BizBash's 10 Most Innovative Meetings 2022 is sponsored by Quest Events, MyClearText, AccessLOOP, and GTHER.
The basics: Gary Vaynerchuck, commonly known as Gary Vee, is a serial entrepreneur known for founding successful companies like Resy and VaynerMedia. More recently, he's amassed a large following for VeeFriends, a community he's built surrounding his NFT collection.
The latter was the subject of his latest headline-grabbing venture: VeeCon, a brand-new event dedicated to pop culture, NFTs, and Web3 that took place May 19-22 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Over the course of the event, there were 154 speakers—including Snoop Dogg, Steve Aoki, Pharrell, Mila Kunis, and Randi Zuckerberg—and nine entertainers, including Wyclef Jean and Miguel—plus a mix of keynote speeches, educational panels, live demonstrations, and collaborative moments.
“VeeCon 2022 is inspired by favorite events I’ve seen throughout my life, including business conferences, music festivals, closed-door offsite events, and not least of all, summer camp activities," said Vaynerchuck in a press statement while announcing the new event. "This is the career-defining conference of my life."
The sold-out gathering—which was produced in-part by emc3—drew almost 7,000 people, including guests from more than 70 countries.
Steal-worthy innovations: The event used NFTs as tickets, a logical choice given the topics and themes. Here's how it worked: All VeeFriends token owners were given three-year passes to the conference, which Vaynerchuck plans to host again in 2023 and 2024. VeeFriends holders had their tickets airdropped to the wallet that held their Series 1 VeeFriends token, while others were permitted to purchase them via NFT marketplace OpenSea. Users then needed to register the ticket on the Veecon app, and were required to provide their legal name as it appeared on the photo IDs they'd be showing to enter the stadium.
The biggest challenges: Daniel Curtis, emc3's chief strategy officer, cited "building the plane while flying it" as the most challenging aspect of the gathering. “This event, and nothing really like it, had never been done before—so there were no precedents to work from or comparisons to make," he said, adding that the NFT aspects and the founder's popularity made for some unique ways of working.
"For example, we had an event that was sold out months before the venue, the dates, the lineup, or any other details had been announced, so we had no way of knowing what the attendance rates would be," Curtis explained. "It was also quite hard to pinpoint attendee demographics as the token holders were relatively anonymous.”
But once the doors opened, he quickly learned his fears were unfounded. "There were hundreds if not thousands of people sprinting in the stadium—so much energy! Seeing the love that the attendees had for each other, the event, and Gary was incredible," Curtis said. 
“VeeCon 2022 is inspired by favorite events I’ve seen throughout my life, including business conferences, music festivals, closed-door offsite events, and not least of all, summer camp activities," said Vaynerchuck in a press statement while announcing the new event. "This is the career-defining conference of my life."Photo: Courtesy of emc3
Lessons learned: Curtis says his team learned an important lesson about stadium-based events: the need for comfortable shoes! "We walked on average 22 kilometers [over 13 miles] per day around the stadium," he remembered. "Luckily we got all our team amazingly comfortable shoes from LØCI for the show, which were also gifted to the talent on-site. As a bonus, they are vegan and sustainable. Best event hack!"
Learn more about our sponsors:
Quest Events is a go-to event rental partner for industry professionals based in North America. With locations across the U.S. and service capabilities in Canada, look no further for effective and efficient pipe and drape services, as well as scenic, decor, and furnishing solutions across the AV, hospitality, corporate, wedding, and exhibition industries.
MyClearText elevates events no matter the format with high-quality human captioning in real-time. Thanks to the team’s 50-plus years of technical expertise, MyClearText captions are produced at the speed of up to 300 words per minute, delivered at 99% accuracy contextually and grammatically.
AccessLOOP is a leader in adding accessibility features to all livestreamed and virtual events (think: human captioning, live sign language, translations in more than 100 languages, and more). It’s a simple workflow—the browser-based software links to your source stream and stream destinations, loops in your preferred providers, and allows you to set your on-screen layout.
GTHER is a next-gen event experience platform that’s designed to evolve with the ever-changing industry by bringing virtual event functionalities into one place. Referred to as “the Swiss army knife of virtual experience platforms,” GTHER allows its users to chat, livestream, stream real-time content, host networking sessions, create a custom-branded space, and so much more.
