Writing on event data.
Methods, measurement and the arithmetic behind them, for people who run trade shows and exhibitions. Every figure here is either from named published research or a worked example you can reproduce on your own file.
405 articles · 22 subjects
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Twenty-five subjects, each one owning its own territory. Nothing appears twice.
- AI for organisers21Where AI helps an organiser and where it does not. Retrieval and grounding, evaluation, human review, natural language querying, model cost, governance and failure modes.
- Attribution21Where registrations came from, and how confidently you can say so. Source hygiene, unattributed records, multi-touch models, paid media measurement and incrementality testing.
- Audience acquisition21Registration volume before the doors open. Pacing against prior editions, registration curves, deadline behaviour, no-show rates and the qualification questions that decide audience quality.
- BI and reporting21Dashboard craft for event teams. Metric definition and naming, row-level security, self-service against curated reporting, embedding for exhibitors, and report adoption.
- Content and media13Editorial operations for event media brands. Repurposing show content, video and clipping, search visibility, visibility inside answer engines, and content performance.
- Data platform21Warehouses built for events. Star schemas, medallion layering, incremental loads, semantic layers, slowly changing dimensions, pipeline testing, orchestration and cost.
- Data quality21Quality as an operating discipline. Freshness and volume checks, schema drift, duplicate rates, stewardship queues, data contracts, ownership and quality SLAs.
- Event finance21Event P and L structure, revenue recognition, deferred revenue and cash timing, contribution analysis, organic growth definitions, budgeting and reforecasting a show.
- Exhibitor performance20Lead capture through to pipeline. Scan data models, lead grading, per exhibitor scorecards, benchmarking inside a show, and reporting an exhibitor will actually open.
- Forecasting methods20Forecasting registration, attendance, revenue and space. Curve fitting, sparse series, cold start for a new event, hierarchical forecasts, prediction intervals and backtesting.
- Identity resolution20One record per person across editions. Blocking, similarity measures, deterministic and probabilistic matching, survivorship, golden records, merges and unmerges.
- Integrations20Named systems and how their data behaves. Registration platforms, lead retrieval, floorplan tools, CRM, ERP, exhibitor portals, and the export you will want on the way out.
- Matchmaking20Buyer and seller matching. Fit scoring, hosted buyer programmes, scheduling under constraints, no-shows and cancellations, connection density, and meeting quality afterwards.
- On-site analytics20What the floor tells you while it is open. Badge scans and access control, session fill, dwell, aisle traffic, the limits of each sensing method, and show-day anomalies.
- Onboarding operations20The exhibitor back office. Contracting, certificates of insurance, tax forms, service orders, manuals and deadlines, document extraction, and the touch count per exhibitor.
- Portfolio and M&A5Buying and selling events. Diligence, portfolio construction and pruning, launches and geo-clones, post-merger integration, vendor rationalisation and synergy tracking.
- Post-show reporting20The report itself. KPI definitions that reconcile, verified attendance, year over year variance decomposition, event level ROI, and closing the pack while anyone still cares.
- Publishing operations4Running many event brands at once. The brief as an artefact, intake, review and approval, brand systems, launching an edition, and naming and rebrands.
- Renewals19Rebooking and what predicts it. Renewal rate definitions, at-risk scoring, account health, win-back, sales call lists and revenue forecasting for exhibition sales.
- Space and pricing19Rate cards, zone and dynamic pricing, floorplan design, net square foot yield, premium location premiums, sell-through, waitlists and priority points systems.
- Sponsorship19Non-booth inventory. Package construction, CPM and value pricing, activation measurement, digital and app inventory, signage, press value and sponsor renewal.
- Standards and research19Audited attendance, third-party verification, industry definitions, published research and how to read it, survey methodology, and comparability across shows and countries.
Recently published
- Capitalising sales commissions for events under the costs to obtain a contract rulesEvent financeCapitalising sales commissions for events: what counts as an incremental cost of obtaining a contract, when the one year expedient applies, and what a December year end does.
- Venue cost in event budgets and the clauses that move it after signatureEvent financeVenue cost in event budgets is a contracted hall hire plus a variable tail that bills on actuals. How to rate it per square foot and budget the part nobody signed for.
- Gross versus net revenue presentation when the organiser resells stand build and housingEvent financeGross versus net revenue presentation turns on control, not on who sends the invoice. A housing block worth 4 million shows as 600,000 or 4 million of revenue.
- Delegate fee revenue recognition for a conference running alongside the exhibitionEvent financeDelegate fee revenue recognition for a conference alongside a trade show: when the fee is earned, how no-shows are treated, and what a conference straddling a year end does.
- Sponsorship revenue accounting when the package spans a year and one show weekEvent financeSponsorship revenue accounting for a package covering show week and a year of digital presence: splitting the price by standalone selling price and phasing each piece.
- What belongs in space revenue versus service revenue when the accounts closeEvent financeSpace revenue versus service revenue: what belongs in each line, why folding services into space overstates yield per square foot, and the test IFRS 15 actually applies.
- Allocating central overhead to shows without starting a war between show directorsEvent financeAllocating central overhead to shows changes who looks profitable. Three bases on one 8.4 million show, the ranking they invert, and the disclosure that ends the argument.
- Forward bookings as a metric only works if the comparison date is fixedEvent financeForward bookings as a metric only compares if both figures are struck the same number of days before doors open and the basis is written down first.
- Why a growing event business runs on negative working capital and what breaks itEvent financeA growing event business runs on negative working capital because deferred revenue funds it. What two filed balance sheets show, and what a flat year costs.
- Splitting fixed versus variable event costs before the first budget reviewEvent financeHow to split fixed versus variable event costs by decision window, what a 10 per cent space shortfall really releases, and why step costs break the two-bucket model.
- The cash profile of an annual show peaks months before the revenue doesEvent financeThe cash profile of an annual show peaks before doors open and settles after breakdown. A month by month curve on one edition, and where the peak misleads.
- Deferred revenue for trade shows is the balance sheet line nobody reads carefullyEvent financeDeferred revenue for trade shows holds every booth, badge and sponsorship invoiced before doors open. What moves the balance, and what it cannot tell you.