Digital Fabric : How and Why it Matters for your Event Planning

Imagine you’re off to start your day on a sunny morning, but a thunderstorm unexpectedly arrives. Your schedule has been put to an abrupt stop, ruining everything you have planned. What if this analogy happens again, but this time, to your events?

We know, this is the last thing that any event planner like yourself will want to happen. But then again, the show must go on.

We can’t predict the future, but we can prepare for it

As COVID-19 disrupted the industry, event organizers around the world made the choice of adapting their onsite events into a digitalized experience. These transitions were deemed necessary as a preventative measure to tackle any incoming problems during the pandemic period.

The situation has subsided considerably and onsite events are returning. However, as the Omicron variant has shown, it may only be a roller coaster ride towards recovery from the pandemic. Health regulations and restrictions will change accordingly to the order of the day, presenting lots of uncertainty for planning an event. This leads us to the question of whether there could be a way of event planning that is future-proof and adaptable to the ever-changing regulatory climate.

This is why we think that having a Digital Fabric in your event strategy will be akin to hitting two birds with one stone: enhancing onsite engagement capabilities whilst having a digital-ready strategy in any case where you will need to switch your event from onsite to virtual.

What is this ‘Digital Fabric’ concept, exactly?

To answer this question, Let’s backtrack and re-imagine the previous analogy.

You as an event planner are about to hold your events onsite. Meanwhile the current situation is unpredictable, just like the weather. Imagine if you must leave your house under these unpredictable weather conditions — you will have to put on the appropriate clothes to get you through the day. This works the same for event planning, you should have clothes that can flexibly adapt to all kinds of weather conditions.

You can think of Digital Fabric as your “customizable wear” to shield and keep you comfortable; regardless of the situation you might face.

First, Digital Fabric should ‘comfortably’ enhance onsite experience

Digital event platforms are dime a dozen, mostly offering a virtualized event experience. Not many can present extensive proven engagement results for live events as understandably many of them were launched or developed during this pandemic where onsite events are a rarity. In pre-pandemic, a core purpose of event technologies (Jublia is proud to be a pioneer) is purely to enhance the onsite experience.

One of the missteps by planners is to have the misconception that digital platforms are primarily only for digital or virtual audiences.

Hence, the concept of having a ‘Digital Fabric’ wrapping around your event means that your digital platform should primarily aim to amplify live engagement, be it onsite smart matchmaking, live booths recommendations or unified audience interactions via Q&A/Polls/Survey for all types of audiences. An added plus will be that the platform should enable your virtual audiences to be involved, if you are planning it in a hybrid way.

Second, the Digital Fabric should tackle any ‘weather’ conditions

When you see your digital solution functioning like a Digital Fabric for your event, you will expect it to be able to anticipate changes and it should ideally have proven itself for different scenarios that may result from the prevailing conditions.

At Jublia, we have experienced and adapted based on different scenarios, some of the most common ones are:

• Going from onsite event type to a fully virtual event
• Downsizing the onsite event size and go partly virtual
• Shifting overseas audience to take part virtually due to travel restrictions
• Contact tracing requirements and cohort managements for the onsite event

The above series of ‘Plan B’ for events are simply a necessity to keep events going. Without the possibility of being flexible to change, the usual options are limited to cancellation and refund of events, or postponement. While those are not necessarily bad options, the additional ‘Plan B’ options that our Digital Fabric creates, increases the resilience of your event plan.

Our Commitment

With our 9+ years of experience in this industry and 5000+ track records in supporting various types of events, we’re ready to be your partner in this uncertain time. Our utmost objective is to elevate event organizers’ success through engagement performance and mitigate any possible risk that could come along the way. This Digital Fabric concept is a core fundamental when we advise our clients with Jublia’s Safe, Anticipate, Future-proof Event (S.A.F.E.) framework.

Do look forward to next week on how we implement this strategy in our upcoming case study! Follow us on our LinkedIn so as not to miss it. Contact us at info@jublia.com too, we will be keen to discuss how we can create with you your Secure Anticipate Future-proof Event.