My role for this AI conference was vastly different from my regular producer work at the agency side. I was hired as a corporate event manager for Company N, which has a large number of employees and contractors at their event team and does not hire an anchor agency. I mainly communicated with hotels and restaurants to plan for receptions and dinner events. One of the items I managed was called “Dinner with Strangers,” in which a conference attendee can choose from a pool of restaurants and be seated with random people from the conference.
You can even see who are sitting at the same table from the displays behind me. Because not everyone has a reception to go to each night, this is a good way to network with others when he or she is attending the conference alone. We sold out almost all the tables and some participants came back to our kiosk with rave reviews. With the ubiquity of the sharing economy, people are more open to share time/space with total strangers. I remember that engineers used to be shy, but the folks I talked to were gregarious. I almost lost my voice on the first day while pitching the concept.