Joe Schwinger is the chief innovation officer for the newly merged MeetingPlay + Aventri. He's based in Frederick, Md.
How he got his start: Schwinger's first true experience with digital and e-commerce was when he worked for Marriott and was tasked with getting images of hotels on the brand's website.
"Through the journey of being one of the first digital marketers at Marriott, I grew within the organization to eventually oversee all the hotels in North America from a digital perspective," he says. "That eventually led to my next adventure on a task force called 'The Future of Meetings.' With my entrepreneurial spirit and desire to create things, I was given the opportunity to canvas the event tech space and identify opportunities in the event industry."
During that process, he explains, "I found a wide-open market of events that had no digital activations. That’s where MeetingPlay got its start."
MeetingPlay has pivoted multiple times, starting as a gamification-based mobile app and evolving into a full-service engagement platform for events. "We then pivoted into on-property activations with badging, lead retrieval, and session tracking, but doing it all at a high level around marketing activations," he adds.
This all meant the team was well-positioned at the start of the pandemic—which lead to a whopping 400% growth year over year. "The explosion of growth and innovation positioned us nicely to diversify our product by merging MeetingPlay and Aventri, becoming the industry’s end-to-end powerhouse solution for all our customers’ needs," he says.
What innovation means to him: "One of the things that was hard for me to understand early on in my career was that change is good. And more importantly, good things come out of change," Schwinger explains. "That was something I learned and took with me into MeetingPlay: Living in a static environment brings static growth."
He continues, "When we started MeetingPlay in one of the most competitive technology fields, every day we would wake up and a provider was offering a shiny new tool. But with that background of embracing change, we have been able to stay in front of it all and provide our customers with innovative solutions before they even know they need them. If we didn’t embrace that entrepreneurial spirit, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to merge with Aventri and bring new, innovative ideas to the industry at a much higher level."
Career highlights: Schwinger's biggest career accomplishment actually came from one of his lowest professional moments: March 13, 2020, when 100% of MeetingPlay's pipeline was canceled in 48 hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I stepped back as a company and individual and allowed myself to have a very small moment of panic," he remembers. "But true to everything I have done in my life, I woke up two days later and said, 'This is not going to be the end for MeetingPlay. Instead, how can we make this a new beginning?'"
Schwinger recalls that the team ended up selling their first virtual environment just two weeks later and became cost-neutral within 45 days. And "after 60 days, we became profitable again. I believe that it was the ultimate testament that, no matter what headwinds were in front of us, we were not going to let anything stop the amazing journey we were on," he says. "As a result, look at where we are today. We have merged with Aventri and employ over 400 people globally, who all wake up with that same spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation for our customers."
He adds, "That rough patch really defined who I am as a person and who we are as a company. And that overall, we were destined to become much greater."
Vision for the future: "If there is something positive that can come out of this pandemic for everyone, it’s that in a matter of months, planners, providers, and vendors went from Blockbuster to Netflix," he says. "We’ve come, as an industry, so far in such a short period that we shouldn’t be thinking of going back to the old ways. Instead, we should be thinking about how we take these new tools that have been invented over the past two years and use them to our benefit."
That's what makes him so excited for his new role at the now-merged companies, with the appropriate title of chief innovation officer. "Now, I have all these tools at my disposal that I am cultivating and giving shape, all to service a global audience that will use them in future decades to come," he says.
Back to the full list: 12 Event Tech Experts Pushing the Industry Forward
