PCMA’s Project Spark – an inclusive education and industry research development initiative on the evolving place of artificial intelligence (AI) in business events – is undergoing alpha testing by both PCMA’s members and the wider business events industry.
Launched at IMEX Frankfurt in May, followed by PCMA APAC Labs in Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney, the priority now is for the industry to test and determine if Project Spark is a good fit before moving into the beta second phase, said Florence Chua, PCMA’s managing director, APAC.
She continued: “Depending on real need and what users are willing to pay, a subscription model and other funding are being considered.” An “enterprise model” is another viable option.
Veemal Gungadin, CEO of Gevme, the project partner, said Project Spark was designed with the various needs and tasks of event professionals in mind, and for them to discover how best to pair it with their existing non-AI tech stack.
Gungadin added: “It’s crucial to remember that Spark is a tool meant to augment user abilities and not replace human judgement. Users should explore how the AI can help them in their tasks, but always have the final say in decision-making.”
During the current testing phase, Project Spark will focus on tracking anonymous usage data for the sole purpose of improvement. This includes tracking which features are used most frequently, and how users interact with the platform.
The data will guide Gungadin and his team on what can be improved and which features should be prioritised in further development
So far, user feedback from the PCMA APAC Labs has highlighted Project Spark’s “efficiency and its ability to reduce time spent on routine tasks, allowing users to focus more on strategic aspects of event planning, its capacity to generate high-quality content and creating outstanding taglines from relevant keywords”, Gungadin shared.
It can currently perform around 20 tasks, including fleshing out an event agenda; writing social media posts or summarising key takeaways based on published content like a video presentation; developing interview questions; writing speakers’ bios based on available notes.
Gungadin shared that a user from Sydney also discovered an innovative use – to analyse videos of keynote speakers to generate LinkedIn posts, transforming multimedia content into a different format.
Laurence Liew, director, AI Innovation, AI Singapore, a speaker at the PCMA APAC Lab in Singapore, commented: “Whether generated by AI or humans, all content needs to be vetted for accuracy, copyright, biases, etc.
“Also source for legally generated images free from legal encumbrances and use tools like Adobe Firefly – which has licensed the images to use in training their model. Be cautious with other free image-generation tools,” he stressed, adding that it would be good to get a company’s legal department to check the T&Cs and fine print.
Liew shared that tools like Project Spark are useful in helping him generate ideas, structure and content, but he would still rephrase the content in his “own style”.
