Mobility Summit 2021How Telematics Valley Executed Mobility Summit 2021 in a True Hybrid Format?November 23, 2021

Last month our client Telematics Valley executed their prominent Nordic event dedicated to the future of mobility - The Mobility Summit. It is a revamped annual event with a 20-year-long tradition that serves as an unparalleled knowledge sharing and networking platform for leading experts and practitioners from leading organizations aiming to share the mobility industry.

This year for the very first time, the event was hosted slightly differently - in a hybrid format. Delegates across the Nordics and beyond attended and enjoyed the event onsite at MobilityXlab in Gothenburg and online through Agorify. The event was a great success and was appreciated by everyone who attended it. Post-event we had a chance to sit down with Philip Wockatz, Director at global digital powerhouse Publicis Sapient and board member of Telematics Valley, to discuss the summit, its mission, future ambitions, and much more. We also managed to get Philip to share some insights and experience from preparing and executing The Mobility Summit 2021 as a True Hybrid event.

Without further ado, let’s learn more about Telematics Valley and their successful execution of The Mobility Summit 2021!

More About Telematics Valley and Mobility Summit

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Telematics Valley’s journey started in 2001 when Sweden’s biggest automotive, transportation, and telecommunications companies decided to join forces in order to establish an industry-driven non-profit membership organization. Located in the heart of the leading telematics center not only in Sweden but also in the world, Gothenburg, the organization today aims to advance the use of telematics in order to benefit everyone involved in the automotive, mobility, transportation, and other related industries.

According to them, telematics is a very old subject that concerns society itself considering that everyone nowadays is somehow involved with mobility even if they just use wireless networks (Wi-Fi).

The organization prides itself on executing networking and knowledge-sharing seminars, annual international conferences, and targeted workshops where people from the industry can meet, exchange ideas, and establish business opportunities. Thus, The Mobility Summit represents an evolution of the annual Telematics Valley International Conference in Gothenburg.

This year, the focus of the summit was on their objective to launch a global platform where people with different perspectives could gather, inspire each other to perceive things from a different angle, and ultimately, create opportunities that will accelerate the industry in a more sustainable direction.

Telematics Valley’s Ambition to Scale Up Mobility Summit

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Telematics Valley’s ambition for this year’s edition of The Mobility Summit was to scale it up and make it more widely accessible to people from all around the world. To accomplish that the team decided to embrace the True Hybrid event format and allow attendees the opportunity to choose whether to attend The Mobility Summit onsite or online.

Consequently, the onsite part of the event took place at MobilityXlab in Lindholmen (Gothenburg), while the online part of the event was executed through Agorify.

“Hosting a hybrid event forces you out of your comfort zone, you can choose to keep running events in a traditional way - either only onsite or only online – or you can choose to do something different and innovative. We decided to do the latter.” - stated Philip when asked why they decided to embrace hybrid events considering that many event organizers still see them as a challenge as they are a relatively new format within the industry.

He revealed that the event preparations started in June and that he and his team worked closely with some of our team members in order to successfully execute the event on time three months later - on September 30th.

They also hosted an online-only pre-event session the day before the main event to test the platform and onboard attendees on Agorify.

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The summit featured 20+ speakers and 10+ tracks of content. Considering that it was executed the day after COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted, it came as a surprise when more than 100 people out of 400 attended onsite for the summit, whilst the rest of the attendees joined online on the Agorify platform.

Philip mentioned that the attendees’ feedback regarding the hybrid format of the summit was very positive and many of them were already eagerly waiting for the content to be shared online afterwards as well.

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How Telematics Valley Managed to Successfully Execute The Mobility Summit 2021 in a True Hybrid Format?

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To provide an unparalleled experience to all attendees regardless of whether they are onsite or online, the event organizers used a number of hybrid event technology features.

Besides live streaming the entire event online and providing the agenda in a digital format, Telematics Valley made sure to give its attendees a unique networking opportunity. Attendees were able to chat with each other regardless of whether they were attending the onsite part of the event or online.

Having in mind how important it is for every attendee to be able to communicate with the on-stage speakers as well, they encouraged online and onsite attendees to use the Q&A chat in the platform as a central tool to ask questions and establish discussions with the speakers.

During the launch and networking breaks, the event organizers took the opportunity to live stream interviews with exhibitors. They did this with the aim to mirror the onsite experience to online attendees and keep them engaged throughout the entire event.

Philip’s Insight About Hybrid Events In General

In our interview, Philip said that organizing an onsite event and doing live streaming is good, but True Hybrid events take the experience to a whole other level as that way all attendees are equally engaged.

To him, hybrid events are the only format to go forward from now on, and that Telematics Valley has an aspiration to further explore the format. He believes that those event organizers who refuse to organize their events in a hybrid format would fall behind their competitors.

“The biggest benefit of hybrid events is the accessibility. The format makes the event more widely available and inclusive to people from all around the world. It also provides a continuous experience as opposed to transient as it could also be available as on-demand content afterward for those who were not able to attend the event live,” – Philip elaborated when asked.

To Wrap Up

Founded by pioneers in the telematics industry and other related industries, Telematics Valley this year made a step forward in terms of the format of their annual event that they have been organizing for 20 years already - The Mobility Summit.

This time they executed the event by giving it a True Hybrid dimension. Their aim was to explore this innovative event format and make The Mobility Summit more widely available to potential attendees regardless of their location.

Hence, upon successfully executing their first True Hybrid event, Telematics Valley’s ambition is to further explore the format with the execution of the next edition of The Mobility Summit in 2022 and other of their future events.

About Agorify

Agorify is a True Hybrid event platform that aims to revolutionize the event tech industry. By our definition, a True Hybrid event is a conference, exhibition, seminar, concert, or any other meeting where participants can partake, choose between, or instantly and effortlessly switch from, onsite to online event experience without losing any event feature or benefit.

Hence, our solutions include, but are not limited to Self Check-In Registration and Badge Printing, Native-Live Streaming, Simulated Streaming, Virtual Round Tables, Breakout Rooms, App Badge Scanning, Silent Room, Online Exhibitor Booths, Digital Agenda, etc.

Interested in learning more about us? Request a demo

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