Event engagement: from logistics to meaningful meetings

Here is the statistic: 67% of attendees come to events for the networking.¹ Not for the speakers. Not for the coffee. The networking.

But how many events have real structure around networking? Most have a “mingling hour” on Friday evening with a bit of champagne and the hope that the right people find each other.

With Ventla, networking is designed in:

• Meeting scheduling: You can book a 30-minute meeting with another attendee directly in the app. It goes into both your schedules.
• Breakout sessions for groups with shared interests: Three sustainability directors from the same industry? Ventla can run a breakout for just them.

The result: attendees who leave with real connections, not just business cards.

People are motivated by different things. Some by engagement, some by winning, some by learning.

Ventla has all three:

• Badges for participation: You attended three sessions. You earned a badge.
• Points for interaction: You asked a question. You responded to a poll. You took a note. Points.
• Leaderboards: If your culture is a little competitive, it’s fun to see who’s at the top.
• Milestones and achievements: You met 10 new people. Achievement unlocked. You attended 5 sessions from the same track. Next level.

It is not childish. It is psychology. It makes people more engaged and they remember the event better.

A silence in the room. A speaker asks a question. Nobody answers. The energy dies.

With Ventla, the speaker can launch a live poll from the stage. Everyone in the room and online can vote from their phone. Results appear on screen immediately. That creates energy, creates participation, and creates value for the speaker by knowing what the audience actually thinks.

Research shows polls increase engagement by 40%.² It is not magic. It is just that people feel they have a voice.

You can run an event in three ways: fully in-person, hybrid, or fully virtual.

Ventla supports all of them. And here is the key insight: a hybrid setup must give both groups the same experience, otherwise the event risks becoming divisive.

With Ventla:

• In-person attendees: get the live stage, networking, and physical energy.
• Virtual attendees: get live stream, breakouts, and messaging with other virtual attendees.
• Both groups: can respond to the same polls, see the same results, and interact through Q&A.

It is not perfect. But it is better than virtual attendees sitting and watching a screen.

Gothenburg Tech Week is a major conference series. Hundreds of attendees. Dozens of speakers. Both in-person and virtual.

With Ventla they could:

• Run live polls from every stage to measure engagement.
• Give virtual attendees the same engagement opportunities as in-person attendees.
• Collect feedback in real time and see what worked and what did not.

We are not a web-based event portal. We are a native iOS/Android app designed so that people actually want to open it and use it.

That means:

• Push notifications: that reach people even when the app is closed, so nothing gets missed.
• Offline functionality: so attendees can navigate the schedule without WiFi.
• Built-in QR scanning from the camera: for frictionless check-in, no extra hardware needed.
• Performance: that a browser can never match. Instant load, smooth interactions, live updates.

That is the difference between an event system and an event engagement system.