AI-powered event design - How to combine your creativity with smart technology

You've been talking to this client for months. The contact person mentioned a major sales partner event planned soon – significant budget, high visibility, the kind of project that could become a flagship case study.

Then the briefing arrives.

It's an email from their procurement department. Three attachments: framework descriptions, bid papers, NDAs. You forward the formalities to your project management colleagues and open the actual briefing document.

❗️The goals are there: "strengthen partner relationships," "showcase product innovation," "create networking opportunities."

❗️Target groups defined: "B2B sales partners, management level, international."

❗️Limitations listed: budget range, venue constraints, timeline.

Everything written in corporate language, methodical and formal.

But: there's no vision. No sense of what would make this event memorable. The briefing tells you what they need to accomplish, but not what experience they want to create.

They talk about metrics but what you need to develop is a transformational concept that makes 200 sales partners actually want to attend instead of sending a junior colleague.

You know your presentation needs to nail it. By understanding what they really need (which might be different from what they asked for), anticipating the stakeholder dynamics you can't see yet, and creating something that survives the adaptation rounds that are definitely coming.

The long journey starts:

🏃‍♀️‍➡️ initial brainstorming to find the compelling angle they didn't articulate

🏃‍♀️‍➡️first pitch to the contact person

🏃‍♀️‍➡️feedback from stakeholders you haven't met yet

🏃‍♀️‍➡️revision to accommodate the CFO's concerns

🏃‍♀️‍➡️another revision when someone senior changes direction

🏃‍♀️‍➡️presentation to the decision committee

🏃‍♀️‍➡️contract negotiations that change key parameters

🏃‍♀️‍➡️and then – if you make it this far – the actual implementation where new constraints emerge weekly.

For years, I accepted it as just how event projects work:

70% of the time managing process friction, 30% doing the creative and strategic work I actually love.

What if you could flip that ratio? Accelerate the grunge work and focus more on the creative thinking?

You can!

By using AI as a strategic partner at every stage.

Not to replace human judgment, but

• to handle the structural thinking,
• analyzing what's actually being asked for,
• testing concepts against different stakeholder perspectives,
• optimizing how we communicate ideas,
• building institutional knowledge that doesn't evaporate between projects.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

WHAT
Before that formal briefing email arrives, there's a window where you can build real context. Not just "what does this company do" but understanding their current challenges, recent shifts, and the public narrative. This intelligence shapes how you read the briefing, you'll recognize what's stated vs. what's carefully avoided, what's a genuine priority vs. corporate boilerplate.
Many agencies skip this step or assign a junior to "do some research" that ends up as a forgotten PDF. 

HOW -  AI APPROACH
1) Deep research with Google Gemini
Before opening the briefing, use Gemini in Deep Research mode to research the client systematically:

• Company performance over the last 3 years (not just revenue, but strategic shifts, market positioning changes, leadership transitions)
• Industry context and competitive pressure points
• The 10 most significant media headlines about them in the past 12 months

Gemini's strength here is connecting dots across sources and usually relies on credible sources.

2) Create a living repository with NotebookLM
The research outcome plus verything publicly available goes into a NotebookLM notebook: business reports, press releases, YouTube videos from their leadership, analyst coverage, even their LinkedIn company updates. This becomes a queryable knowledge base that persists throughout the entire project.

The difference from a static research document: You can ask NotebookLM specific questions as the project evolves. The notebook won't hallucinate but answer from actual sources.

WHY
Read the briefing with context and ask smarter questions earlier
When you understand their current narrative and challenges, your clarifying questions land differently. You'll be demonstrating that you understand their business context. Reference library for the entire project. 

WHAT
That briefing document has everything and nothing. Goals listed, target groups defined, budget set. But the critical questions only emerge when you start conceptualizing: Which goal actually drives decisions when trade-offs come? What does "strengthen relationships" mean in practice? What's the real priority here?

HOW -  AI APPROACH
Create a Claude or ChatGPT Project as a dedicated workspace that maintains context across all conversations about this specific project. Upload the briefing and ask the AI to identify explicit goals vs. implied expectations, where stakeholder priorities might conflict, and critical information gaps.
The output separates facts from interpretations.

Then, use the AI to formulate strategic questions that force specificity: "If we had to choose between 50 deep one-on-one connections vs. 200 people sharing an inspirational experience, which serves their goals better?"

WHY
Time compression: One structured inquiry with strategic questions beats five rounds of "can you clarify X?"
Better foundation for creative work: When you know which goal actually drives decisions, you can develop a concept with a clear point of view instead of trying to be everything to everyone.
And you have a documentation of every step that serves you later.

WHAT
You have a clarified briefing. You understand the context. Now comes the conceptual work.
The challenge isn't generating ideas. It's developing a concept that works for multiple audiences simultaneously: the CFO who needs ROI justification, the HR lead who worries about inclusivity, the marketing director who wants Instagram moments, the CEO who needs this to feel premium. Your first concept draft might satisfy two of them and alienate the others.

HOW - AI APPROACH
Create detailed stakeholder personas for the critical decision-makers and the actual event audience. Not just demographics, also their concerns, their past experiences with similar events, what they'll measure success by.
Example personas:

👤"CFO, 58, skeptical of 'experience' budgets, will ask for concrete business outcomes, has killed three event proposals this year"
👤"Gen Z sales associate, 26, has ignored the last four company event invitations, expects authenticity over polish, checks LinkedIn during keynotes"

These live in the Project's custom instructions, and before finalizing the pitch, run the concept past these personas: "How would the CFO react to this? What objections would the Gen Z audience raise?" The AI plays both roles simultaneously, surfacing tensions you haven't considered.

WHY
Early warning system: Better to discover that the CFO will hate your creative risk in the concept phase than during the pitch presentation.
Sharper positioning: When you know exactly which stakeholder concern you're prioritizing, you can defend the concept with clarity: "We optimized for participant engagement over operational simplicity because the bigger risk is low attendance, learning from your past event experiences."
Efficient iteration: Instead of waiting for stakeholder feedback and then scrambling to revise, you're already ahead of the likely objections.

Read more on AI personas here.

WHAT?
You have a solid concept - now you need to sell it to different audiences. Not only once to win the pitch, but along the full project timeline.
The executive summary for C-suite needs strategic alignment and business impact. The detailed deck for the project team needs feasibility and timeline. The creative presentation for marketing needs to communicate the experience. 

After approval, all the thinking behind the concept – stakeholder analysis, strategic trade-offs, why specific elements matter – exists only in your team's heads but you want to keep it alive until the final evaluation phase.

HOW? - AI APPROACH
Adapt the pitch for different audiences with the help of AI. Use the personas and meta-prompts to ensure consistency. This highlights what each stakeholder cares about and which concerns to address proactively.

Everything stays in the Chatbot Project: briefing analysis, persona testing, pitch variations, reasoning behind choices. When someone asks months later "Why this format instead of that one?", the answer is documented with context.

WHY?
Efficient communication across stakeholder groups. Institutional knowledge that persists - team members can be onboarded by reading the project history. 
Last but not least: it is way easier to evaluate change requests against documented priorities and you can always use AI to create reaction scenarios within minutes.

WHAT AI CANNOT DO

☝🏻AI doesn't replace human judgment about event atmosphere.
☝🏻It doesn't know the unspoken politics in your client's organization or the personal dynamics between stakeholders.
☝🏻It can't read the room during a pitch or build the relationships that make difficult projects work.

What AI actually brings: structure where we need it. It analyzes briefings systematically, tests concepts against multiple perspectives, adapts communication for different audiences, and maintains institutional knowledge.

This creates time for the work that actually requires human insight in an event project: strategic decisions, creative vision, relationship building. Your best people can do more of this, when AI removes process friction.

Take a current briefing or a past one that was problematic and run the workflow as a workshop with your team. All you need:

• A Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus account (~$20/month)
• Access to Gemini (free) and NotebookLM (free)

Need Support Getting Started?
I help event teams and agencies integrate AI into their workflow – not as technology training, but as practical implementation for specific challenges.
This might be:

• A workshop with your team testing the approach on your actual projects
• Individual coaching to set up your workflow and prompts
• Consulting on how this fits your specific client structure and processes

The goal isn't learning everything about AI. It's developing the specific capabilities that make your team work better!