One of the meetings world’s most-notable tech experts got her start in the event planning industry in perhaps one of the most unlikely ways.
“My career started in hospitality when I was doing marketing for a property on the Red Sea in Egypt,” remembered Dahlia El Gazzar, Tech Evangelist + Idea Igniteur of DAHLIA+ and Empowerment+, a new entrant in the meetings tech world that aims to educate attendees about event technology on-site at conferences. “I started creating these events where I would meet with the Bedouins in the Sinai to create camel races. I took the mattresses from the chaise lounge swimming pool chairs and shipped them to the middle of the desert to rent them to Italian tourists for $150 per night to see the stars.”
After marketing stints for Starwood and athletic retailer Puma, El Gazzar joined meetings tech trailblazer Passkey, and later struck out on her own to spread the word about the amazing possibilities of meetings tech.
Her newest endeavor, Empowerment+, entails setting up a tech bar, or social media lounge, at conferences to teach attendees how to use mobile and other technology utilized at the event.
“We need to empower attendees to familiarize themselves about mobile platform technology,” El Gazzar said, “so event organizers can implement it and there’s adoption on both sides.”
Hot tech trends in the near future, according to El Gazzar, include virtual and augmented reality, as well as interactive screens, capturing attendee behavior to create revenue-generating data points for organizers, and live on-site content curation.
