No, AI Isn’t Coming for Your Event Planning Job.

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com

I'll admit, AI can be a bit frightening at times. Not just in the feeling that it's displacing humans in the workforce, but not too long ago one of my kids saw a video that was assumed "real" and of course, it was not. We talked about "assuming" and how you pretty much cannot believe ANYTHING you see, hear or read anymore. Definitely encouraging skepticism in my children given today's world. I fear for how AI plays out in society, politics, science, religion, ethics - you name it. That's a bit heavy for the moment, so let me take a small chunk of where AI is showing up for us as meeting planners and let's talk about just that minuscule piece.

I attended a professional development course put on by Meeting Planners International (MPI) and Reposit. The one-day, online course is offered on future dates if you're interested in pursuing your AI-Enhanced Event Professional Certificate.
My biggest takeaways from the course are as follows:

• There is an Art to the Prompt
• Data is Public
• AI is Inconsistent. So are People.
• Use ChatGPT for Writing, Summaries, Evaluations
• Use Google Gemini* for Local + Real-Time
• Continue the Conversation...

There is an Art to the Prompt

When putting a prompt into ChatGPT or Gemini, skip the texting shorthand! The more detail you can provide on input, the more thorough and useful the output will be. Tell ChatGPT who you want it to impersonate - what role is it playing - who do you want it to act like? What do you want ChatGPT to DO? What's the task at hand? Then finish off with how you want to get the information back from ChatGPT - as an article? A bulleted list? A chart or graph?

Let's walk through a basic prompt then a powerful prompt. I encourage you to copy and paste these prompts into both/any AI services you're using to compare results on your own. While I'm not going to share my full chat or full results here, I'll give you the quick comparison of what I found.

• Basic: What are the three most desirable hotels or convention centers in the United States to hold a conference for 500 attendees?
  • In short, there were NO cross-over options at all between ChatGPT and Gemini. As close as we got to overlap was each named a different Gaylord property, so there's that.
• Powerful: Pretend you're an experienced event planner working for a Fortune500 company on a multi-day conference for 500 attendees in the United States, in August of 2025. Find three desirable hotels or convention centers where the weather will be at least 60 degrees but no more than 90 degrees, and there is a very low chance of bad weather or a natural disaster at that time. Provide results in a table that includes venue name, venue address, largest meeting space size at the venue, number of hotel rooms at the venue, average hotel room rate for that time of year, and average weather that time of year.
  • In short, again, NO crossover answers - and not even any of the same answers from the first prompt. Also, Gemini gave me three unique draft options, all with different choices so I really had NINE from Gemini.

Data is Public

Before you do ANYTHING in ANY AI system, know this: WHATEVER DATA YOU PUT IN POTENTIALLY BECOMES PUBLIC. Before uploading ANY files or data or submitting a prompt in any way, be certain you have removed identifying information of ANY kind, contact details, or other sensitive data. Even if you have an upgraded, secure account, where they tell you your input will not be made public, I would encourage you to follow this same advice. We all know data can be hacked, leaked, exposed, stolen. Be smart.

AI is Inconsistent. So are People.

Basically, anything it tells you is as accurate as your neighbor. How much do you trust your neighbor? How much do you trust AI? The good thing is that in the interfaces, both ChatGPT and Gemini tell you they can and do make mistakes and you need to do your own research. As we saw in the example, answers can be vastly different even when the same question is asked. And AI learns from you, so you could ask Chat GPT this same exact question and also get completely different results. It gives us somewhere to start though - and that can be helpful at least.

Use ChatGPT for Writing, Summaries, Evaluations

Got a big batch of evaluations that you want summarized? Drop the file into ChatGPT. Ask it the questions you want answered. Which presenters were rated the highest? Which session had the most negative comments? Which sessions were most well-received? What are the top three things we could improve upon? If you track your registration trends for events over time, load those files into ChatGPT and let it evaluate the best time to open registration, when registration peaks, or if the current trends will get you to your end goal this year. This can help you assess marketing timelines as well. While most survey systems can quickly give us results of quantified data, AI can help us sift through the qualitative data in a much faster way. Also to note, ChatGPT's system was given information only through 2021, so it cannot process or dissect current events from after that (unless it's data you're putting into it of course).

Use Google Gemini for Local + Real-Time

Gemini is excellent as an assistant to finding locations, hotels, restaurants, etc... And unlike ChatGPT, has a more real-time information system. Having the power of Google behind it, we can ask Gemini to find us upscale seafood restaurants in Washington DC... then further specify that we need one in walking distance from a particular hotel, at a certain price point, open on a certain day/time - or better yet, have it tell us the best time to make reservations there. If you're trying to pull together a list of options for a client, this is a great way to START the list. Of course, you'll want to still evaluate for accuracy, errors in information, or possibly completely missing information. Don't expect the generated list to be in turn-over ready mode. It also won't replace your CVB or DMC - these people know things Google does not, have connections with humans Google does not, and can negotiate local deals for your incoming group.

Continue the Conversation...

If you don't like what ChatGPT or Gemini spit out at you, ask them to revise it, refine it, adjust what you want done with it, convert it, or even ask it why or how it came up with that response. It is definitely more conversational than Alexa and Siri are, so use that to your advantage. Once you start a new question though, start a new chat. That way your previous conversations aren't playing into the new chat (unless you want them to). At a broader perspective, "continue the conversation" can also be a reminder that what AI spits out is just a starting point. We have to fill in blanks, smooth it out, fact-check, and revise. Continue the conversation is also a note to everyone when using AI - it's growing and changing and we need to keep talking about, knowing how and when to use it, and learning alongside with it.

*Google first released its AI under the name of Bard - and that was the name being used when I first started drafting this blog article. Later, Google changed the name to Gemini. If you are interested in when and why, you can ask Gemini to tell you... or you can read this article.