Events Intelligence managing director, Mark Parsons reflects on an AI revelation inspired by last week’s AEO conference.
The AEO Conference in Manchester last week brought together a fantastic mix of industry professionals, with thought-provoking discussions on the future of exhibitions and data-driven strategies. The sessions and networking opportunities were exceptional, but the most impactful insight for me didn’t come from the stage. It came from a serendipitous evening conversation.
Rather than reflecting solely on the sessions, I want to share a revelation I had over dinner with the team from ASP, which beautifully tied into the conference’s discussions on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
ASP, as many know, creates websites for event organisers. Over the years, we’ve scraped data from hundreds of their sites, recognising the HTML code used by many organisers to structure their exhibitor directories. However, I hadn’t fully considered the intricacies of what goes on behind the scenes—something one doesn’t see as an “end user” of the sites.
During our conversation, ASP’s real value proposition became clear to me. Yes, it creates appealing, easy-to-navigate websites, but its strength lies in the content management system (CMS). This simplifies the painful task of managing exhibitor data for shows.
While we collect this data from sites for exhibitor landscape analysis, I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that someone in the marketing or operations team at an exhibition historically managed the thankless and arduous job of collecting and publishing all this first-party information from hundreds of exhibitors. This sounds very much like a ‘herding cats’ problem. ASP’s value proposition is that it has taken this difficult task and used technology to automate it via exhibitor self-service.
This “simplifying jobs to be done” mindset was mirrored in the AI session at the conference, featuring David White (MD Clarion), Stephan Forseilles (CTO Easyfairs), Sharon Roessen (COO Terrapinn), and Adam Parry (CEO EventTech Live).
They discussed the evolving role of AI in streamlining processes and driving efficiency in their own businesses. A key takeaway was not just the parlour tricks of language and image generation, but how AI was being applied in practical ways to automate time-consuming, repetitive tasks—thus freeing up human capital for more strategic and creative work.
The connection between my dinner conversation and the AI panel was particularly striking when David explained how Clarion was using “value driver trees” to identify where to focus their AI investment.
These value driver trees, which they built for their operations, broke down business activities into performance indicators, costs, revenue, and manpower insights, highlighting those activities which not only have the highest impact on overall performance but were also the most time-consuming.
By understanding the concentrations of effort, Clarion is able to strategically deploy AI to those areas best suited for automation and also aligned with the biggest impact on performance.
This framework—identifying high-value tasks and evaluating the potential of AI—provided a fresh perspective for me on how organisers can better optimise their operations and investment decisions.
Much like ASP’s CMS solution, which streamlines exhibitor management, AI can, and should, play a similar role by focusing on data-heavy, repetitive tasks such as data entry, content generation, and reporting.
These are the “jobs to be done” that take time but don’t necessarily require human input, making them perfect candidates for AI, and in due course for agent-based automation.
The insights from both my dinner and the AI panel reinforced a key point: AI isn’t about replacing human effort; it’s about enhancing it.
The focus is on freeing up valuable time, allowing event professionals to redirect their energy towards higher-impact areas, such as building the event narrative, focusing on exhibitor and attendee experiences, and shaping their shows to meet the evolving needs of their customers.
As the exhibitions industry continues to embrace AI and other digital tools, I believe the emphasis will increasingly shift towards this balance of human creativity and technological efficiency. The future of exhibitions lies not in the technology itself, but in how we leverage it to unlock new propositions, streamline processes, and deliver exceptional experiences.
In short, the real power of AI in our industry isn’t just in the automation of tasks—it’s in the reallocation of our most precious resource: time.
