 So, and welcome, we are so glad you're here starting your week with us as well as Elias Perronan who has joined us all the way from Canada. He is the founder of Traktis Events and is going to shed a lot of light with us about rethinking virtual conferences. So stay with us because Elias has some really good insight to share with us. And I've already enjoyed our conversation so I know that there's going to be more more fun to have. Julia Patrick is here. Of course she is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. We have her to thank because we are marching towards our 900th episode. That's 900. I know, jaws are dropping, heads are shaking. And I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group and truly honored to serve alongside you Julia as we march toward this big milestone. But you know we wouldn't be here if it weren't for our amazing sponsors and our partners in this journey. So thank you so very much to our friends. They are Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd as well as Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the companies many have been marching with us from the very beginning all the way to this 900th and beyond. I feel like Buzz Lightyear to infinity and beyond. So we're going to keep marching. But if you missed any of our episodes, including the one today that we're having, you can find us on all of our platforms which include the streaming of broadcast also on podcast and the latest and greatest which I've been saying now for a few months so that who knows, we might be working on something else but you can download that app. So go ahead and scan the QR if you're watching and you can see the visual element right in front of you. Scan that app in just a couple of hours. After this conversation live, you will get a notification that today's conversation has been uploaded. So without further ado, I would like to reintroduce Elias Perinen. Again, he's joining us founder of Traktis Events. Welcome to you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Okay. Where are you coming to us from? Because this is pretty cool. Well, I am coming to you today from Ontario, Canada. Awesome. Awesome. We were talking in the green room, Elias, that for... We just keep picking up more and more viewers and more and more guests from Canada and it's just been a really cool thing to see with the nonprofit show. You know, we operate so similarly and then there are other pieces where they aren't similar and so it's been really fun to kind of learn, you know, from everybody. Talk to us about Traktis Events, where you work and actually what you do. Absolutely. So Traktis Events, the way we started out was just a simple, hey, we're at a trade show and you want to scan other people using your phone. We came up with that technology. Then 2020 happened to put it lightly. And we were looking at doing live streaming and virtual production anyway, so we ended up going down that road, ended up making an event platform to host those events, doing speaker coaching, full event production, and that's where we are today is doing virtual and hybrid event production. Also, a lot of our clients, when they hire us, they're looking for somebody that's able to take what their requirements are and go and talk with the tech teams and the venues to figure out how are we going to make this happen without spending all of our money. Yeah. Well, I'm really excited. We have to, I feel it's only right, Julia, that we went as, when we started the nonprofit show, we truly thought it was like a two-week endeavor. And here we are four years in the making and not going anywhere, no plans to go anywhere, really maintaining this streaming, not only live, but then sharing it on the other platform. So let's dive into hosting events because you have a lot to share with us. And one thing that Julia and I, you know, ask a lot of our guests is, you know, what does this look like going forward? So if you could, Elias, start us off with, what's the current market showing when it's showing for in-person events as well as a hybrid? Can you like catch us up to date on that? For sure. And this is the perfect time to have this conversation too, because we're coming out of the summer. Everybody's going to start thinking about their 24, 25, 26 events, hard to believe, but yes, we're getting into that. Venues are getting booked out. Wow. I can't believe, I mean, I'm just looking at like October of 23 right now. Yep. And then there are venues that are booking out. I know, I mean, wedding venues for sure, they're booking out two, three, four years in advance right now, but when it comes to your big tier one venues like in Las Vegas and in Vancouver and in Toronto, I mean, they're, they're getting booked solid. We're seeing a big comeback with in-person events. But at the same time, there's been a lot of conversation now that we've had about a year, about a full year cycle where the restrictions are minimal to none. And we've been able to try to go back to in-person and incorporate some virtual elements into it, creating what we would call asynchronous hybrid, where the in-person and the online attendees are experiencing the same content at the same time. The interesting part that's coming through is now that the bill is coming due for a lot of those events, the ROI has been a bit of a question mark for the virtual side, for the, for the hybrid side of things. Okay, wow. Oh, okay. Because to do the hybrid side, what we're finding is that the AV that you need to bring in, there's a lot of audio visual, there's now that we need a technician in every single room, that's labor that we have to pay. They're set up and teared down for all that. I mean, the biggest example of a not-for-profit talking about this publicly too is the American Astronomical Society. They had a 2023 conference and to go hybrid for the six days, their internet and Wi-Fi costs alone were $147,000. Whoa. That just gave me the chills and made me sick to my stomach at the same time. Yeah, and the big thing that they're saying is we're not sure where to go from here. Right? Yeah. Okay. So, okay, now with that, I have like a bajillion questions. Yeah. When you hear that and you're just a, you know, you're a, let's say you're an association of social workers of some sort. And you hear that. It seems to me like it's going to slam the door pretty quickly on even thinking about hybrid. It's going to just turn people off and say, no, we can't do that. What do you think? Is that something that is a one-off that that's going to be what we need to be thinking about? I mean, how realistic is this given what you said, which was pretty magical, is that we're still neophytes here. It's still the first year. We're still learning. Sure. Here's the thing. Costs never seem to go down, do they? Costs never seem to go down. There's a shortage of labor in the audiovisual market and that is driving production costs up. This equipment is not cheap to get. A solid portable streaming rig, one of them can be five to six figures to build. And so that needs to be rented so many times in order for the company to make their money back. Not to mention that there are other market forces at play. There's been a lot of consolidation in the events market. We have seen hotel chains get bought up by private investment groups. I believe it is Blackstone that bought up Hilton along with Sevent along with Encore. And so that vertical integration and monopolies is going to have an impact on venue prices. Combine the combine that with the demand for those tier one venues and those costs that are already high, they're not going down anytime soon. And if we continue a high interest rate environment, that's just going to be what we're going to see. So the question becomes should we go hybrid? Shouldn't we? Should we have an in person event? Should we have a virtual event? And I would suggest that if you're thinking about an either or either we do in person or we do hybrid or we do virtual, I think you're limiting your options as a not for profit organization because there are we now that we're solidly away from the early 2020s. We can now start to take a look at all these different event formats and go, when do we want to use each of these? Because remember the core reason why are we bringing people together for an event in the first place? And having done some consultation calls with some organizations, sometimes that core idea hasn't been explored in a decade. It's just like, well, we're doing it every year because this is what we do. What we do? This is our main fundraiser. That was the other thing I was going to say. Elias is really looking at, okay, in person, remote, and we could have synchronous, asynchronous, or we could just scrap the whole event, right? Like, is that even what we want to consider doing? And that's really what I'm hearing you say is like a lot of these events. We haven't even scratched the surface on them in a decade because we do them and we do them and we do them and we do them. So I feel like there's so many questions on the table now. And now is the time to start thinking about this. Now that we are past the early 2020s, now that we have a fix on what the next couple of years will likely look like, we can now start to talk about what does our event portfolio look like? The idea, think, here's an idea that I always suggest. Back a couple of years ago, AI was just on the minds of us nerds. There's a lot of nerds here, so be careful. Yeah, yeah. But today, my father uses chat GPT to help write his emails. Right. Like that's how fast the world has moved in just 24 months. Yes. I mean, to 24 months ago, we were mocking generative AI for not being able to draw hands. And today it's making works of art that are winning awards. So when you think about how fast today's world is moving and changing, if you are having one event per year, because that's what you've always done. And say your event is two or three days long. Well, how are you engaging with your audience the remainder of the year? How are you giving your sponsors and your exhibitors opportunities throughout the year to connect with you and connect with your audience? One of the big struggles I've seen with some not-for-profits, and I've been on this side of it before, is getting to your sponsors at the right time when they're in the planning phases for their budgets. If you don't get in front of them at the right time, it's, well, you know, we love your cause. How many times have you heard, I love your cause, but we just, we've already set our budget. Right, right. You know, I love that you're talking about this in that respect of your round engagement, because Jared and I hear this from so many of our guests that come on, especially when it comes to fundraising or board development, marketing, PR, you know, it can't be just a one-time thing and be effective. And so it's fascinating to actually even hear you echo that as well with something that we don't normally think of. So I'm kind of curious about this and I'm wondering about what this looks like to you. Do you see that it's, you know, in essence, a hybrid concept where it's like in-person only, and then we do things throughout the year that are asynchronous? I mean, where do you see this going? Where I look at this, where I look at the market going and what you can think about when you're starting to think about building that event portfolio, and you really need I believe you need to think about the events that you put on as a portfolio, because each event that you do should lead into the next event and into the next event and into the next event, because it used to be you put on an event and as long as you could get authority from whoever your office's higher power was, or if you were an entrepreneur yourself, you would go. And the value propositions were very obvious for going to an event. You could meet the right people. You could get educated on the latest going on in your industry, self-evident. Now that decision chart has become a lot more complicated. Event expert Julius Solaris talks about this. He's the awesome dude who wrote the forward to my book and he talks about the old decision used to be if it was an event, you went. But now if there's an event going on, you know, can I get the same content online? Is there a live stream option? You know, there's a lot more decisions that go into this that go into going to an event. So when you're thinking about doing about putting on your yearly event and having a yearly cornerstone major fundraiser event or major event where you bring in your top sponsors and your top speakers, that might be something you want to consider for in person. The format of it may change. We can talk about that in a minute. But where you can start to harness a hybrid model of your event portfolio is thinking about, well, what kind of virtual events, what kind of online events can we do to start building up our audience, you know, getting them involved with our brand or with our message more often with that leading into and building up to a cornerstone event that may be smaller than what you are used to, but offers connections that are high value to everybody that's involved. And those events don't have those in person events don't have to break the bank either. You know, as small intimate exclusive 50 person dinner with an A level keynote expert can be super valuable to your attendees. And those are the events that we're starting to see really take off. Interesting. Wow. Okay, really stirred the pot. Yeah, you have no idea. I know. And I really appreciate it. And I'm looking at this. Elias, there are a couple of lens first and foremost, you know, as the nonprofits that that want and need to engage their donors, but also as a conference attendee that wants to engage and learn, you know, and interact with peers across the nation. Can we talk about apps? Because there's a lot of apps now that exist when it comes to events, right? And it's like, I see it in conferences. Do you recommend that we include some kind of an app as this build up? If we can look at it from the purview of the nonprofit, like the nonprofit, perhaps doing builds up, you know, build up throughout the year. How are we engaging that community? If you will, through that technology platform in so many ways. And I just opened up like a whole box of words, but Oh, for sure. And we've seen, I mean, and I've been on the other side of this as the the the origins of tractis my company, we built an event app and it was meant for exactly what you're talking about. You go to a conference. You want to see who's there, who are the exhibitors, who are the sponsors scanning badges, doing lead retrieval for the exhibitors been there. I've been the developer on that side. Okay. So it's and that's an interesting world because the more that I built out that app and the more that I saw people use that the more that I realized that we've almost got the app game backwards in my opinion in that you almost find that there's let me tell you a story. I'll tell you a story about one of the latest conferences that we did. It was a trade show and we gave everybody access to the platform to the app. You know, a few weeks in advance of the show and what it did was it gave all of the exhibitors and all the attendees a chance to map out and plan their show. And in that way, it was a hybrid, maybe not the hybrid that you would think of where you're watching all the content at the same time, but there was an online element. You could set meetings. You could see who was there by the time you get to the trade show. It was really only the exhibitors that were using the app, but they were just using it to scan badges and then do the lead retrieval later. So in terms of an app, I think as if you want, if you're hosting a conference or you're hosting a trade show and you want to invest in the success of your attendees, I would say start thinking about platforms that allow you to give your attendees access to the content to your exhibitors to your sponsors well in advance. You want to have that show planned out. I had a client that I was working with as well to help build out his trade show exhibition strategy before the conference. They had no plan at the trade show. They actually ended up closing. They've closed so far 16,000 in new business and they've got another 40 K in the pipeline just because they came up with the mentality and the mindset of here's how we need to exhibit, you know, setting up a good booth, getting the leads, scanning the badges, getting appointments set on people's calendars, you know, setting the followups. When it comes to the community side, this is where things are starting to shift in the and I think there's there are a lot of tech solutions out there for building up a community and there are some event apps that are good for say one event, you know, one and done. There are some apps that go for a little bit more of a community feel, but when it comes to building up your community, I think this is where brands have traditionally struggled to retain people and actually build up, you know, how do we how do we engage this community? Like a lot of times they'll use social media, just blast stuff out there and with without talking, but it's but again, it's it's social media, you know, the what we see across all the platforms is the individuals that are associated with companies get like 10 acts, the reach and the coverage that the brand itself does. I mean, go on LinkedIn for five minutes and what do you see all the individuals posting about their companies, not the companies, right? I have 10 acts, the followers that my company page does and people are following me, they're not following the company page. So you need to figure out where are your communities and how do you meet with them? There are a lot of platforms that you can use to say build up community over time. A lot of individual creators are fix it or going towards platforms like discord, for example, where you can have a community based text chat that is just always happening. I'm part of a large discord called office hours and it's where a bunch of us audio visual professionals and tech people, you know, it's it's a giant network of experts and along with that they have their daily office hour show and it's a chance for us to keep the conversations always going come up with new show topics. If somebody needs help with something, you know, they put a blast out to the group, you know, to a specific channel and say, Hey, I need help with this. And so they're building up that community. So I think when it comes to go back to the original question is how can we start to build up community and start to engage community? It's also thinking about meeting your community where they are, like what are the platforms that you say? Right, right. Well, yeah, I mean, stir in the pot, I know, but this is just fascinating. Let's get back to the production. So perhaps we're listening as a nonprofit leader, board member, you know, planning committee and we say, Okay, we are absolutely doing the same event we did last year and the year before and the decades previous. We really want to engage with the right production partner because this is where we want to level up, right? What does that look like? And what are some of the things we need to look at when it comes to securing the right production partner? Sure, that goes on a couple different levels because you can have the production partner that's taking care of the audio visual. You have production partner that might be taking care of onsite logistics, you know, making sure that your exhibitors get on boarded that their that their gear get shipped to the venue that they know who to contact at the venue should they need electricity or rigging or anything like that. You've got the marketing and ticketing side of things where you're you've got somebody taking care of registration and the big thing when you're looking for your right production partner or partners is you want to make sure that you are working with somebody that can understand that whole picture. And you also want to make sure that you're working with somebody that is able to secure you the right partners if they're working on your behalf that can secure you the right partners that are the best fit for your organization that without break, you know, without breaking the bank without say going to something that's more exclusive. What I've seen in some cases is here's another here. I'll tell you another story. A lot of times in 2022 when I was called in and my company was called in to help produce a hybrid event or a virtual event actually hybrid for the most part on these ones. A lot of times we were called in a little bit too late in that they had already signed a contract with a venue and in that contract there was no details about Internet. There was no details about Wi-Fi. There was no details about audio visual. They might have a preferred production partner or they might have an exclusive production partner. By the way, big tip if you're booking venues is the second that you see on those lists that this is our exclusive partner for audio visual. That's going to mean you're going to pay whatever it costs and you can be paying a lot. I have one client that they had booked the venue without consulting us first. They brought us in later. Their audio visual costs for two days for a stage two projectors, a camera and a sound system ended up being $75,000. No live streaming included as part of that. So $75,000. You know, the Wi-Fi was $10,000 which after hearing the American Astronomy Association that probably sounds like a bargain. Yeah. But that's but that's but these are some of you will also you want to engage somebody that understands all these different parts. You are looking for somebody that is almost like a project manager for your event. One thing I would recommend to any organization that is working on events is I often find that the responsibility for producing an event is dropped in the lap of whoever's head of marketing or whoever's head of sales. That happens so often. Right, right. You know, you're just you're told, OK, we have a yearly event, go do it. Make it happen. And some of the best organizations that I've seen some of the best run organizations, they have somebody that may be working underneath or with that marketing officer that's the CMO. But they are responsible for executing the event. They're responsible for taking care of all those and whether that's internal or external and you can do both and both work very well. And I've worked on both sides of that, both as somebody that is working with their event, working with their event organizer and also essentially being the on contract event organizer. That you need to take that off of the plate of the chief marketing officer, because by the end of the show, I've seen it time and time again. The CMO plus everybody else associated with the event is just burned out. Trashed. Yes. Yeah, we see that a lot and we talked about that a lot because, you know, when you have these events to your point, the year round approach or mindset, sometimes we see groups are so trashed that they can't even begin to really start doing the work that they should be doing to steward what has gone on in those relationships whether it's fundraising or building the brand, whatever it might be. But they're just so exhausted that there's nothing left in the tank. Yeah, this has been amazing and we have only a few minutes left, which is like hard to believe. But we're going to ask you to shine up that crystal ball of yours, Elias, and talk to us about online event trends going forward. And it sounds to me like there are a lot. Yes. We're in a state of flux still because there's the industry is changing. It's if you've been following virtual events and the event tech field for a little while, there's been mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, outright shutdowns. So on the technology side, everything is in flux, but the fundamentals are still the same. When you're going to an event online in person hybrid, the core question that we need to ask is what unique result can we get out of this event that we could not get otherwise? That core fundamental is not changing. A lot of folks have said that, you know, look 2023 has been an amazing year in person's back. We're back to business as usual. But the bill is also coming do and a lot of organizations are saying, shoot, we can't do this like we can't continue this same way. Over the weekend, one of there was a major marketing influencer. He held a virtual event to launch his new book. They had over 200,000 people join live on Zoom. Now, 200,000 people is the size of a good city. Yeah, yeah. And it's true. Yeah. And that that gentleman made I would wager well over a million dollars in one weekend. And he managed to get every he managed to get 200,000 people to come out on a Saturday right around this time for a book launch and have everybody hanging on his every word for 90 minutes and sell out. So if we're saying if if the benchmark is well, we're able to fill venues again and events are back to business as usual. We're starting to see the rise of virtual events as a way to test new ideas as a way to deliver content. I mean, think about this. There was you probably been to some conferences where seeing the person's entire body did not make their PowerPoint slides any better. For sure. No, no, I'm glad you have a torso and legs. But, you know, you're you're using Comic Sans. Right. And we could have done this on Zoom and there's a lot of conferences that, you know, the it was fascinating this year to see the feedback surveys. We saw time and time again that when it came to just the content, the online attendees had a better experience than the in person. Oh, yeah. And so the trend that I think is going to continue is we're going to see that kind of content delivery move to online. We're going to see the rise of online events as that on ramp to small intimate exclusive in person events and use in person to deepen the relationships. Wow. Well, one of the big takeaways that I'm hearing from you, Elias, is to really partner with that production person, team, group, first and foremost, and I would say like engage with them before you even look at the venue because of what you said, you know, really looking at that is exclusivity, perhaps for some A.V. Elias, Pernan, you've been amazing. Um, our time goes fast, but we always know we can like there's so much more to the conversation. So we're merely scratching the surface for those of you watching and listening, but Elias is the founder of Tractus Events. You can find Tractus Events online at Tractus. That's T R A C T U S events.com. It's been amazing. And Julia, I know that there's there's a lot in this little bit of time that I know our viewers and listeners are just like, okay, time to rethink what we're doing. Love it. Yeah, I love it. And I really I think it's just brilliant that you kind of put us in this different mindset. Elias, it's been amazing. Again, thank you so much for joining us. This was a great day. A great Monday, Jarrett, to start our week. I love it. Yeah. Again, Julia Patrick. I've been joined today by Jarrett R Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself, CEO of the Raven Group. We want to make sure that we thank our partnering sponsors. They include Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, nonprofit nerd, and nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out going on nearly 900 episodes. Elias, do you know this is something that you've really stirred the pot on for us. And this is a good thing. So we might have to kind of think about some of the things you've said and then re-invite you back on to go further because we didn't even really talk about fundraising. We were talking more about like the more conference side of building our profession, whatever that might be within the nonprofit sector. There's so much more that we could really move through. But wow, amazing conversation. Thank you so, so much. You know, Jarrett and I like to end every episode with this mantra. And it was really born of COVID, but it's changed in the way we look at things and really as we explore new ways to think about our sector. And it goes like this. Stay well so you can do well. Thank you ever so much Elias and Jarrett. Great conversation.