A new online networking organisation is trying to fill the gap left by the absence of trade shows and conferences.
Media Meet & Greet held its first event last October, offering ‘real-time networking’, using the Deal Room event tech platform. The latest takes place on February 25.
“Many people say they really miss the serendipity of trade shows. But if we’re really honest, that type of serendipity is not very efficient. Fun, yes. Efficient, no. Not to mention how expensive it is,” says founder Janet Greco, Principal Consultant at Broadcast Projects.
“But imagine if you could go to an event armed with accurate people and company metadata that could help you easily target those that were absolutely mandatory for your business to connect with? When it is clear what you “Offer” and what you “Seek” it is more likely that people will find serendipitous matches”.
Greco says that when the pandemic broke it was natural that everyone turned to webinars, to the extent that by October last year her TV Events Hub recorded 130 webinars in a single month.
It was at this point that Greco started investigating a range of new event tech platforms. “It became evident quite quickly that Deal Room Events, known for its strength in networking, would become our ideal virtual event partner,” she says.
Deal Room had established itself at physical investor/start-up match-making events long before the pandemic. Start-ups and investors would be brought together based on both metadata and relevance matching algorithms.
For Media Meet & Greet, each delegate has a profile that enables them to state their interests. The Deal Room relevance-matching tool then surfaces the top matches. The matching process takes place several weeks before the event, during this time private, live video meetings can be set up in advance, which take place during the live networking session.