About
Future-Now is a Hungarian consultancy firm that helps its clients innovate and digitise. They have always believed that digital transformation is not a goal but a tool and can help make their clients future-ready.
Last year, Future-Now was exploring various virtual event platforms and had zeroed in on Airmeet as they were impressed by the versatile and interactive, life-like and secure platform. They began recommending Airmeet to their clients and leveraged Airmeet for a variety of different events.
Present Day
Fast forward to June 2021, and Future-Now has revamped the organisation with a larger team, offering many services. Fanni Szintai-Major, Project Manager at Future Now, said, “Given the pandemic and associated restrictions, the online event business grew exponentially. Everyone needed to do everything online, even companies we didn’t think would pivot have moved online. This aspect of our business had a lot of demand, and we responded to it.”
Future-Now has been hosting a number of events on Airmeet, and these include trainings, hackathons, business gatherings, conferences etc. On average, they host about five events on Airmeet every month.
One of the key events they hosted this year was ‘Girls’ Day’. Laszlo Szemelyi, Executive Partner, Future-Now, described the event, “There was a very special event we hosted a few weeks ago called Girls’ day. Each year, our client organises a country-wide event that is hosted across Hungary. The goal is to introduce high school girls to the world of STEM with the help of many companies and universities etc. This time the event went online. That was a common gathering for everybody in the country. It was not at a hundred different locations like it used to be earlier.”
Calculating carbon footprint savings by hosting a virtual event instead of an in-person event.
One of Future-Now’s initiatives is a tool that helps event organizers calculate the carbon footprint saved by hosting a virtual event instead of an in-person event.
The goal
Fanni gave a detailed account of what this entails: “Our objective is to inspire companies to make use of the new technologies so that they can improve their processes and save resources.”
The creation
“We had hosted an event where the organiser was a research organisation. They did a conference where many scholars presented their research. There was a presenter who talked about the carbon footprint of small enterprises. We got in contact with her asking if she’d like to collaborate with us. They agreed, did the research, and actually created this calculator based on what we told them. The idea behind this calculator was to compare the online event to an alternative event that would take place offline. Say a company has its headquarters in Budapest, or the event is always organised in Budapest. Depending on where the participants lived, would they travel to Budapest for the event? We would also ask what means of transport(car or train) they would use to get to Budapest. We could then calculate the reduction in the carbon footprint and give an answer in kilograms of carbon dioxide stopped from emission.
We knew that gathering too much detailed information would complicate the process. So we had them create a calculator where you need to ask only two questions from the participants-
Where do you live, and would you travel to another city for this event and how?
We only calculated the transport because we assumed that that is the biggest contributor.”
The implementation
“We’ve calculated this for a few events so far. There was an event called Women in Business which had more than 200 participants altogether. We received 45 responses for the calculator questionnaire that we tried to build into the registration process itself. Based on the responses, we were able to identify that the virtual event saved 1420 kilograms of carbon dioxide from getting emitted which equals to driving an average car for 5,700 km or charging your smartphone some 170,000 times. This is a conservative figure given the other contributors during an in-person event.
This tool is good for everyone! The main purpose of this is to raise awareness. Being environmentally friendly is part of our values as a company.
It also increases the value we provide to our clients. They can include details in their post-event communication like- “Congratulations! With this conference you helped save x amount of carbon dioxide.”
The partnership
Future-Now has been helping clients host virtual events every step of the way. They assist their clients right from the planning phase until post-event with analytics. The event attendee numbers range from 30 to 700.
Fanni shared, “Airmeet comes into the picture when the clients want to do some kind of conference with a large number of people. Many of our clients would like to do a physical conference, but given the COVID situation, they are unable to do that.
Or they do this kind of event every year, regularly but this year they need an alternative solution. We always ask how important networking is to them. If it is important, then it obviously shouldn’t be like a Zoom webinar. If they are looking for a conference format with presentations and breaks for people to network, we propose Airmeet because that’s the most suitable platform.”
Most appreciated features
Fanni and Laszlo elaborated on the Airmeet features that most clients loved. “Most of our clients find the interface new and refreshing. It’s not like a classic Zoom call. It’s something much more colourful. They also like that the Q&A stays with the session. They appreciate the emojis, recording options and tables. Also, it’s great that it is now accessible on an app.”
A special mention was made for the Airmeet support lounge. Fanni said, “ We used the help desk a lot, especially while planning the event. I like the support lounge a lot. Usually, if you write an email for assistance, you have to wait a while to receive the response, but you need the answer right away because all your planning depends on it. In the Airmeet support lounge, your queries get answered right away.”
Regarding the analytics, Fanni said, “We share the analytics with the customers, and they find it very important. They are mainly interested in –
- The number of people who actually joined the event
- Which sessions were the most popular
- The numbers involving the booths. This is important for them to forward to the sponsors. It’s very important to actually see how many people visited the booth. Sometimes the sponsors complain to the organisers that no one sat at their tables. With the analytic report, we can show them that even though no one sat at the table, people visited the booth, had a look and got to know about the service.
- Many times clients want a list of the questions asked after the event. If there were some unanswered questions, they can have them answered via an email to the concerned participants.”
Airmeet loves how Future-Now is documenting the reduced carbon emissions through virtual events and through the platform.
Show your love for the planet and book a demo with Airmeet today!
