In the article below, you can delve into more information about session recommendations and the factors shaping them.
Understanding Session Recommendations
Grip offers the flexibility for sessions to be recommended, although it's not mandatory. Sessions not listed as being recommendable won't appear in the recommendations, and event participants can easily manage them on their My Schedule page, choosing to skip or add as desired.
Recommendations are produced when specific changes happen, or daily if no relevant changes occur. A maximum of 5 recommendations per person is made in a day, to stop participants from being deluged and thus ignoring recommendations.
What are Session Recommendations based on?
Recommendations are primarily based on expressions of interest. These expressions can come in various forms.
Connections with Speakers
This is relatively rare, but if a person has a connection with a speaker at a session, this is considered a strong expression of interest. Not only are you interested in the speaker, but they are interested in you, and thus likely a first choice attendee. Any sessions they speak at would likely be recommended if possible.
Interest actions on Speakers
It is more common for a person to express one-way interest in a speaker - since that does not also require the interaction of the speaker. This is also considered an expression of interest and will be used to create recommendations. Sessions they speak at will be recommended to that individual if possible.
AI-based interest in Speakers
Perhaps more abstractly, recommendations of sessions are also made if the AI has identified a reason you would be interested in the speaker. Typically it needs more information about you to make this decision to the certainty needed here, so it is rarer. However, some recommendations are created based on this expected interest.
Sessions that your connections are already attending
A simple but effective strategy is to recommend sessions based on what your connections are already attending. Performance will depend on the kind of event, or more specifically, the most common kind of connection that's happening.
For example, in a content-focused event where the objectives are to stay up to date with industry trends, participants are likely to be connecting with people in similar roles, or who have similar interests. However, in events that are more sales-driven, connections will usually happen between buyers and suppliers who actually may have compatible but opposite roles, and so content may not be mutually interesting.
Speed Networking Recommendations:
Speed Networking sessions are a little different from other types of sessions as they do not have speakers, and are instead sets of 1:1 auto-generated meetings for those attending.
These sessions will be recommended specifically if any of your connections or individuals you have shown interest in have added these sessions to their schedules. This is considered a strong expression of interest because not only are your connections or interests present, but it is likely that there will be other people similar to them attending as well. This increases the likelihood that you will have an interest in others attending this session.
Speed Networking have proven to be a time-efficient way for attendees to make meaningful connections and have productive meetings within a short time frame. They are often used as an introductory platform for participants to get to know each other and are especially good when dedicated to specific areas of interest.
Similar People:
We also make recommendations based on the actions of people similar to you. Similar in this context can mean a variety of things.
- Similar metadata values (e.g. services interested, product categories interested, etc).
- Similar sessions added to schedule / attended
- Have shown similar interest preferences - e.g. made similar swipes on other users/products etc.
In all cases, we can use these similar people and by using any sessions they have added to their agendas we can make recommendations for the user of interest.
As a final addition:
We have recently decided to add a final ‘backfill’ to the session recommendations. Previously despite all of the above, some users received no recommendations, while it was also possible for some sessions to not be recommended to anyone. To reduce these occurrences, we now say that if a user has no recommendations they are given a single session as a recommendation (if available), with a preference for sessions rarely or never recommended previously.
FAQ
Are companies/sponsors recommended as well?
Currently no, though there are plans to take sessions & session recommendations more into account for profile recommendations in the near future.
Can I choose which strategy makes recommendations to my event's participants?
No - the various AI routines listed above are chosen by.... AI!
Remember that each participant is different and some recommendation strategies will be more or less suited to a given person in a given event. This is why Grip is valuable - these decisions can be made quickly and automatically on a personal basis, based on feedback from each participant skipping or adding sessions to their Schedules.
What is the difference between similar sessions and recommendations?
Quite simply, recommendations are based on your interactions within the event platform whereas similar sessions are based on session tags. If a session has no tags it won’t have similar sessions.