The Technology and Innovation Watch Award, takes place at ibtm world every year and it showcases the Top Ten technology suppliers, who have made a significant contribution to the meetings and events industry. The Top Ten are always featured in the Innovation Zone on the show floor, for all attendees to pop by and find out about the latest leading developments.
InitLive won the ultimate title and took the award home last year. Let’s take a look at where they are now, 1 year on.
Tell us about your product and who your target audience is?
InitLive helps Event Planners better manage and coordinate their event team. Their tool provides planners with scheduling & communications before, during & after their event.
InitLive is best suited for any type of event that requires a large staff/volunteer team, particularly: festivals, sporting events, conferences & academic events.
What changes to your business have occurred since being part of the Innovation Zone’s Top Ten at ibtm world 2015?
Since ibtm world, we have crossed over many milestones with the product and overall business. Many new features have been launched including the full localization of the product, making it now available in French. Our biggest success has been landing a contract with the Ottawa 2017 Bureau, which will help them manage thousands of volunteers for the year long celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017.
What advice can you provide to a company that wants to launch a product to the MICE industry?
If you have a company that is launching a product in the MICE industry, make sure you talk to your customers. Find out exactly what their needs are, and keep in touch with them as you continue to build the product. Their feedback and direction will help you make the difficult decisions with your product.
What advice would you give to this year’s applicants to be successful? If you had the chance to do it again, what would you do differently?
In order to be successful, you are going to want to take advantage of the show floor. Not everyone will come up to the booth, so it will be up to you to try and network with people in the other common feature areas.
If we were to do anything differently, we would really narrow down the product’s value proposition into a short, deliverable elevator pitch.
Outside of the Innovation Zone, what new things did you discover about the meetings industry at ibtm world?
This felt like one of the biggest shows in the industry, not because of the physical space, but because of the diversity of the audience. We were so impressed with everyone’s excitement and willingness to do deals internationally. Being on the show floor, you could really see how open the meetings industry are to the whole globalization movement.
How did ibtm world help overcome any challenges you were facing?
Having the ability to talk to planners from around the world at ibtm world, really helped us identify the problems we needed to address with our product. Although events are taking place in many countries around the world (and are being hosted in different languages), all planners seemed to identify to the same key problems whilst planning and running their events.
Summarise your Innovation Zone experience in 3 words.
Great for networking.
Find out more about – The Technology and Innovation Watch with EventMB.