The business festival kicked off with the one-hour master keynote "The Circle of Live". NEXTLIVE co-founder Sjoerd Weikamp first led the audience through the "Evolution of live communication and experience marketing". He organized this excursion together with one of the leading live marketing experts: Colja M. Dams, CEO of the agency VOK DAMS worldwide, which works for and with brands and companies such as BMW, Grohe, IBM and Porsche.

During the master keynote, the internationally renowned agency boss highlighted the trends and development of live events and ventured an outlook on the brand experiences of tomorrow:

• All eyes on: "MIP" - most influential person
  • VIPs are playing less and less of a role at events, as all participants are important for the success of the event
  • The aim is to find the "most influential person" and win them over
• The attention span of users on TikTok is just 0.4 seconds
  • Why messages and feelings need to be conveyed quickly and clearly
• The classic, familiar target group milieus are outdated and can no longer be used to categorize today's diverse society
• The chosen venue has an immense impact - whether the event leads to the desired emotion and is remembered or not, the topic of live, hybrid, digital must be rethought and taken into account
• Cookies and double opt-in are on everyone's lips and a big topic of discussion - they don't play a role at live events (a big advantage with "live") and participants will accept almost anything to be there
• AI is clearly the future of events.

Another highlight of the master keynote was provided by two international luminaries. Book author and Fortune Top 500 consultant Joe Pine explained the transition from the experience economy to the transformation economy and internationally renowned event tech expert Julius Solaris showed, among other things, how AI, Web3 and immersive tools will enhance brand experiences at live events in the future:

• In the end, it's all about data
  • Something has to "stick" after the event - for both the organizer and the visitors
• Participants must be left with a lasting impression

Another focus of the master keynote was the topic of sustainability: 2bdifferent stands for sustainability in the event industry and presented in the keynote how it intends to make NEXTLIVE a sustainable platform for the corporate marketing and event community in the coming years. Sabine Böhling, author and lecturer in sustainability at the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden, spoke about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

The master keynote was rounded off by Georgina Treen, Marketing Events Specialist at NIO Germany. Following the German market launch, the manufacturer of AI-controlled electric cars opened its first stores last year. Following Joe Pine's theory - people today prefer to invest in the (brand) experience rather than in products themselves - NIO focuses primarily on community building in its customer journey. The NIO HOUSE is an open, inviting space for the brand's users and their community: an event location, a co-working space and a space for encounters and shared experiences.

Another focus of the festival was on the Experience and Transformation World. The focus here was on event ROI: the masterclass "ROI lessons learned form the automotive industry". Rolf Schumann, who has been responsible for global brand communication at Škoda Auto for over 20 years, raised the question of whether we should actually focus even more on the hard return on investment or whether it is not a matter of completely different event KPIs - such as community building, for example, which replaces the classic, media-driven reach. Because without experience and content, there is no conversion. The participants were given insights into inspiring high-impact events and also gained a completely different perspective on the ROI of events. And never forget: "Storyliving increases impact by 300%".

In his keynote speech "Event ROI between performance and purpose", Hans-Willy Brockes from the Swiss ESB Marketing Network provided insights into the Experience Marketing Barometer 2023, making it clear that the balancing act between measurable marketing results and purpose communication has increasingly arrived in live communication and experience marketing. And Dutch neuroscientist Martin de Munnik provided insights into the first study to scientifically prove that live communication has the greatest impact in the communication mix of brands and companies and that live events are therefore gaining relevance in an increasingly digitalized society.

Digitalization was another thematic focus at the NEXTLIVE.FESTIVAL - with a focus on AI, Web3 and immersive brand experiences. In the masterclass "Big Data, AI and Events", Prof. Dr. Dirk Hagen from the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University presented the scientific perspective of the increasing digitalization of the event industry and shed light on how business events can be used more efficiently and effectively. The "Artificial Intelligence for Marketing" masterclass shed light on how marketing campaigns can be linked with ChatGPT and Midjourney to make creative processes in marketing and product design more efficient:

• By using AI, we could be up to 50% more productive
  ChatGPT and Midjourney can be perfectly used in combination to create new brands and products
• ChatGPT is suitable for structuring problems
• There is AI with real-time translation
• The AI tool D-ID is ideal for animating images
• B-Human makes it possible to convert/record a video greeting so that it is sent in a personalized way for different customers

This masterclass then delved deeper into the subject matter as part of the expert breakout "How to implement AI" and showed which steps marketing and event specialists need to take, depending on the size of the company, to use AI in order to achieve the best possible success for their brand and company. Using the Universal Music Group as a case study, Frank Hahn outlined in his masterclass "The future is 3D" how participants can understand and shape the evolutionary change of the internet towards the metaverse. And in his masterclass, Tom Inden-Lohmar explained how digital education for adults can be seen as a benefit.

And how AI-based performance analysis can increase the ROI of live events was shown by Martin Jerulank from Live-Matters:

• Customer Satisfaction Surveys for Live Events:
  • Pros: poll immediately after the event for particularly meaningful feedback
  • Disadvantages: On-site customer surveys too extensive, take too long

• Commission a company to analyze customer behavior during the event
  • You photograph participants and make an anonymized evaluation (demographics, emotions, satisfaction, etc.)
  • Emotions, age, gender, etc. are analyzed and evaluated
  • In addition: Did people listen to the presentation to the end? How old were they? Did they leave the room? Did they smile?
  • Not always easy to implement in terms of data protection law