Coming at a critical moment for the industry, the collaboration between the EIC and VSef is hugely significant. With more than 30 member organisations representing over 103,500 individuals and 19,500 firms and properties in the events industry, the EIC’s mission is to support the sector through the setting of professional standards across the entirety of the international events community.

Amy Calvert, CEO of the EIC, commented,

“As the global voice of the business events industry, the EIC works to establish international industry standards through the CMP Programme, EIC Sustainable Event Standards as well as the long standing APEX initiative. The global VSef initiative, founded by Explori, has focused on the area of digital event data standards, and developed a comprehensive solution on a not-for-profit basis. We are delighted to bring our APEX Commission and VSef together to further develop and establish these essential data standards.”

Mark Brewster, Founder of Explori and VSef, commented,

“We are delighted to be working with the EIC and their APEX Commission. We have formed this alliance to further the cause of data standardisation. Ultimately, it is vital for event organisers to keep a firm grip on their data assets.  In terms of digital event data, the events industry has become a challenge to navigate effectively with every platform operating in their own data silo. This leaves event organisers with the unenviable task of operating in an incomparable, opaque, and inconsistent landscape. This presents significant barriers to multi-platform integration, consistent measurement, and the essential insights that event planners need to develop strategy.

It isn’t currently clear where the lines will be drawn between today’s event technologies and the rapidly evolving metaverse, which in my opinion, will be a huge channel for the events industry. What is clear is that data is an essential asset for all event organisers and unless they can gain control, access and ownership of their digital event data, I fear that huge opportunities for growth and innovation will be missed. VSef is an important step in eliminating silos and putting the control of data back in organisers’ hands. It also offers enormous benefits to the platforms themselves”.

Stephen Rose, Head of Global Communication Services, Siemens, commented:

“To create the right analytics and insights along the entire customer journey, we need to be able to integrate consistent data from a plethora of event technologies into our data lake and blend it with data from other marketing and communication channels. It is not realistic for every individual platform to manage the unique data requirements of every corporate; and equally, it is not viable for every corporate to work around each platform’s unique data format. The solution is to have a robust industry data standard, and this is why I am a supporter of the VSef initiative”.

VSef was launched in early 2021, with the aim of creating a global standardised data format which can be used to simplify the process of moving data between event platforms, sales and marketing systems and business intelligence tools. Using a universal data format and API makes the process easy for organisers, as well as offering access to a better range of event metrics and engagement KPIs. This will inevitably lead to events improving their digital experiences benefiting their brands and the customers and stakeholders they serve.

 VSef has recently launched the second iteration of the standards - VSef 2.0 which includes a range of new features, allowing it to better meet the needs of international audiences as well as allowing for the unique data variables each platform captures.

Since its inception, VSef has received backing from many world-leading organisers and platforms including Informa Markets, Reed Exhibitions, Tarsus Group, Emerald Expositions, Clarion Events, Grip, Balluun, Notified, Swapcard, Accelevents, ExpoPlatform and many more. Today’s announcement with the Events Industry Council is the next move in the organisation’s mission to support the future development of the events industry.

***

For more details and to get involved contact Stephen Knowles - s.knowles@vsef.io