Cognitive events learn the participant and respond.

observation — attributed to Chris & Jill Drury

Chris Drury's framing of cognitive events is structural. The event learns who the attendee is. It reasons. It watches behavior. It makes recommendations on what might be right for that specific attendee. The Drurys built one such event around IBM's Watson, which required their right-brained team to learn cognitive computing. The category is still emerging. The implication is that event design over the next decade will increasingly resemble personalized digital products: the event has a model of the attendee and responds in real time. Conferences that treat all attendees as identical will lose to conferences that adapt to each.

For corporate event teams, conference programmers, and agencies thinking about where the field is heading. The observation is most useful as a planning input for organizations deciding which capabilities to build.

cognitive-events, personalization, ibm-watson, real-time-recommendation