The ibtm Technology Watch Award winners for 2017 were announced at the most recent ibtm world, held Nov. 28-30 at Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, Spain.

As the longest running awards program of its kind, the ibtm Technology Watch awards recognize the achievements of new and innovative event industry technologies, ensuring that the achievements of talented entrepreneurs looking to revolutionize the meetings and events sector are duly acknowledged.

There were three categories for this year’s nominations: Logistics and Production, Management and Marketing and Audience Engagement.

All entries were reviewed by an independent judging panel of experts who are considered influencers in the field of technology, headed up by Corbin Ball, owner of Corbin Ball Associates and comprising Michelle Bruno, president of Bruno Group Signature Events; Dahlia El Gazzar, founder of DAHLIA+ Inc; Ruud Janssen, founder of TNOC.org and co-founder of EMG; Pádraic Gilligan, managing partner at SoolNua; Paul Hussey, director of The Conference Doctor and Julius Solaris, founder and editor of Event MB.

Sciensio was judged the overall winner for its Concierge Eventbot, winning the Audience Engagement category, while SharedXP Limited won the Logistics and Production award and ConferencePulse took the Management and Marketing category.

“We had an incredibly strong field of entries this year, making it a challenging task to decide on the winner,” Ball said.

Sciensio is an emerging technology supplier that helps businesses develop and deploy messaging platform strategies to improve customer interaction and help build relationships with their stakeholders. The company’s Concierge EventBot is a chatbot that has been specifically developed for events, enabling event organizers to easily share information and logistics with their attendees in a valuable and accessible way.

“Sciensio and its Concierge Eventbot has proven great tenacity and innovation in helping the events industry stay ahead of the curve with regards to effective customer engagement, sitting at the heart of every successful business in this industry and beyond,” Ball added.

He continued, “Sciensio and its Concierge Eventbot highlight two important event tech trends: the emergence of artificial intelligence to provide better and more efficient services to attendees in the form of chatbots - a direct and very useful means of providing event information.”

Shared XP Limited is a web-based crowd sourcing and crowd voting platform that enables event organizers to engage with their audiences and networks on ideas and content to create valuable event experiences.  

ConferencePulse uses marketing and sales intelligence to provide insights that can help event professionals determine the right events to attend, submit (session presentation) abstracts for and sponsor.

"The fact that ConferencePulse won this prestigious award is a further testament and validation that we are building an events intelligence platform that truly addresses the needs and pain points of our valuable clients," said Val Tsanev, founder and chief executive officer of ConferencePulse.

He added, “We were humbled and honored by the award.”

Michelle Bruno, a member of the judging panel who regularly writes about event technology and event innovation, explained that award winners are selected based on two different types of innovation criteria.

"As judges for the ibtm Tech Watch competition, we always look for innovation in two areas: the way technology is used to solve a recurring or familiar pain point for the meeting industry and whether the technology used is on trend,” Bruno said.

She continued, “So for example, Sciensio uses artificial intelligence and a chatbot to address attendee engagement and customer service. Shared XP uses crowdsourcing to co-create event content and ConferencePulse uses large data sets to discover speakers, sponsors and venues in a manner that the judges had never seen before. In these ways, the three category winners and the overall winner were unique.”

For more information on the ibtm Technology Watch Awards, go here.