Planners Moving Forward Series- Cinzia Petruzzello, AIPPI
Cinzia Petruzzello, of AIPPI, brings awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
Luke Whalin
Mar 24, 2022
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
Name: Cinzia Petruzzello
Company Name: AIPPI
Job Title: Director of Events
Years of Experience: 25
How do you think you are positioned, after months of persevering with the pandemic, to take advantage of our new and disrupted meetings/events landscape?
The future is still not clear, I don't have a clear picture yet. What I see is that we think with hybrid we might have a solution for future events but I think we need more, we need creativity. We need to think out of the box. We need literally to redefine the events landscape. It's not easy, I know, and so scary but it is also so fascinating. We are probably not consciously aware of the pivotal role we have in defining new events style. There are no written rules, scripts right now. We are writing the future, right now.
As our community moves forward with planning in person meetings, what new technologies or processes are you implementing that you may have not looked at before?
I see do not see myself anymore as just an event planner only. I like to add the term event technologist. We all learned so much about new technologies, platforms etc. Most of them will accompany us in the future. We can't live anymore without ZOOM, TEAMS & Co. Who is not using one of this new technologies also in their private life?
As we see virtual meetings transition back to face to face, hybrid meetings are beginning to be the vehicle to return to normalcy. What are your thoughts on hybrid meetings versus traditional fully in person meetings?
Everyone speaks about hybrid meetings but everyone has another understanding of hybrid. What works best for my organization, will not work for others and vice versa. The concept of hybrid opens a new chapter in the event industry, even though hybrid meetings were around before Covid, but now we are forced to be more creative with our events and more solution oriented. We have to think out of the box, our checklists, manuals need to be redrafted. Hybrid opens our minds to new solutions and format - this can be very exciting. I am also sure that what is labelled hybrid today, in future will be "just" called an event. There will be a natural fusion between hybrid and in person. Don't we have already a virtual aspect in an in person meeting and the other way around? We just need time to fully embrace it, we need time to gain more experience and make what we think is new, make it normal.
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
Our members are definitely missing the networking part. We managed to keep offering the educational aspect in a virtual environment for the last two years, while it has been a challenge to find the right formula for the making the virtual networking as attractive as the in person one. Also returning to live events gives them (and us) back the sense of familiarity and community that you can breath during in person events.
As the pandemic fades away and we return to face-to-face events what do you hope changes, either for planners or hoteliers, in the traditional RFP and proposal process as a result of all of the learnings from the last 20+ months?
I would like to see more flexibility in contracts, deals etc. No one is eager to sign a contract with a venue or a service provider 3 or 5 years before knowing that the world can change in a day. If we learned something from Covid is that long term planning with contractual commitment could be a pitfall. I understand the needs for hotels, venues to be able to plan properly but I wish to see more flexibility in terms of date, space and financial penalty.
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.