What the Modern Meeting Planner Wants

New research from the International Association of Conference Centers reveals that 80 percent of meeting planners believe access to interactive technology is going to become more important in the next five years, while an astounding 92 percent say “my dependency on Wi-Fi will continue to increase in the next three to five years.”

According to a report from Bizbash, these beliefs are driven by the need for delegate email and Internet access (86 percent); smartphone audience participation (84 percent); conference app (83 percent); video streaming for presenter (68 percent); live event streaming (66 percent); virtual attendees (57 percent), and other, less significant functions.

“Bandwidth is the gold standard—if you think you have enough, think again and double it,” says Ellen Sinclair, senior vice president of operations at Benchmark, a global hospitality company, who has been actively involved with the survey since its inception two years ago.

Obviously, these connected devices serve two roles in the meeting space: individual connectivity and group presentation. As these trends play out, presentation technology will become more widely deployed.