Technology is becoming a much bigger part of event planning, management, presentations, and attendee engagement. For example:
- Event technology trends in 2026 show that more attendees are looking for immersive experiences, such as live audience responses or polls during presentations.
- Automation is becoming more important to help small association teams manage all the elements involved in event management.
- More events are becoming global with virtual and hybrid attendance options.
All those shifts and more due to innovations in event tech have led to a rapidly changing event landscape. It’s important to stay ahead of the curve to keep your audience engaged and your organization looking like a leader in your industry.
Our team at Cadmium recently attended Convening Leaders 2026 in Philadelphia, and we got a lot of great insights from event leaders and professionals we met and heard from during the event. Based on those insights, we’ve created this checklist to help you make the right event technology selections in 2026 and beyond.
What Makes Choosing Event Technology More Complex in 2026?
One of the most common things we heard about during Convening Leaders 2026 was a growing focus on integrated event solutions.
Rather than having isolated software and solutions for various tasks, associations want software that can handle everything in one place. For instance, event management software that can manage tasks like registration, logistics, speaker management, attendee engagement, and more in one system.
However, it can feel complex when it isn’t always clear how well different solutions available handle each task. So, it’s important to do enough research before choosing a solution, know what to look for, and get a demo from the provider.
What should you look for? First, you need to define your organization’s needs.
How Do You Define Your Event Technology Needs Before Shopping?
Here’s a quick checklist so you can define your organization’s event tech needs before you start looking:
- What are your event goals, and how can technology help you reach them? For example, if you want to achieve higher pre-event registration, adding technology that creates a smoother registration system would help.
- What types and sizes of events do you plan to host? For instance, you might be in need of a hybrid event platform that can handle the needs of virtual and in-person attendees at a large scale.
- Who is your target audience, and what are their needs? Sometimes it can help to ask association members or previous event attendees what they’d like to see at your next event.
- What are your must-have features? List whatever features are most important to your organization, such as registration, abstract management, automated logistics planning, etc.
What Integration Capabilities Should You Prioritize?
Now that you have your organization’s needs in mind, another important part of your event tech evaluation criteria should be integration capabilities. Some of the common integration capabilities that association and nonprofit event managers prioritize are:
- Integration with your association management system (AMS) to keep branding and messaging consistent across platforms.
- Ability to integrate your audio-visual (AV) system to help troubleshoot and identify errors ahead of time.
- Integration with a learning management system (LMS) to combine continuing education with events.
- Livestreaming solutions you can add for virtual or hybrid event experiences.
Our Eventscribe event management system (EMS) at Cadmium can integrate with each of these and more to provide you with a well-rounded solution.
What Questions Should You Ask About Customer Support and Training?
It’s common for organizations implementing a new event software to have some questions during the process or need support to help while getting started. Some questions you can ask about customer support and training from event management software providers are:
- Do you offer support during the onboarding process?
- How quickly does your support staff typically respond to questions?
- What is your process for issue resolutions, such as bugs or errors, while preparing for an event?
- What methods of support are available, such as live chat, email, phone, etc.?
- Do you offer any training materials to help get started with the software?
When you use our Eventscribe EMS at Cadmium, our goal is to offer you all the support you need to use the software effectively. That includes onboarding sessions, dedicated project managers, on-demand training resources, technical support when needed, and more.
What Scalability Questions Should Be on Your Checklist?
Another thing to think about when choosing association event technology is event platform scalability. You want your software to be able to handle your needs and grow with your organization. Some questions you can ask about scalability include:
- What is the maximum attendee capacity that the software can handle?
- Will there be any performance degradation with high-volume registration?
- Does the software support planning and hosting multiple large-scale events at the same time?
- What is the maximum number of users, admin profiles, or concurrent sessions you can have in the software?
- How can the software help our team adapt to growing or changing event planning needs?
How Do You Test for User Experience on Both Sides?
Choosing an event management system requires thinking about more than your team’s experience on the backend. You also need to consider the user experience on the front end when attendees are registering, engaging with event materials, and communicating with you.
It’s often helpful to ask the software provider if you can get a demo of the experience on both sides to evaluate if it’s the right fit. You’ll also want to continuously perform usability testing when setting things up, like registration systems or abstract submission portals, to ensure you’re consistently delivering a great user experience.
How Eventscribe From Cadmium Can Help
Our Eventscribe EMS at Cadmium is an all-in-one software built for association and nonprofit event planning and management. You can use it to manage events of all sizes and types, integrate the software you already use, and our team will provide you with extensive support along the way.
Eventscribe can help in the following ways:
- Creating a smooth registration system
- Adding transformative attendee engagement options before, during, and after events
- Coordinating speakers and presentations in an organized interface
- Managing sponsors and exhibitors
- Automating logistics planning
- Managing abstract submissions and reviews
- Integrating with our Elevate and EthosCE LMSs and Warpwire livestreaming solution
- And more
Learn more about how Eventscribe can help you stay ahead of the curve while planning events now and into the future.
