High Tech Low Touch Face 2 Face Business in Post COVID World

A template for managing sustainable face 2 face event planning in a world when our faces will need to be further apart, sometimes virtual or a new marriage of both.

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Inspiration over 1.5 billion special events happen every year- during COVID 19 this stopped.

Online communications can not replace face to face connection for example: a 2015 Harvard University research study found shaking hands built trust. Trust is vital to negotiate for peace, policy change, medical innovation and industry exchange, in other words trust is vital to achieve the UN SDGs.

Problem During Covid19 all trust building face to face meetings stopped.

Event organisers do not know when they can plan these meetings to start again. There is no template for managing face to face event planning in a world where COVID may mean the face to face plans quickly turn to virtual plans or a new marriage of both.

The world is experiencing it is possible to collaborate over technology rather than face to face. But connecting is limited in how trust is built so it can not be a replacement for face to face meeting. In our mid Covid 19 online meeting environment opportunities to build trust and to achieve the UN SDGS are being missed.

Target group the global event industry (which is an industry as large as agriculture in the UK and automobile in the US)

Solution a template for managing sustainable face to face event planning so the global event industry can start planning face to face events again (confident that virtual plans can be implemented)

This template and the campaign that supports it would create a cultural mind shift across the over 1.5 million special events every year so that every event was planned through the lense of sustainability ie every event would further advance the UN SDGs

What we want to build: technology which can be used by event professionals to plan sustainable face to face events when they may be delivered virtually or a marriage of both face to face and virtual.

The final product is likely to be a squarespace website (using Forest UI Kit), YouTube video, Suggestion of how existing in use event industry technology could be adapted to meet this need (the creators of this technology are on our Hackathon team) and ideas on how this would be communicated out to the industry for immediate uptake so the industry could start planning face to face events again (even though they could be delivered virtually).

Who our team includes: one of the largest tech providers in the event industry, the cruise industry's key data analyst, an example of a corporate company who plan thousands of events around the world annually, an event industry's sustainability leader with experience in creating UN level collaborations and other team members with networks of connections within the industry and practical expertise. Finally we have input from two academics a design thinker and an academic who specialises in meetings and neuroscience.

Most of this team are new to Hackathons!

We do not have images, existing webpage demos or your tube videos yet

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posted an update —

We started this hack clear on our problem (1.5 billion events now not happening) but unclear on what the solution could be. We followed the design thinking approach. Our team members included people responsible for thousands of international events so our empathy stage provided insight. At the defining stage we defined our statement to be ' How might we use to technology to provide a failsafe template for in-person events that requires no additional last-minute resources (human and material)?' During our ideation period we realised pre COVID 19 there were two ways to plan an event: 1- In person (with a virtual element) 2- 100% virtual During our ideation period we identified post COVID 19 there was the opportunity for a paradigm shift and a prism of solutions to exist. Our prototype brought this to life in the form of technology to support an event executive, from day 1 of the planning process, to be planning with a 'backup' option. Our technology provides the planner with suggestions of what to include in the planning process of the event so at any moment the failsafe could immediately be used. This could avoid the creation of waste, stress for the event professional community and ensure the event could continue. If our prototype was in use pre COVID 19 the 1.5 billion events would still be happening and 10.3 million jobs, in the US alone, would still exist.

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