CROWDSOURCING: Harnessing the Hive Mind - Feature

Crowdsourcing taps directly into the insights and creativity of attendees, revolutionizing event planning and elevating the events and exhibitions sector to higher standards and experiences. As the industry continues to transform, understanding the emerging trends in attendee input is crucial for shaping modern events.

One of the most effective tools in event planning is Crowdsourcing. It is a process that aims at collecting people’s ideas, opinions, and suggestions through the internet and social media networks to increase the interest and success of the event. It enables event organizers to go straight to the heart of their target clientele, thus catering to clients’ expectations in the best ways possible, with higher people’s engagement leading to better event outcomes.

Leveraging Social Media Platforms
With the rise of social media and networks, communication has picked up pace between event planners and their target audiences for idea creation. Social media platforms offer direct means of communication with the attendees. These platforms enable event planners to gather information from the intended attendees by employing polls, comments, and live question & answer sessions, as well as people’s opinions and/or feedback in real time. Furthermore, because of the nature of social media, the presented ideas can go viral, potentially reaching a larger audience than a conventional marketing campaign.

There are many engaging social media campaigns that have got attendees involved in the planning of events. For example, the Coachella music festival leverages Instagram and invites people to upload their ideas for art installations using a dedicated hashtag. 
Digital platforms offer advantages such as:

• Ideas can be accessed instantly, resulting in the enhancement of creativity and the inclusion of participants’ perspectives on the events. 
• Creates a group identity and feeling that is associated with ownership, meaning better learning attendance and even better formation of group and team participation. 
• Helps attract the most fitting audience as well as collect valuable data on attendees’ expectations to improve the organization of events, as well as act as a cheap and effective surveying tool. 

These approaches not only improve the event itself but also create a loyal audience around the brand, which in turn translates to the possibility of long-term business success.

Engaging Attendees through Interactive Platforms
Conducting social media crowdsourcing could be a bit tricky because it involves sourcing information from hundreds of thousands of people, making it extremely challenging and time-consuming. It is therefore critical to turn it into actionable insights, and a few important pointers to take note of to make the most of the process are defining goals and expectations; choosing the right approach and channels; and sorting the information with a unified monitoring platform.

Another engaging way to collect event data is to use gamification technology and gamify event agendas, which are great tools to enhance digital marketing strategies and boost engagement, respectively. In line with the event agenda, immersive games—arcade games, digital scavenger hunts, etc.—can be customized to engage new prospects and leads.

Interactive platforms foster the implementation of attendee interaction and establish a feedback loop between the organizers and the attendees. With the help of these platforms, event planners can develop more engaging event experiences, resulting in not only better outcomes for the event but also a more engaged community around the brand of the event.

Exploring the Power of Co-Creation
In the ever-evolving landscape of exhibitions and event planning, a new approach is gaining momentum - Co-Creation. This concept actually involves participants, attendees, or partners in the event design and creation, enhancing attendee satisfaction, fostering brand loyalty, and driving the success of events, making them active contributors.

Co-creation also differs from conventional approaches to event planning because the participants’ collective intelligence and creativity are incorporated. When planners involve the attendees in the decision-making process, they gain an understanding of what they want and require, which influences them. With this understanding, event planners are able to design and present memorable and creative events that resonate deeply with attendees.

The value of collaborative design in terms of the satisfaction of every attendee and the success of an event is crucial and undeniable. Therefore, for event planners to fully unlock the potential of co-creation, they have to adhere to best practices, much like in crowdsourcing. Among the crucial activities are goal specifications, choosing the proper communication means, and orienting participants. Additionally, it is important to note that ethical issues should be central to the realization of co-creation. Optimizing the flow of information, transparency, fairness, and respect for the privacy and security of the information is essential to building trust and continuously ensuring that the process is as ethical as it can possibly be.

Navigating Ups & Downs
Crowdsourcing can be effectively used in business as a component of its strategies, though the process must be well coordinated. Following are some of the of the main benefits:  

• Enhanced Creativity through diverse perspectives by tapping into a broad and diverse crowd.
• Cost-Effectiveness due to reduced overheads by allocating tasks or projects to a distributed workforce.
• Faster Idea Generation and creating creative solutions swiftly ensure staying ahead in competitive markets.
• Enhanced Problem Solving through collective intelligence, especially addressing complex challenges.
• Adaptability to scaling resources up or down based on project needs.
• Access to Global Talent Pool via the internet.
• Community Building and Engagement, leading to increased enthusiasm and dedication to the success of the initiative.
• Faster Execution by distributing tasks among a large number of contributors.
• Testing ideas, products, or services with ease. 
• Openness to Everyone, promoting inclusivity by allowing anyone with relevant skills or insights to contribute. 

Adopting these best practices will help organizations improve the quality of crowdsourcing, come up with more innovative solutions to challenging problems, and engage a global community in a useful way.

A Process of Continuous Learning
In today’s fast-paced world, event management and planning are rapidly evolving, driven by many upcoming megatrends in line with changing societal norms. Crowdsourcing can be viewed as an opportunity for continuous learning and refining such processes for future events, which keeps the interaction with the audience open and engaged with the event. Yet to be widely adopted by business environments, crowdsourcing still needs to overcome certain barriers. However, as an effective innovation tool, crowdsourcing is sure to continue to help make events a unique and shared experience.

‘Wisdom of Crowds’ is a theory and new typology of crowdsourcing that allows respective fields to build knowledge systematically and collectively, which is more effective in problem-solving and decision-making than individual expertise, as exemplified by the TED conference’s crowdsourced speaker nominations.

Crowdsourcing offers many benefits, including enhanced creativity, cost-effectiveness, faster idea generation, enhanced problem solving, adaptability to scaling resources, access to a global talent pool, community building and engagement, faster execution, testing ideas, products, or services, and inclusivity.