Corp interview: “Having data or metrics to demonstrate event success is essential"

Stevie Simpson is Senior Events Manager at Input Output (IOG). The organisation is a blockchain infrastructure research and engineering company and Simpson’s role sees her working across a range of events across the globe.She describes the ‘variety’ within her role and says that she works across everything from conferences to exhibitions to community focused events. “We often attend community or industry events as a sponsor, so part of that is having a bespoke booth build with exciting activations, curated panel and speaker sessions, even live streamed podcasts.” The IOG events team also cover their internal events such as company Town Halls, AMA and in-person meet ups and workshops. IOG is a remote first business that has employees across the globe. Bringing the workforce together to collaborate is an integral part of the business operations.“I often also work with Universities that we partner with such as the University of Edinburgh, to collaborate on academic and research led conferences and events,” says Simpson. Her role in these cases involves engaging with the blockchain community and involving them to celebrate the amazing work within the academic and research side of the business.When asked what the most exciting event is she has produced to date in her career, Simpson says that it was a time when the world was just coming out of successive Covid-19 lockdowns. While working in her last role, the event set out to bring communities together worldwide for a global community event. She describes it as a ‘hybrid event that was one of the biggest blockchain events in the world to date and one of the first of its kind within the metaverse.’ The event brought together over 140,000 people virtually and over 10,000 in-person, Simpson’s main role was in the delivery of the live events which happened in New York, Miami, Wyoming, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Cape Town. Simpson oversaw the roll out of the geographically spread events and attended the Wyoming event in person.It stands out in her mind because the world was waking up from the pandemic and she admits it felt ‘like a funny time’ as the world was still so isolated, but she was prepping for an event with global execution. She herself, and some of the key event team, had to go into isolation overseas for two weeks prior to the live event. The whole event was curated and executed in seven weeks and there were numerous regulations to cross too at a particularly difficult time for business travellers and the events industry.“It was the biggest challenge from a logistical and production point of view of my career to date. I think that while we were producing it, we didn’t really ever take stock of whatwe were about to achieve but the success that followed after the event from multiple industry awards was amazing, including myself being named on the C&IT Agency A List 2022,” says Simpson. She says it was the sheer scale of it that makes it a career highlight added together with the particular restrictions of the time.Reflecting on the work she performs at IOG she says that with blockchain it is the open source community and a lot of the events that she works on are community focused. She notes that she recognises that post-Covid there is a thirst for individuals to ‘belong’ and be part of a community.“People really want to belong and be part of a community, and there are great examples that teach us this fundamental observation whether that’s someone being a Swiftie and going to a Taylor Swift concert to engage as a fan or belonging to a fitness community such as Hyrox to attend and compete in their global events. By fostering strong communities within your brand enables you to enhance your event attendance not just from a footfall perspective but also in terms of engagement to ultimately drive key messages and deliver on your strategic objectives.” she says.Reflecting upon why strategic event planning is more important than ever, Simpson says that having strong communities and knowing how best to engage with them aids successful event attendance and traction.She adds that in today’s world, more than ever, event specialists need to ensure their event strategy aligns with the wider corporate strategies of their organisation or their client’s organisation to be used as a tool that ultimately delivers ROI and metrics for success. The question says Simpson is that you must always ask yourself about the need/purpose of an event. “It’s not acceptable to sit as a team at the end of an event and say that was a great event, but we don't really know why, or we don't have any data or metrics to clearly demonstrate the success of the event. Especially as a corporate event professional we must ensure that our event strategy is in line with our company corporate strategy and that we are only using our events as a tool to achieve our strategic objectives as a business,” says Simpson.Outlining her top tips, Simpson says ensuring you are informed on your organisation’s corporate strategy, company objectives and developing an event strategy that supports and aligns with the wider business goals is vital. Engaging with the relevant stakeholders within your organisation is also fundamental to see how you, as the event specialist, can create an events strategy that ultimately position your events as a valuable tool across the business whether that be for external marketing, internal comms or even for business transformation strategies.“By setting out with a measurable and results driven approach, it allows for you to conduct insightful and valuable event analysis, which is key for future planning,” says Simpson. She remarks that it’s important to take the time post event to produce full post-event reports and gather feedback from across the business and attendees.“This provides us with valuable insights that allow us to ensure we’re delivering on what we set out to achieve – and if we didn’t, understand why that was. As well as providing data that will be a valuable contribution when preparing for future events strategies,” concludes Simpson.

Corp interview: “Having data or metrics to demonstrate event success is essential"

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