S6E2: The World's Fair

Let's talk about Dubai and the World's Fair!  In this episode, I give an overview of the World's Fair, my top three lessons learned from the World's Fair that can apply to any of your events on the day to day (such as innovation and ideas in signage and inclusivity) and some of the new countries on my short list to visit! 

Things referenced in the podcast:  My Email

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Transcript

Hello, hello my friends listening in today. It is another day, another podcast. I am so excited. Alright, why am I excited? Today we are going to talk about the World’s Fair. In full disclosure, this was my very first World's Fair, though I have read about it in books and textbooks for many, many years looking back at the innovation of the future, all of the placemaking and architectural parts of the World's Fair and seeing pictures from World's Fairs that have been hosted around the world. It's definitely an important event of the 19th and 20th centuries. So I was so excited when I found out that my university was going to host a study abroad to the World's Fair in 2020. 

And then COVID hit and then that got postponed to 2021. Then delta hit. And it was really sad that there were students who were planning on going to Dubai to see the World's Fair in 2020 and 2021 and both times it got canceled. So I had a group of students that were planning on paying to go to the World's Fair from their own money on their own. And they said we're graduating and we've been looking forward to this for two years and we are going. This is our graduation present to ourselves. And they set it up and of course they were like Dr. K, we want you to come with us. Will you come with us? And I said sure. And they said Dr. K, can we keep the exact same schedule that we had but add on some extra days at the World's Fair? And I said sure. So together with our incredible partner at the Emirates Academy and their point person for us Raluca, we set up an incredible journey for almost two weeks, where we got to explore the World's Fair for many days and also see the rest of Dubai and some in Abu Dhabi. It was absolutely incredible.

I had to admit, the first time I went to the World's Fair, very specifically, we took a train. It took about an hour to an hour and a half from where we were staying. And I have to admit when you walk in the doors, you have to show your vaccine card and then you go through the metal detectors and things they scan all your stuff, and then you walk in. It's larger than life. It's absolutely incredible. With that said it's really hard to know what to expect. If you don't do your research ahead of time. So as the best example that I can give is that the World's Fair is actually a city. They are building a city. And every single country in the world who chooses to participate, which is almost 200 countries, they all can own a building or go in with other countries to have specific spaces and buildings. And so this entire event, this entire site is a city and keeping that in mind. 

It's a long time to walk around a city. So think about any city in the country that you live in. Whether that's Paris or London or New York or Boston, or anywhere in California. Imagine walking around Los Angeles or walking around Frankfurt. It's gonna take a long time. And so these groups that are only scheduling one day at the World's Fair, they're missing out on so much. If you didn't stop to look at anything, it would take a solid three to three and a half hours just to walk around the footprint of the World's Fair.

The World's Fair was divided into five different areas. These districts included the sustainability district, the opportunity district, the mobility district, Jubilee, Al Wasl and Al Forsan. So technically, that's six areas, but there's five districts and then kind of your opening part where you're coming into the park and each one of these districts had one key area, something that was a pavilion that centered the district. So for example, in the sustainability district, they had the sustainability pavilion, and these pavilions are are grandiose, larger than life and they really dig into the topic. So in the sustainability pavilion, they talk a little bit about the history of sustainability. Then they talk about where we are now and then they talk about the future of where we're going. What the world's problems are, what the issues are, what we can do, what we can do to help, what innovation is going on, what innovation is needed. So you can imagine in sustainability and in mobility and even in opportunity, there's all these different possibilities that could be in those pavilions. And the pavilions are definitely a can't miss.

So you've got the five districts and all the countries have divided their content into these districts essentially. Every country had the opportunity to hire their own architect that could build their own building or their own space - doesn't have to be an architect could be a designer. I'm assuming it's a large team of people. And they can design interactive elements or some more passive elements where you just kind of watched videos, most of them were experiential. And you go around as a participant and you're just taking it all in. That's on top of the fact that they also do themed weeks with specific themed activities and then they have special events that happen one off, or once a season, or once a month. So you have a lot going on. So figuring out what you can do there definitely takes some pre-planning. So we just went to the world's fair on the first day, we wanted to take it all in and see what was going on and then make a plan for the rest of the time we were there. And let me tell you, I feel like we almost wasted a day. It was incredible to walk around and see everything. But in the words of one of my students, it's just so overwhelming. You're walking down these large paths, and you're just seeing building after building after building and you have no idea what's inside. You have no idea if you're going to resonate with it. You have no idea if it's going to be engaging or interactive, and a lot of the pavilions, the larger pavilions had lines. Is it worth waiting 90 minutes to two hours for whatever's inside this building? Am I going to like it? Is it going to be engaging? So it can be a little bit overwhelming. 

 I had one student who was just all in their element. They did a plan, they walked around, they maximized their time, they did all the things. And then I had some students who were like, it's so overwhelming I'm going to go to like the top 10, see the experiences, see the sights, and that's my experience. And I think that's really important is you always have to keep in mind who the attendee is and what their desires are. Are you showing up to this to look for the next innovation?  To see what our future looks like? Are you coming to this to see event logistics? Are you coming to this to see marketing? Are you coming to this because you're working it? What exactly is your purpose? Now the Dubai Expo, the World's Fair, did a really good job on their mobile app. You can type in some things that are important to you and they give you these personalized journeys, and they tell you about how long it takes. So say you were really passionate in storytelling, and you filled out this little 10 Question personality quiz or whatnot. You are really interested in storytelling, it would give you suggested paths that you could do. It’d say okay, this path will take a day, this one will take three days, this one will take half a day and then you can click through to the different countries to kind of learn more about what their exhibit is. 

As someone who’s heard about world fairs in the past but has never attended one. I have to say I was expecting a lot more future thinking. I was expecting a lot more of like innovation of the future. And there were many buildings that had that. I think I was just expecting every country to kind of focus on what's innovative in their area. And it was surprising to me to see that some countries didn't do that. There were a lot of countries who wanted to focus on their history, the past until now, which is really fascinating for people who care about history and historians. I will say I developed a brand new love of several countries that weren't even on my radar. One of them being we were in the Hungary pavilion. Love the Hungary pavilion, definitely recommend. One of the things that I loved about the Hungary pavilion outside of just their innovative use of projection and interactive technology and the way that they chose to do their signage. They had this incredible team that was working in the gift shop. You walk right by the gift shop, they have a water bar with the different types of water from Hungary. It was really fascinating. They were just open, they wanted to talk, they wanted to make sure you had a positive experience and it wasn't like that in every building. We were asking about food. Now when you ask people at the World's Fair about food, like what food is good, right? So as Americans, we often ask what do you recommend? And what you find out culturally is that not a lot of people are like that. And instead of telling you what they would recommend, because they are their own unique individual person, they would just tell you where the local restaurants are. They would say, oh, you're hungry. There's a pizza place here, and a Greek place here, and a cafe here, coffee here and you would just get the nearest restaurants within a five minute walk. When we asked the person at Hungary, he was like, okay, what cuisine do you like? And then we said the cuisine we liked. And he's like, okay, here's the three places you have to go to. 

He told us he said you have to go check out the Estonia space. And we went over to the Estonia space and it was breathtakingly beautiful on the inside. On the outside it just looks like a just a building with no windows and you walk in and it's this incredible experience. It's very engaging yet passive at the same time, but it's really talking about - chances are you've never heard of Estonia, where is Estonia? And this is why you should have heard of Estonia. And here's reasons why you should be interested in Estonia. And here's what the future of Estonia looks like. Let me tell you, Estonia is on my shortlist of places to visit now, simply because of their incredible space at the World's Fair, which is awesome. 

So now, I'm going to do the exact same thing that I just slightly insulted these people at the World’s Fair for. People keep sending me emails or calling me or asking me what booths do you recommend, what countries do you recommend, that I go to at the World's Fair. And I always advertise the app, always. And I say it's really dependent on what you want to do. Some of my favorites, I really loved the Hungary one and I really loved Germany because I think that Germany had a really engaging exhibit that blended our current life and our future life going forward. And it was very well done. I definitely recommend the sustainability pavilion. I recommend the light shows. There's just so much I recommend. 

Now things to take into consideration. Maybe you're like okay, Kristin, I'm listening to the podcast, because I really love your podcast but I have no interest in going to the World’s Fair or I’m not going to go. It is open until April. And if you do want to go you should definitely look up the Emirates Academy because they are wonderful people to work with and you can stay there even though you're not a student. They have lodging. It's incredible.

So what lessons have I learned? Lessons learned from the World's Fair. Now definitely cultural, but Dubai is in a desert climate, and it was really hard to find water. Now Aquafina has an exclusive sponsorship on this so you essentially had to buy overpriced bottles of water or buy a reusable bottle that you could then go around to different fill up stations. But there was only I think two free water fillers, water spigots, whatever, around the park and the park again, takes three and a half hours to walk around. So dehydration is a real thing. So you're thinking about that in terms of events, not just the World's Fair. If you're going to the World's Fair just buy the reusable cup from Aquafina and just call it a day and make sure you stay hydrated. But thinking about that at our events, in general is access to water. I think so often in some countries, we take it for granted that we're just going to have water everywhere and being in a country where water was not readily available. You really have to take those things into consideration. 

Two. Definitely signage, signage, signage, signage. And one thing that I really loved, and I'm going to talk about Hungary again, one thing that I really loved about Hungary was that they did signage without just having the sign that had a word with an arrow. As we become an increasingly interconnected global community with many, many different languages. We have to get past this thought process that signage is words in one to three languages and an arrow. A lot of companies, organizations do a great job using pictures, little pictures. I think about IKEA instructions for their furniture. They do a great job of having pictures again with arrows. Hungary did a really cool thing in terms of, in their walkways, they had a little stream that was lit up from below, and you just followed the stream. So you walk in, it's very natural, you followed the stream and it took you everywhere that you needed to go. Now I'm not saying you can build a stream or a projection of a stream into all of your events, but we really need to start thinking about signage that's outside of the written word. Because I am constantly facing this when I'm traveling internationally. Airports are normally okay because it's in English but outside of airports signage is always really difficult.

And the last thing I'll talk about in terms of lessons learned. I'll talk about technology. There's a big difference between using technology for the sake of the latest and greatest and most innovative so I have to have it. And using technology effectively to improve the user or attendees experience. I used to say this all the time to instructors just because Prezi came out and it was super fun and awesome, doesn't mean that it became a better technology over PowerPoint. Essentially, it's the same thing. You have to think about what you're trying to get across, what your objective is, and then the technology that best matches it. And sometimes it's an older technology. Sometimes it's minimal technology. Sometimes it's no technology at all. Just because the RFID scanners and trackers and eye trackers and all of the super fancy technology comes out - if it doesn't align with the objective that you're trying to get across or incorporate or measure, then it's not right for you. Don't use technology just for technology's sake. 

All right. We're coming up on 20 minutes. So those are some of my lessons learned from the World's Fair. If you are interested in knowing more, getting more specific recommendations, you are more than welcome to reach out. My email is linked in the show notes. You can reach out on any social. I always value your time, and I never take it for granted. Thank you so much for taking the time to make the time. I'll talk with you soon.