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: Lexi Matz
Company Name: Exactech
Job Title: Meetings & Events Sr. Manager
Years of Experience: 17
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?
I think my fellow planners would agree that the pandemic completely flipped our world upside down. For me, in-person team collaboration and in-person events have always been my motivation for success. I’ve been fortunate over the last 16 years to work with an amazing team of planners at Exactech. We have supported each other every step of the way. Going from someone that thrived off interaction and bringing people physically together to now a more virtual setting, I had to change my mindset. Our team really took the time to learn how to effectively execute virtual events and develop programs and projects that in the past had not taken priority, because of workload. I believe we are now a more well-rounded team than we were prior to the pandemic. Event planners have such a unique skill set and we bring so much value to our organizations. We truly are the wizards behind the curtain that bring the company initiatives to life.
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?
Since we have become more comfortable on the virtual side, I think that we’ll fold in more live streaming presentations into our in-person meetings and conferences. This allows us the opportunity to still engage key speakers and avoid travel and scheduling conflicts.
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?
I personally don’t think anything replaces the value to face to face connection. As a planner there is no better feeling after months of hard work to see the magic unfold live. We are slowly starting to implement more in-person meetings, but I think that we’ll continue to use virtual tools as needed.
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
For us nothing replacing the in-person event experience. Over the years we have built a dynamic “Exactech Experience” program that cannot 100% be replicated virtually. Nothing replaces peer to peer collaboration, interaction with our corporate team and executives, the opportunities to have access to our world renowned thought leaders.
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?
Our planning timeframe has gotten shorter throughout the pandemic. For an event that we once planned 1+ years in advance has moved to more of a 6-month timeframe. My hope is that hotels will be able to rebuild their sales and event teams to support the increase of onsite meetings, so that response time is better. I hope that we can all work together to bring meetings and events back to pre-pandemic levels.
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.