This week on Events ProfsCast, Rachel is joined by David Adler, chairman and founder of BizBash. David pops by to talk about preserving the memory of our events and how event professionals can play a larger role - beyond traditional events - in a world transformed by the pandemic.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Davis was the CEO of BizBash for 20 years. He guided the business through the ups and downs of 9/11, bursting of the doc com bubble, and the economic disaster of 2008. BizBash covers events and creates databases of who did what at that event. This gives event planners the ability to see what other event planners are doing. BizBash has created a visual vehicle to get ideas, find ideas, and expand on ideas.
- BizBash went global in 2019 when David sold a majority stake in the business to Tarsus.
- Right out of college, David started a society newspaper in Washington, DC. With a bootstrap budget of only $6000 and his mother acting as the editor, David’s newspaper became a database of who did what at society events around the town.
- People generally want to know what other people are doing. This is true in business and in virtually every aspect of life.
- In David’s eyes, going to an event is a way to do reconnaissance and a way to gather intelligence about what others are doing. In a competitive world, this becomes an important activity. BizBash allows event professionals to gather this intelligence without having to attend hundreds or thousands of events in a given year.
- For any event planning professional, providing a lasting experience that inspires attendees to talk about that experience for into the future represents a real accomplishment. BizBash provides a way to facilitate this “memorability” in the events space by capturing a visual record of what transpired at an event.
- Most people in the event industry are overlooking the psychology of events. When people gather, events flow. David likes to reference the “oxytocin exchange” that happens at events. Not only paying attention to this aspect of gatherings and events, but recording it for future reference is valuable.
- Having hit “rock bottom” after a two year shutdown, David sees a coming renaissance in the in-person event space. People need gathering and interaction. After having this taken away from us, “event thinking” is going to permeate everything going forward. Event planning skills and methods can be applied in all kinds of interesting ways as we return to offices, schools and other gathering places. Learning to celebrate our “return to normal” should show us that we should and can regularly celebrate our gatherings and make them special.
- In a post-pandemic world, new “gathering things” are going to start happening while old “gathering things” are transformed and reinvented. Event professionals are in a great position to play a key role in facilitating the way we re-discover gathering. As David pointed out in this episode, in every type of crisis comes opportunity. Are you ready to take advantage of this opportunity?
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