CogX: AI Innovation Exchange & Awards
The brief
Who do you call when you have a vision to create a ground-breaking AI conference and you only have three months to do it? Forgather stepped in to help CognitionX, a market intelligence platform for all things AI, bring together global thought leaders to debate the impact of AI on industry, government and society.
The solution
CogX was a two-day innovation exchange featuring three streams, 18 sessions, 44 exhibitors, 100+ speakers and an awards dinner to celebrate the most innovative contributors to AI, including DeepMind, UiPath and Tesla.
Speakers included the likes of MC Srivas, Chief Data Architect for Uber, Lord Young, Former Employment Secretary, Matt Hancock, the Minister for Digital and Kathryn Parsons, Founder & CEO of Decoded. We even had contributions from a robot – Hanson Robotics’ Sophia joined us on stage to discuss the future of AI. Finishing touches included a gold mirror bar serving up quality barista coffee and a 2m LED neon CogX digi brain.
Our role
Partnering with the founders, we provided a full outsourced event management solution that stretched from managing the budget to advising on sponsorship contracts, developing the event brand across all onsite materials and AV production, to planning a memorable pre-event dinner at the Cheesegrater. We also took the expo startups and vendors in hand, supporting them to build and manage eye-catching stands. On the day, we scaled to a team of 60 people, whom we recruited, briefed and managed. This was an ambitious conference, which we pulled off in record time.
Proud moments:
From a standing start, in just three months we collectively achieved over 1200 conference attendees, 250 awards dinner guests and 44 exhibitors.
Designing a buzzing expo area complete with 36 cutting edge AI companies in our startup alley and 8 market leading vendors including Accenture Analytics, IBM and The Alan Turing Institute.
Bringing to life the key insights from the sessions with a live graphic wall – a hand drawn visual representation of the current state of AI. An army of Insights Volunteers provided session highlights to our resident artist John Caswell, who delivered a pictorial executive briefing summary, which would later inform and inspire 18 post-event insight reports.
Praise:
“With just 3 months to go before our event we needed an event production partner who could match our passion and ambition. Whilst we concentrated on the content and sales, Forgather provided all the key event delivery services - managing the planning, budgeting, graphics, onsite production, AV, live streaming and staffing of the conference, exhibition and awards evening. It was the first event we’d produced of this scale, and with limited in-house resource we needed a partner who was not only an expert in event planning but a mind reader, tech specialist and experienced sounding board. Forgather stood with us shoulder to shoulder and it was a pleasure working with them on CogX”.
Tabitha Goldstaub, Co-Founder, CognitionX
“It was an awesome event. Great to hear so many industry leaders openly thinking about a complex topic, and I am glad to say I learnt a lot.”
MC Srivas, Chief Data Architect, Uber
“A sizzling combination of feeling plush, high budget and professional but like one big friendly open Meetup.”
Maxine Mackintosh, Co-Founder, One HealthTech; Data Science & Dementia PhD Student, UCL
“What an awesome gathering! You managed to bring so many different industry, technology and activists together and have positive discussions that generated ideas, vision and paths for an AI enabled future. It was a privilege to be a part of.”
Hugo Pinto, Innovation Officer & Innovation Services Leader, IBM EMEA
“I think that in years to come people will be proud to say, 'I was there’!”
Robbie Stamp, CEO, Bioss International; Chairman h2g2.com & Hitchhiker’s Foundation; Director, See Change Films; Owner, StampBros
