A visual summary of the www.EventTechBrief.com article, "The Data Dilemma: What Does Google Know That the Event Industry Doesn’t?" To read more or subscribe to the enewsletter, visit www.Eventtechbrief.com

2. The event industry has some
problems with data:
There is too much of it, it is spread across
multiple databases, and it’s not
standardized.

3. Eric Ly, founder and CEO of Presdo (and a Co-founder of
LinkedIn where he previously served as the company’s first
CTO) believes the event industry has only just begun to
understand the value of the data accumulated through the
normal course of operating an event—not to mention the
mounting business intelligence from mobile apps, beacons,
and other devices.
“There are many in the industry who
are interested in data and want to do
more with it, but we are just at the
beginning of understanding what the
value of data is. There’s a lot of data
being collected, but no one is
making actionable use of that data,”

4. It’s Not Going to Be Easy
Organizers use multiple platforms that create data—
registration, membership, marketing automation, and
mobile, to name a few—and each system organizes data
differently.
In order to leverage data, event producers
first have to be able to manage it.
Therein lies a major challenge.
“Because attendees touch multiple
databases as they interact with the
event, it’s hard to track the
activities of one single individual
across the entire event lifecycle.”

5. It’s Not Going to Be Easy
The APIs (offered by existing software companies)
that allow new applications to interoperate with
legacy platforms are very limited in the events
industry.
There are structural barriers that prohibit the
harvesting and integration of data from multiple
sources too.

6. It’s Not Going to Be Easy
When APIs are “open,” as in other industries, Ly says, “it’s
easier for customers to link systems together in order to
extract valuable insights.”

7. It’s Not Going to Be Easy
Another obstacle preventing
organizers from leveraging data is
the attendee himself.
“The registration process is broken.
Attendees give false information just
to get through it. We need to collect
good data about people that attend
events and relieve them of having to
fill out a registration form for every
event.”

8. Events could be contenders
Outside the event industry, organizations like Google,
Facebook and LinkedIn mine data to create exciting new
products and services, thereby attracting more users.
“Uber is a killer example of how a company
can leverage data to bring about a very
compelling user experience,” Ly says.
Event organizers can do the same. “The
promise of event data is to provide ways to
connect the right buyers and sellers
together and ultimately bring more value to
events, attracting even more participants to
events.”

9. A Collective Roadmap
In order to move to the next level of the data discussion—
true implementation and placement of the event industry on
par with other forward-thinking industries and
movements—change has to come from all stakeholders.
For example, while APIs represent a way for platforms to
communicate, it’s one that the developers control and
some event software providers aren’t as open to the idea
as others.

10. A Collective Roadmap
Ly strongly believes that open-data standards,
a common language that that no one company
owns and that platforms could share, would
make the integration of multiple systems that
much more viable.
They would enable event organizers to manage
data more easily and give software providers
an opportunity to compete more vigorously and
offer better solutions.

11. A Collective Roadmap
Event organizers themselves, including the
ones that have yet to develop a strategic
plan for data, have to take more initiative.
“Change of this magnitude takes
leadership by the events that are
the most innovative and for them
to show the rest of the industry
how it can be done.”

12. A Collective Roadmap
“Certain things are going to
break and it’s a hard thing to
have to experience, but in trying
we learn the key techniques that
will make these efforts
successful. The ones who
experiment and learn the lessons
first will be the ones who benefit
the most.”

13. A Collective Roadmap
Moving forward on data may require the event
industry to address some of the issues that are
holding it back: legacy systems and processes, an
aversion to risk, a lack of sustained investment in
new technologies.
“Without experimentation, reaching
a new level of opportunity will be
slow.”

14. Events aren’t that unusual
The discussions taking place in the event industry
today are not that much different than those Ly was
having with his LinkedIn colleagues a decade ago.
“Ten years ago we were talking theoretically about
what we could do with data. It turned out that there
were many valuable businesses that LinkedIn could
build with data. Now, [in the event industry] there are
similar discussions about what can be done to
leverage data to create even more value,” he says.

15. Events aren’t that unusual
Eric Ly’s outlook, forged from his role in arguably
one of the most successful business startups of all
time and a career steeped in the innovation of
Silicon Valley, is positive. “The potential for the
industry to leverage data is not that different than
the potential to leverage data in other industries,
and it’s happening in every industry. There’s a
huge opportunity to leverage data to grow the
business by 10 times to 100 times.”