5 questions for InvitePeople from an event studio

Recently, Digitalstudion asked us to answer a couple of short questions about the InvitePeople platform in their series The Platform Guide. Below is the interview with Matti from us.

Why should we as event organizers use InvitePeople?

We see event organizers as our partners and colleagues. Therefore, we try to give them top notch service, work closely and they should be confident that we respond and help as soon as possible and needed.

 

As an event organizer, you also have a platform where you can basically do everything. From the small event like webinars and conferences up to large congresses and fairs. You do everything in the same platform and never have to look around for another service: Matchmaking, invoice management, interactivity, gamification and a whole lot more. In this way, our platform is one of the most competent on the market. And don’t forget that we have damn sharp developers so we develop and are involved in shaping the meetings of the future together with our customers.

 

InvitePeople’s platform is also intuitive and easy to understand and manage. It’s easy to say, but ask our customers! You can design the event page directly in our editor, but also have the opportunity to use HTML and CSS to make professional and stylish events. Ordinary computer skills go a long way, however. Event organizers can do everything themselves without our help, but if you want us to do certain parts, we are there for you.

 

But the most important thing is probably that with our more than ten years of experience of physical events, you can carry out digital, hybrid or physical events with one and the same platform. While you can stream, send pre-played broadcasts, chat, polls, breakout sessions and lots more, you can also print badges, scan QR codes in the entrance with an app in the phone, view agenda and booking status for sessions on screens onsite and have registration computers set up.

How do you handle the important pieces of data privacy and GDPR in terms of your connection to the United States?

The most important thing to mention is that the customer owns all the data that we store for them for as long as they want. It is the customer’s information, not ours.

 

InvitePeople maintains a high level of security and everything else would make it impossible to have large international companies, banks and insurance companies as customers. Of course, we follow GDPR rules, follow customers’ DPAs and all data is stored within the EU/EEA. We have a Data Protection Officer, perform regular penetration tests and scans for OWASP top 10 threats, have security strategies for employees and everything else that may be required to maintain the absolute highest level of security.

We have no direct connection to the USA and you can carry out events without connection or information transferred to the USA.

How do you handle video storage and metadata?

Most platforms do not have video storage, so the customer must store them in other services. We store video for customers within the EEA and store in accordance with agreements with our customers.

 

There is also a lot of other functionality around video management. You can, for example, watch and trim recordings while the livestream is in progress, thereby publishing a trimmed video very quickly after a livestream or publish segments of a livestream while it is still in progress.

 

The customer receives very detailed data on what the participants have done in the platform, attendance at sessions, who has logged in, how long and on which parts of the event and other info that is very useful to be able to evaluate their event.

What sets you apart from international players such as Hopin?

The small customer at Hopin is the large customer at InvitePeople! We have the opportunity to be close to customers with a local presence and local service. With us, you can ask and get answers and often we can adapt things for our customers the way a company that Hopin would never do.

 

Given our history, we are also fully equipped for physical and hybrid conferences in addition to digital meetings, which means that you do not have to turn to more suppliers. And frankly, I’m not particularly impressed with Hopin. Expensive and it often goes bad, maybe not because the platform does not fit the bill, but I don’t think the customer always gets the support required.

How many conferences were run via InvitePeople during the spring?

We do not reveal any exact numbers, but more than one a day in the spring.

What do you see as you look into the future, post-pandemic?

I think that the industry right now are staring blindly at the pandemic restrictions and if they come back and have an idea, belief or hope that the event industry will go back to as before with above all physical events.

But I think they are missing some important big trends. The absolute biggest is that digital meetings and events work and work very well! We are only at the beginning of the technical development so they will be much much better year by year.

Another important trend is what we hear from our customers and from elsewhere. Many companies make sharp cuts in their budgets for “Meet and Travel”. For example, Eriksson plans to reduce business travel by 50%. We hear the same thing from SEB, Telia, IKEA and Volvo to name a few, with the difference that many plan to reduce the budget by up to 80%.

Eriksson’s CEO Börje Ekholm said some time ago: Our ambition is to greatly reduce travel. It is good for the quality of life and good for the environment. So I am convinced that we will use the digital aids that are available.

This will greatly affect the event industry. So my guess is that many more of the events of the future will be held digitally than people believe today.