which is like Disney World for any kind of event anyone's putting on very and so great. But now you're looking at East Coast, so you really, a, you're trying to [00:15:00] bring the event to where it's like, it's accessible to people. Let's talk about what kind of attendees, like if someone is saying, okay, I have not been to a Event Tech Live, why would I go?
Adam Parry: Yeah and it's a really hard picture to paint for us, Rachel, because we're talking about a topic rather than an event type, right? Like if you are a professional conference organizer, maybe you just go to the PCMA events or the MPI events or something like that. If you are into room blocking and DMCs and things like that.
You go to the IMEX of the world, things you have SISOs on at the moment. I dunno when this is going out, but that's the Society of Independent Show Organizers. They've got their CEO Summit, so if you're in trade show world, you go to that event. They talk about things very broadly and holistically within that sector, whereas we don't talk about events, we talk about technology and as part of events, so actually our audience is very broad, although we do tend to eek out strongly [00:16:00] more on the brand corporate agency and trade show world generally because they're larger, they tend to have deeper pockets, so they're more invested in technology already at this stage. Actually, what I would encourage anybody to do is really look at Event Tech Live as an opportunity to learn and upskill yourself, right?
If you are an event planner and you better understand how interpretation technology integrates into the event experience and how that technology is deployed and how to budget for that technology, or what does a budget for that technology even look like? You know, it could be you want a better understanding of the revenue opportunities that technology brings you. And you can look at that from the education that we put on. And at the moment, let's be honest about it, AI is the big topic. So you know, there has been and already is gonna be so much of that content weaved into the show that I really look as it is like being [00:17:00] prepared for every eventuality, right? If you have a better understanding of technology, the innovation that's happening, what's coming, then you won't feel, I think what a lot of event planners had felt at Covid and since, which is overwhelmed, right? I don't have the time. I don't have the bandwidth to learn all of this stuff.
I've got my day job to do. I'm gonna stick with my Excel spreadsheet. Cool. Yeah. In that situation, you're fighting fires. But if you take the approach of, right, if I kind of just gradually learn about this stuff and educate myself and get better at it, it will become a skill that's then transferable into the existing business that I work for.
Or maybe that opens up the doors because now I have that knowledge and that's super valuable to the next company I wanna work with.
Rachel Moore: Oh gosh. Absolutely. Any room you're talking about technology, AI's gonna come up. And I mean, gosh, even the time we're recording this last week, ChatGPT just rolled out their image generator, which everyone's doing, you know, Hayao Miyazaki artwork and they're just like, whoa, look at what you can do.
Which naturally you're gonna be like, great, how [00:18:00] can I, you know, how can I incorporate that into my approach? But you may not know what you don't know. And being able to be in an environment where you literally are walking across the floor saying, oh, there's a technology for tying my event you know, it's my event platform or event measurement to a CRM that my brand uses.
I didn't know I needed that, and that's okay to not know that. But now you are seeing it in your face. It's so accessible right there. Just walk up and learn about it. And I think that's so important. Like you said too, we were just talking about the need for there to be a wider pool of event planners.
Really good ones, you know, experienced ones who are out there. Well, guess what? The way they get experienced is by getting exposed to more of what's accessible that are available, so they can be those subject matter experts for the teams they're working for. And that adds value to them. So it's a valuable thing to, to be able to go and say, Hey, I know more coming out of Event Tech Live than I did going in.[00:19:00]
Adam Parry: I genuinely think, I mean, we're already seeing titles such as event technologists, and I think they'll expand, right? I think it won't be long before we do see an SVP of event technology at a large corporate or something like that. Bloomberg, for example, Financial Times. They both have extensive teams just dedicated to helping their other event teams deliver on that technology piece effectively.
I think we'll see that, that rollout even further and people start to look for like, okay, now we have this tech stack, or this tech vision is just being a great event planner enough anymore? Is it gonna get you the big bucks? I don't know. Like, it really is.
And when it comes to ai, my approach to it has been just try and break stuff. A like, play with it, try and break it, figure it out. If it doesn't work, not, you know, I've been, I've actually been working with the image generator that you mentioned this morning, [00:20:00] Rachel, and another tool we are using to literally create bespoke HTML emails to our database, which took me all of -I produced one this morning from copy to completion in probably less than 30 minutes,
Rachel Moore: Wow.
Adam Parry: which is probably less time than I would've spoken to a designer about it.
So a really interesting quote that the model's changing, right? The reason that organizations like Facebook and others were really successful at the time is because the people that launched them knew understand how to code. That was the skillset that gave them the edge to create those things.
AI has changed that fundamentally forever. Now it's gonna be won by the people that are the most creative and the most eloquent when it comes to telling these models what they want and how they want it. You don't need to learn how to code anymore. In fact, in my opinion, it's gonna be a dying skill.
But that's what the events industry's all about, right? Isn't it? Creativity and ideas and how to bring people together and how to create these amazing experiences. So anybody that's in the field of like, well, it's not my [00:21:00] field. I'm in it to create experiences. Well, if you can get all of the stuff working in the background.
Like getting data to certain places, getting registration information, getting reports, getting data updating, updating contractors and all this kind of stuff. If you can use the tools and technology to automate all of that in the background and do it well, you've got all the time to focus on the creative stuff.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. There's all the reasons to tap into that because as we all said, I mean, the pressure's gonna continue. You know, the push to, to make more events and make them more evocative, make them more creative and keep leveling them up is going to continue.
But you providing Event Tech Live, having exhibitors there, having vendors there, having those options there. And I like too I think there, there's an aspect as well. You're not just going to a trade show. You also have experts there who are you know, giving talks demos thought leadership saying, Hey, by the way, did you know that this is where this is going?
Whether it's about AI or, experiential or how you, how are you gauging attendee sentiment and things like that. [00:22:00] There's all these kind of aspects that, as you said, it's not just about tech, it's about really upskilling any of those areas where you're like, I need to know more and need to be better at this.
Adam Parry: The technology really fundamentally comes down to either providing a process, which is an attendee needs a badge to get into an event, right? Or really supporting an objective for the event, which is we want to understand or do or know X and we need this thing in order to achieve that. And I think actually we've forgotten that some of these companies, not some of them, most of them are continually innovating with their platforms and technologies and stuff like that.
So even if you've seen the brand before, you've looked at it before, you kind of thought about it before and you've kind of dismissed it. It's not right for you at that right time. They've all changed in 12 months. They're all doing new things. They're all doing things in different ways. They are themselves leading when it comes to the integration of AI 'cause somebody asked me the other day was like, are you gonna have an AI section at Event Tech Live? And I was like, absolutely not. No, we're not gonna have an AI [00:23:00] section because it's fundamentally getting woven into every business
Rachel Moore: Yeah.
Adam Parry: as we see it. We all have lots of content about it, but it would be kind of unfair to have this little pot of like, oh, well that's all the fun AI stuff, and there's all these great companies doing all this great AI stuff, and they don't get the, they don't get the spotlight.
So I was like the event in itself is a spotlight on what's happening when it comes to AI and events.
Rachel Moore: We will be right back with more event experience after the break.
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Rachel Moore: We are back with Adam Parry to prepare any new attendees for their Event Tech Live experience. we're recording this at the very end of March.
So this [00:24:00] episode's probably gonna go live in April or May. Yes. Folks, people are still registering for conferences more than a week before it happens. Which Oh my gosh. I'm sure that is the talk of the town too is just like, oh my gosh, people are making these decisions and I'm not getting my attendee list until like, literally three days before the event. That's been a struggle. But again, tech can help with that stuff, but there's always that human factor, right?
Adam Parry: Oh, absolutely. You know, as somebody that would be self-proclaimed on the spectrum, there are some things I know I am absolutely gonna do, but I'm only gonna do them at the end when the time on the bomb is ticking down.
I had to apologize to somebody else the other day 'cause we booked a trade show booth with them and I was like, I've, I could have done this three weeks ago, Janet, and I'm really sorry, but I've just let it slip.
And it's like, I have even been that person that's literally registering for an industry trade show on the way into the venue. You know, because I've just left it that late. But that's, you know, where we all do it. Let's be honest about it. There's nobody in this events industry that can [00:25:00] say, oh yeah, I register like six months in advance.
And it always do it. That's a lie.
Rachel Moore: Nope. Step into the confessional. We can all admit what we've done. This actually segues nicely because, we know there's some things that are tried and true technology is always going to advance, it's always going to evolve. Some of the things that are not tried and true are just the world around us, right?
You know, we all know that there are different trends, different you know, geopolitical things happening you know, costs, prices, economies, things like that. All of this has impact on events. Whether or not people either can go to events or plan events or attend events or what have you.
I wanna ask you a bit more too, 'cause you, you do Event Tech Live, but you also do Event Sustainability. And I would love to hear more about that too. 'cause I feel is that a bit of a newer endeavor? And tell us more about that. It.
Adam Parry: Yeah, absolutely. You know, sustainability has always been at the heart of how we've produced Event Tech Live. You know, we were, I wouldn't say pioneering 'cause it's not rare, but me and my business partner actually went out to a trade show before we [00:26:00] launched Event Tech Live in Taiwan and the first thing that we noticed was there was no carpet.
It was a sustainability initiative. They were like, we don't need carpet in these halls. They're very nice. They're cool they're awesome. Exhibitors can have carpet if they want that's absolutely fine. But that stuck in our brains.
And actually we didn't go for a traditional trade show venue the first time we went out. So that's something. Now, don't get me wrong, some people were like, I am never coming back to your exhibition ever again 'cause you've not got carpet. I'm like, okay, that's fine. And we've continued to go through that.
Don't get me wrong, there are fantastic recyclable, reusable products on the market. There are sustainable carpet options, but it's always been a part of what we've done at Event Tech Live, and that's even gone into the technology side where we use it. We've, we were an early adopter of translation technologies, close captioning technologies, other accessibility supportive solutions for events and things like that.
So it was actually a really nice. [00:27:00] Natural segue into the sustainability side of things. And we were writing lots of things about it and actually that event, we're going through a process at the moment of re-imagining it as well, does it necessarily need to be a trade show? Could it be another event design or something like that?
That's something we're talking about internally, but the one thing that we know is. It's a very interesting topic to the events industry at the moment. The challenges are and continue to be budgetary investment, similar to event technology. Are people paying piecemeal to it a little bit? Is the budget being invested in sustainable options if a non-sustainable option is cheaper?
'cause budgets are under scrutiny, budgets are tight and things like that. And we're not legislated like other sectors. So there's no governments or government or, and that might change, right? That, that, that could absolutely change at heartbeat. But I know even, I won't name them, but I know very big companies that have carbon credits in the events sit [00:28:00] outside of that.
Rachel Moore: Are you still finding that attendees, we talked, just talked about choosing maybe late in the game, am I gonna go to this event or not? Is that part of their selection to say, is it evident that you're putting on a sustainable event and that's important to me as an attendee?
How heavy do you think that's impacting people's decisions?
Adam Parry: Do you know what it I think it, you have to look it from a generational perspective . And the same way the trend is going that younger generations don't drink alcohol. By margins that we meet my generation. 'cause I won't mention anybody else because that's not fair. You know, it's behavioral change and I think, you know, I'm in my forties now.
It's not my generation. There is consciousness on sustainability when it comes to attendance, but it's not necessarily a driving factor on whether I will or won't attend an event. But I could see my son as he gets to that point. Absolutely. Being a decision making, just the same as people make decisions on whether they go Pepsi or Coke or Nike or Adidas or do you know what I mean?
It's kind of like those, like, [00:29:00] well, I believe in that brand and that brand's mission and that thing more, I. You're gonna see more events. There are always gonna be competing events. So if one's offering a more sustainable approach to their events, then yes, I think that could absolutely play into somebody's decision making process about which one they invest in and which one they go to.
Because they themselves don't want to make an impact and we're being inundated with this information now, aren't we? Like if you book a train and you are often given, well, you save this amount of CO2 or if you go to a specific hotel, you might be like, well, if you stop in this room, you've made less impact.
If you don't ask for your room cleaned every single day, you've less made less impact. If you choose this off the menu, you've made less impact. So, yeah, I think naturally we're coming to a point where the impact element has be, is becoming much more transparent to us as consumers and attendees and things like that.
So yeah, I can absolutely see it making an impact in the future on, on where people go and who they do. The biggest problem is at the moment, on the whole events still aren't doing [00:30:00] a big enough job of recording and calculating their impact.
Kind of like a fear thing.
It's like don't want to know how bad it is. Better to be ignorant to it than knowing have to do something about it being terrible, do you know what I mean?
Rachel Moore: Yeah, I do kind of keep it nebulous where it's like, it's, yeah, we're thinking about it. Haven't really taken this step to measure it yet, because maybe we're not thinking about it, but I totally get it. I mean, it's kinda like when you,
Adam Parry: It's like the junk, what junk drawer is. It's like the junk drawer.
Rachel Moore: Oh, we, we have more than one in this house or like you see something kind of decadent and you're like, I'm gonna order that and I'm not gonna ask how many calories the nutritional value is 'cause I just want it.
And later you're like, oh no, that's re I regret that choice.
Adam Parry: What we have to remember to do as well though, is also change people's perceptions of things, because what could be seen to be a very lavish event, a very flamboyant [00:31:00] event. You know, certain structures, certain builds, certain stands, certain activations, those kinds of things. Well, how can that possibly be sustainable?
That's a huge waste of money. I actually took a, I took the Mickey out of her friend on Instagram yesterday because she was at a Greek event and they were smashing plates. And I went, oh, that's not very sustainable, is it? And she was like, actually the recycled are made from paper. So there you go. And I was like, you know, we have that relationship where we can have that bit of banter, but I could have also just been of that perception that's just a huge amount of waste and actually there's a story behind that.
Rachel Moore: where can our listeners find and follow you and Event Tech live online?
Adam Parry: Yeah. Show Event Tech Live is at Event Tech Live on Instagram, on LinkedIn, all the good for places. Me. If you want professional, it's LinkedIn, Adam.Parry. If it is General Live, it's Instagram PunchTownParry, and if you wanna see silly videos of me in the gym working out, I'm on TikTok, [00:32:00] so whichever, whichever floats your boat.
Rachel Moore: Skill up for this episode is a can't miss tech recommendation from Adam that has changed his daily life.
Adam Parry: There is a little piece of technology that I've come across recently that has made a huge change to my productivity. And it's a platform called Wispr Flow. So Wispr Flow is essentially a tool, and there's a free option, so no reason to not try it.
What Wispr Flow does is it sits on your Mac, and I do believe they're releasing Microsoft very soon, and it turns your functioning key into a listening microphone with a microphone attached to your computer and anything that you have, which has a text input into it.
So it could be [00:33:00] Slack, it could be Word, it could be docs, it could be LinkedIn, anything like that. You just hit it, you talk, and it dictates perfectly.
I am I'm not ever, I'm not exaggerating where I think it's allowing me to respond and reply and write things about five times faster.
I recommended it to a friend the other day at the Financial Times and she was like, this is the best tech recommendation I've ever had in my entire life.
Rachel Moore: Thanks again to Adam Parry for joining us on Event Experience, and thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you're listening. Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends. You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcast.
On behalf of the team, thank you. We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience.
