What happens when the event app crashes, the Wi-Fi disappears, and the entire schedule lives inside the technology that just stopped working? Apparently, "blame the vendor" is not a contingency plan. Rude.

Jen Santos, host of Mayhem & Method, sits down with Vinnu Deshetty, founder of Event ROI Coach, to talk about event technology, data, and the very human chaos behind both. What starts as a conversation about a failed mobile app quickly becomes a deeper look at planning for tech outages, understanding how attendees actually behave, and choosing tools based on real needs instead of shiny features.

They talk about offline access, attendee communications, survey data, AI-assisted analysis, and why event tech needs a dedicated advocate before everyone arrives onsite and starts frantically refreshing.

Top Takeaways from Vinnu & Jen's convo:

• Plan for the app to fail: Offline access, backup schedules, and clear attendee instructions beat panicked printing every time.

• Use the tech you can actually support: More features do not automatically mean a better event. Sometimes gamification is just an expensive button nobody had time to configure.

• Collect data with a purpose: Digital surveys, paper forms, onsite conversations—use whatever works for the audience, then make sure the results do not quietly die in a spreadsheet.

Links:

@event-roi-coach on LinkedIn

@EventROICoach on YouTube

This episode was produced by Audiotocracy Podcast Production.