Open Audience says that despite being an audience engagement technology company, tech is often the last thing the company talks about.
Sometimes the perception of technology companies is that we’re geeks who pitch up to an event, plug in, do a few checks and away we go. Thankfully I can confirm that isn’t the case for Open Audience. We specialise in audience engagement for Life Sciences events, and although technology is at the heart of the solutions we deliver, it isn’t the first thing we think about.
We know that Healthcare Professionals attend events for many reasons; be it personal development, networking with peers, education or to hear from specialist speakers. Whatever it is, their time represents a real investment and has a value to them, and so almost the first thing we do is to try and understand the needs and expectations of these delegates.
We know that the delegate journeys differ for hybrid, virtual and live audiences, so we look at each journey carefully to identify how we can deliver an equivalent experience and what the touchpoints en-route might be so that we can make it more personal. As part of this process, we calibrate where we can gather insights that allow us to deliver a more relevant and valuable event experience, in exchange for their time invested.
When it comes to the event itself, we may be working with pre-determined content, or get involved early in agenda design. We’ll discuss and collaborate with our client or our event partners on the best way to present the content and what engagement techniques will produce the best communication flow? This could include everything from pre-event questions like “what are the biggest issues you’re facing with this subject?” (which will allow us to tailor the event content before or during the event), or facilitating dialogue from the stage to the audiences with rolling Q&A ‘s from specialists in the audience, or simple voting or polling opportunities to sense check understanding and so on.
When we know what return on engagement the client expects, and we know how the delegate defines ‘value’, then we consider the best technologies to deliver a seamless, relevant, engaging event experience. Technology-wise, one size certainly doesn’t fit all, although we have our own industry-leading engagement platforms, sometimes the simplest little app can fill a gap and work wonders. So, we often use multiple technologies along the delegate journey (first touch to last-pass and everything in between), to deliver over-arching solutions, we believe our experience and tech literacy help us to create just the right tech solution for the job.
So, if you talk to Open Audience about your event we may seem reluctant to open our bag of technical goodies straight away. Our aim is to offer you the right technology solution for the right reasons, at the right cost to drive the best engagement outcomes for you, and that may very well include someone else’s technology as well as our own.
