April Product Updates: Centralize Your Event Portfolio, Empower Your Speakers & Simplify Meeting Schedules

Speakers need their bios updated. Attendees can’t figure out how to schedule meetings. You’re sending out five different event links to the same audience because there’s no central place to showcase everything you’re doing.

April’s updates tackle exactly this kind of friction. We built features that let your stakeholders handle tasks themselves. Speakers manage their own profiles and sessions, attendees set their availability with a few clicks instead of filling out forms, and your entire event portfolio lives in one place instead of scattered across dozens of URLs.

The goal? Get you out of the weeds and back to the work that matters.

Let’s get into what’s new.

Showcase All Your Events on One Central Website

If you run multiple events throughout the year, you know the pain. Every event gets its own registration link. You’re constantly sending different URLs to the same audience. Attendees have to keep track of which link goes with which event. It’s fragmented, confusing, and makes your event portfolio feel disjointed.

The new Organizational Level Website fixes this.

Create a centralized hub that showcases all your upcoming events in one place. Organize events under categories by industry, format, region, or whatever makes sense for your portfolio. Highlight high-priority events, so they get the visibility they deserve. Share additional content like speaker spotlights, past event recaps, or resources that deliver a complete guided journey for interested attendees.

Instead of sending scattered links, you now have one destination. Attendees bookmark it, return to it, and explore your full event calendar on their own time. You spend less time managing links and more time promoting the actual events.

For organizations running dozens of events across different teams or regions, this is the centralization you’ve been missing.

Give Speakers & Moderators Real Control With Speaker Portal 

Speakers and moderators want to do a good job, but they’re constantly waiting on organizers for basic things. Whether they need to update their bio, change their headshot, or upload any handouts, they need to email the organizer. It creates unnecessary back-and-forth and slows everyone down.

The updated Speaker Portal changes this dynamic completely.

Speakers can now edit their own profile fields—bio, headshot, job title, credentials. No more email requests for simple updates. They get a personalized view of all assigned sessions, roles, schedules, and co-presenters in one dashboard, so they always know what they’re responsible for and who they’re working with.

During live sessions, speakers can manage audience Q&A in real time with visibility controls. They decide which questions to show or hide during the session, keeping the conversation focused and productive. After the session, they can export full Q&A logs in CSV format for post-session follow-ups, academic documentation, or internal review.

Moderators get even more power. They can add or remove co-speakers directly from the portal without routing requests through you. They can create new sessions or edit existing ones on the fly, adapting to last-minute changes without waiting for organizer approval.

Event organizers can assign preparation tasks to speakers with due dates—upload slides by Friday, review session materials by Monday—and track completion before the event. Speakers see all these tasks within their portal along with status, deadlines, descriptions, and action types. Everything they need is in one place.

Role-based permissions ensure speakers and moderators only see controls relevant to their assigned role. Speakers don’t see moderator tools. Moderators don’t see organizer-level settings. Everyone has exactly what they need, nothing more.

This turns speakers from people you manage into empowered collaborators who handle themselves.

Minimize Meeting Scheduling Friction for Participants

Meeting scheduling at events has always been clunky. Attendees struggle to define their availability manually. They block out time slots one by one, make mistakes, and end up with double-booked calendars or no meetings at all. For events built around meetings, this friction kills the entire experience.

We’ve completely revamped the Meeting Module to make scheduling intuitive and flexible.

All users are available for the event by default. Instead of manually selecting every available time slot, they only mark exceptions as unavailable. For multi-day events, they can drag and drop to mark unavailabilities across the entire schedule. This simple shift eliminates the tedious process of defining availability slot by slot.

Need to hide certain VIP attendees from general meeting requests? They can opt out entirely, making themselves completely hidden from participant lists and matchmaking. This is different from marking unavailability. Opting out means their name doesn’t appear in the participant list at all when others try to schedule meetings. This feature is particularly useful for VIP buyers, high-profile alumni, or executive speakers who need to be in the system but shouldn’t be visible for open meeting requests.

Organizers can opt users out from the backend and manage all unavailabilities centrally, giving you control when needed.

Everyone gets notifications for meeting status changes—started, starting soon, accepted, rejected, invited, or reset. No more wondering if someone confirmed your meeting or checking the dashboard constantly.

Filter meetings by creator, invitee, or specific participants from both frontend and backend. Find exactly what you’re looking for without scrolling through endless lists.

The new calendar view shows all meetings, unavailabilities, and organizer-added block times in one place. See accepted, rejected, or unacted-upon booked meetings alongside self-added unavailabilities. The calendar gives you a complete picture of your event schedule at a glance.

These changes were driven by feedback from events focused entirely on meetings, where booth representatives and attendees struggled with the old manual system. Now scheduling is fast, intuitive, and actually works the way people expect it to.

Run End-to-End Hosted Buyer Programs

Hosted buyer programs are one of the most valuable offerings for trade shows, but they’re operationally complex. You’re managing buyer recruitment, registration, package selection, payments, accommodation tracking, flight reimbursements, and meeting schedules across dozens or hundreds of buyers. Most organizers cobble together spreadsheets, emails, and multiple systems to make it work.

The new Hosted Buyer Software handles the full workflow in one platform.

Manage everything from buyer recruitment and registration to package selection and payment processing. Track accommodations and flight reimbursements without leaving the platform. No more spreadsheet chaos or scattered data.

AI-powered matchmaking connects exhibitors with hosted buyers based on criteria like job title, country of operation, and ideal customer profile. The system suggests matches, then handles automated diary scheduling with full organizer control. You decide which meetings happen, when they happen, and how long they last.

Exhibitors can browse buyer profiles, score prospects as “must meet” or “nice to meet,” and send connection requests. They can also purchase guaranteed meeting slots with high-value buyers, creating a new revenue stream for your event while giving exhibitors the access they’re willing to pay for.

This turns hosted buyer programs from a logistical headache into a competitive advantage that drives exhibitor satisfaction and event revenue.

Create Custom Badges for Every Attendee Segment

Last month, we introduced major Badge Designer updates. This month, we’re expanding customization even further.

You’ve always been able to create unique badges for different user types—speakers, exhibitors, attendees, and sponsors. Now you can create badges based on attendee segments, such as VIP, general admission, hosted buyers, honors students, or any segment you’ve defined in your segmentation module.

To enable this, follow these steps:

1. Badge Printing Settings > Addons > Enable Badge Segmentation
2. Participants > Segments > Create Segment > Enable for Badge Printing
3. Badge Designer > Here, you will be able to see the enabled segments under the Visitor heading.

This meaningful badge distinction helps people navigate your event. A VIP badge signals access to exclusive areas. A hosted buyer badge tells exhibitors this is someone worth prioritizing. An honors student badge helps faculty identify high-achieving students during networking.

Use custom fonts on badges to match your brand perfectly. Adjust size, colors, and backgrounds. Add profile pictures, QR codes, or custom text. Include any field from your registration form, such as job title, graduation year, company size, buying intent, department, or skills.

Your badges now reflect the full nuance of your event and help attendees identify who’s who at a glance. This small detail makes a surprisingly big difference in how people navigate and engage with your event.

These updates are live now in your vFairs dashboard. We’re continuing to build features that centralize your operations and empower your stakeholders to manage themselves, with more improvements on the way.

Got questions about any of these features or want to see them in action? Book a free demo or reach out to us at [email protected].