Smart Event Academy

Smart Event Foundations

for Agencies and Delivery Organizations

Digital event strategy and event tech project management training program

The Smart Event Foundations (SEF) program is a six-week hands-on training course and certification program to make you and your team event tech savvy. No confusing terminology, no complex systems. 

Using our mock event — CoffeePalooza — we walk you and your team through an event technology implementation from marketing site to post-mortem. 

Digital event strategy and event tech basics are baked into every step in the process.

Get Your Agency Event Tech Ready!

Course Tuition: $1,795

Course Dates: April 1, 2024 - May 12, 2024

Registration will be opening again soon, so get on the waitlist today to secure your spot.

For Agencies and Delivery Organizations

57% of marketers increased their spending on event tech in 2022, according to a recent Forrestor survey, with a focus on streamlining registration and tech experience. With the explosion of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools along with growing attendee expectations for personalized experiences, you can bet that that number isn’t going down anytime soon.

As a result, understanding how event tech fits into the overall event delivery experience is becoming table stakes for every delivery organization. Even if you aren’t an event tech delivery org, you MUST understand the basics in order to communicate effectively with the event tech delivery team and loop them in at the appropriate time in the process.

The Smart Event Foundations (SEF) certification program is designed to give you and your team the insights and vocabulary you need to confidently work with event tech providers – or become a provider yourself. You’ll know what questions you need to ask and when to ask them to let you and your team plan – and deliver – with more ease.

Build true partnerships with your event tech teams

Reduce churn by understanding event tech flows and processes

Feel confident your team is learning industry best practices

By partnering with the Smart Event Academy for your event tech training needs, you remove the training burden from your organization and hand it over to a team led by people with more than a decade of experience delivering digital event strategy and event technology for some of the world’s largest companies and most prestigious events.

Your team will get a consistent training experience with a proven methodology. We take everything we’ve learned in the past decade — event tech lifecycle, client and project management best practices for events, event strategy, and event and event tech terminology — and bundle that up into a six-week, mock-event style program for team to experience event tech from start to finish.

Contact Us to Discuss Group Pricing.

Are You an Event Pro Who Wants to Understand Digital Events?

Learn digital event strategy and project management with the Smart Event Foundations certification program for individuals

From Event Brief to Event Delivery

As close to a real event as you can get without stepping foot on the show floor

The course uses a mock event format and real event tech for experiential learning — taking you through a complete event cycle from event brief to event execution. 
 

We combine self-paced online training with weekly live Q&A calls and a six-month mentoring program to help with the transition from classroom to a live event. 

To ensure the growth, learning, and relationships continue, we also include a one-year membership to deexpa (Digital Event Experience Professionals Association).

Cohort-based program

learn with and from a community of peers

Hands-on learning environment

set up your own event with real event tech

Complete event lifecycle

manage an event from event brief through to post-event reporting

Cohort-based program
learn with and from a community of peers
Hands-on learning environment
set up an digital event with real event tech
Digital event strategy
understand how to design a digital event experience that aligns to event objectives
Complete event lifecycle
manage an event from event brief through to post-event reporting
Project management skills
learn THE key project management philosophy to keep projects on track and on budget
Effective communication
discover the keys to good requirements discovery and client communication and management
Life of an event pro
learn what means to be a digital event specialist and how to thrive while doing it
Supportive mentoring
build confidence in your digital event delivery skiills via weekly calls plus your year of deexpa
The course encompasses roughly 20 hours of online instruction, plus live calls and homework. Quizzes throughout the program ensure comprehension, and a certificate of completion for those who complete the course and pass all of the quizzes (80% or higher).

Course Syllabus

Using a mock event format, we’ll deliver the imaginary hybrid event, CoffeePalooza, taking it from event brief through to event delivery. We’ll go step-by-step through the planning process and build out our event from the ground up so you can see first-hand how all of the pieces — in-person, virtual, and hybrid — fit together.

Introduction and event management basics
  • The attendee journey and deciphering the event brief
  • Effective event requirements discovery
  • Mobile app considerations
  • The CoffeePalooza event tech platform
  • The event marketing platform and recording event metrics
Event registration and communications
  • Best practices for smooth deployments
  • Event registration do’s and don’ts that can make or break the event
  • Access control and badging
  • Types and timings of the most common event communications
  • PII, GDPR, and how to keep event data secure
Content tools and tool deployment
  • Content management strategies and tools
  • Speaker management tools and prep resources
  • Scheduling and managing tool deployments
  • Best practices for creating documentation that will support you event over event
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Attendee networking and event exhibitors
  • Features and gotchas of attendee networking tools
  • Exhibitor and sponsor management and tools
  • Exhibitor ROI and lead retrieval
  • Communication and collaboration tools and best practices to manage your team and client
Delivery and event prep, travel, and metrics
  • Tracking session admission and attendance
  • Session and event surveys and evaluations
  • Pre-event best practices to ensure a smooth event delivery
  • Travel and expense policies and procedures
Event delivery, reporting, and wrap-up
  • Monitoring event delivery and effective triaging techniques
  • Connecting the dots for meaningful event reporting
  • Delivering an effective post-mortem
  • Positioning yourself as an digital event strategist and event tech professional

Six-month Mentoring Program for Students

Six months of professional mentoring provides you the support you need to successfully take what you learned in the course and apply it to your first event.

Course Tuition: $1,795

Course Dates: April 1, 2024 - May 12, 2024

Registration will be opening again soon, so get on the waitlist today to secure your spot.

Your Head Instructor

With three decades of IT consulting and project management experience and more than a decade leading event tech at some of the world’s largest companies, Jen Santos brings a deep understanding of technology, project management, client management, and event strategy to the Smart Event Academy. Her clients call her the OG of the event tech space.

Event clients include Microsoft, GitHub, CES, Oracle, and Splunk.

What Colleagues are Saying

Respected throughout the industry, here’s what fellow event pros have to say.

FAQ

In this context, event tech means the online components — from the marketing site to registration to the content system to the schedule builder to the digital venue — that’s required to deliver an event.

A/V (audio visual) and production are not a part of this program beyond integration tips and tricks.

If you are curious to learn more about how the in-person components of an event intersect with registration, session and speaker management, the expo and more, then this program will be valuable to your event management career.
Yes, this program will. The concepts remain the same, independent of the tech. While the event tech is an integral part of this program, this is not a technical event tech training program. The digital event strategy and  concepts taught in this program will translate to any event tech stack.
The Smart Event Academy Foundations course is designed as an intensive to help professionals quickly get up to speed. You can expect to spend roughly 3-5 hours per week on course material, including homework.
The program is specifically designed for non-technical event professionals. Easy-to-use event tech combined with in depth training videos means even if you’ve never touched a reg system in your life, you will be able to follow along.

Not the Right Time for You?

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