(00:00:05) - Welcome to The HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show.
(00:00:45) - Hello! Today's episode is shining a spotlight on 6Connex - an in-person, hybrid and virtual event technology for enterprises. The product portfolio includes meetings, virtual venues, environments, learning management, and webinars designed for corporations in need of engaging with communities in person, virtually, or in hybrid fashion. HR teams are using the technology to host benefit fairs, job fairs, HR, staffing, meetings, and more. Joining me to talk about 6Connex today is Luiz Martins, chief marketing officer at the company.
(00:01:17) - Welcome to the show Luiz. It's so great to have you on as a guest.
(00:01:21) - My pleasure. Thank you so much for having us here.
(00:01:24) - So tell us, Luiz, about your background in the HR tech space.
(00:01:30) - Sure. I joined 6Connex in 2019. 6Connex has been around for close to 15 years now. It's been it's been around for a while. And, when, when I joined, this company had about 25 employees back in, mid-2019 and, and, we basically did what we do today, which just got a little better and bigger., obviously the pandemic helped for, for growth, but we have an interesting background story, and if you don't mind, and I'd love to kind of share, how we got started as a company. Is that okay?
(00:02:10) - Yeah, that was actually my next question. So let's go to it.
(00:02:14) - Perfect. So back in 2010, there was this agency that was really good in creating this visual, artwork.
(00:02:24) - And, they realized in 2010 that, well, you know, if we could get technology around this, those visuals, this backgrounds that we create and, and put some technology around it, we could really make it into immersive type, experiences for people. And, and they identified the group of, technologists that came up and, and just started, creating interactions on that environment. So, so from there, in 2011, the company stopped being an agency, a marketing agency, and became a virtual event technology company. So, so, so the beauty of what they created is that they were thinking in terms of how do I actually take a physical location and make that into a virtual experience. So the to the point where they actually took a picture of an office of, a building of, park and, and took that and made that into, a navigation experience virtually for attendees. And, and they started, the first thing they did was aja type events and their first customer, what they wanted to do, it was a multinational company, and they were concerned about we onboard a lot of employees worldwide, different languages, and, you know, different offices, different ways of communicating.
(00:04:00) - How can we actually just take a virtual way of onboarding all this, folks? Because the way we're we're doing now just takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and we have no control from a headquarters standpoint of the data that these people are getting, they new employees are getting and the culture that we want to share. So the first customer was a company that created this wonderful, virtual headquarters where every single employee would come in with their login and their credentials, and they would see what, what the company had envisioned for them to learn, to know about the company and to answer any questions that the employee may have. And because of that, because of the the way we started being a company that, delivered a HR type,, content and experiences, we really grew in this space during virtual career fairs, benefits fairs, open enrollment and company communication in general. So that's sort of the genesis of 6Connex, by the way, people always ask me, so where do you get this name? I don't know if you're curious about it because it's it's written a little bit different.
(00:05:27) - It's six the number six and then connects with two n's. Right. And it comes from the fact that, someone back in the 90s said that we are a part by six degrees. So, if we want to get to, I don't know, Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, there are 6Connexions that we have today that will take us with anybody. So they they thought this name was cool and they, they created, the company called 6Connex because of that. So long story DNA, but I think it gives you kind of a, a background of what it is that, how we, we are created and how we got involved in nature.
(00:06:10) - That's great. Thanks for sharing that story. And as a marketer myself, I love hearing that it was a marketing agency that evolved and how the name came to be, because that's always fascinating in the marketing world. I know you had mentioned Louise before we hit record, that you would love to actually show what the platform looks like.
(00:06:32) - Obviously, if you're listening to the podcast, you won't be able to see this. But for those of you that are watching the video, we'll have Louise walk through it and and try to be very descriptive on these things. So let's talk a bit more about what 6Connex does. And if you want to pull up that, platform right now, this is the first time on the podcast that we're going to try taking a look at the actual technology as we're talking about it, so let's do it.
(00:07:00) - That's perfect. Can you see the screen?
(00:07:03) - Yes.
(00:07:04) - So so great. So basically what we do is, is we create this, experience online., we have technology today that covers pretty much any type of event. So we've done a commencements that are in-person events and we mix it up with virtual components. But what what I'm going to show you is the virtual side of 6Connex what we do virtually. So the first thing that we do, as you can see here, this is a fully branded 6Connex, site.
(00:07:36) - It's a virtual experience and we use it for demos and anyone can come in here. They register. It's really simple to register. You can use your LinkedIn to do it. And once you register you log in by clicking here. And I'll give me a second. There you go. So, everything that you're going to see is customized., the the everything, the background, the content. What is shared here is designed with a very specific means, including the, you know, you see this huge, at the bottom, we have the, the navigation menu, and it's on this, environment, very, very, long menu. Usually it's like 4 or 5 navigation, icons that we have. But because we wanted to show everything, we made it very complete. And we created, for those who cannot see this, well, probably an incentive for you to jump on the, on the video portion of this, but, what we're showing here is an environment that we thought would be inviting to people.
(00:08:55) - So we created this beautiful sunny day, outside environment where we have a lot of navigation icons that take you to different areas. So let me start by showing you the demo area here. You can see that every time I hover over my mouse, it has a description that says, this is where you're going to go if you click here. So you know exactly the type of environment that you're going to. So when you come in here, what you see is a in this particular case because it's a 6Connex site. It's just everything about 6Connex. So you have here the content about us, the content, about events in general and how you register to, to learn more, do courses and all of that. That is our own environment for events., for this purpose, I think it would probably be better if I just showed you some of the, environments that we have and how we operate them, as you can see on this one that I'm showing, we call it Event Tech 101.
(00:10:09) - You see it on the right. We have our own social media walls running on the right. This is a partnership that we have with one of our customers., we have a lot of event examples that you can click here and see., or you can read a blog about 6Connex. What you see on this environment is that we can do anything you want. So if I already have a presence online and you want to read, you want to send your attendees to a certain area, you click here. And in this particular case, I just clicked. It took us to the 6Connex page. This is our blog. And then if you want information about HR, recruiting and job fairs, you'll see we have a vast, library of content here that talks about recruiting. It talks about job fairs. It talks about pretty much any employee branding. It talks about communication in general. So all of this is available as a resource for people to know and learn more about how, they can do this themselves.
(00:11:24) - Or they can leverage technology such as 6Connex to do this. Now, just to show you some event examples, if you don't mind, you can see I just clicked on the Event Examples icon and, on the navigation bar and we have event examples for everything career community conferences, internal events, marketing events, sales events. These are the majority of the events that we've run. We have we run some very specific events like sales. We've done quite a few sales events, in the bottom here where people actually sell, products and services on the events. But but for this purpose, I'm going to show you the career events that we have. We have three examples of customers that have agreed to share what they've done., I'm sure most of you are familiar with bamboo air. So bamboo is is a long term customer. And here's their event., so Bambu chose to go, just it's a very graphically beautiful site, but but it's not like real life. So they created this journey that takes people into this field where you have helpdesk join the fun sessions.
(00:12:39) - So it's a it's a great navigation experience. And as you browse through it, you see like they've done everything a little bit as an adventure type. You see, tent people camping out there and then you have access to download the information in a very easy way to do this., you can download a PDF. If you just click on this, you actually get to see the PDF. We've replaced the content that Bambu Jar has. That's their content with, 6Connex content. Just to show you what you can do. This is a 6Connex brochure., we just uploaded this here, but then once you have this, you can download it, you can print it, you can do whatever it is that you feel like doing. One of the things that you can do is save it. We have a little briefcase here, and you can see right here on the bottom there is a, open briefcase. And you can see that what I just saved is right here. Is on the top of my briefcase and I can view later and I can.
(00:13:45) - If it's a video, I can watch it later. Same thing applies for videos, right?, you can play videos. You see one here. And there are many ways you can actually interact with video content. This one is just a playback. That's something that happened before, you can do animation. You can do, I don't know if you can hear the sound of the video. Yeah. Can you.
(00:14:10) - Events. Yeah. One solution.
(00:14:13) - So it's a great way for you to do this. You can this is obviously, recorded but you could do this live. So it's a live session that talks about, whatever content you want to bring up to your audience. And you can have an interactive type, conversation with the audience there because you can ask live questions., so Bambu had this great image, about a resource center and click to enter. You click and you have access to the content they made available for you there. Again, this can take you pretty much anywhere as long as it's digital.
(00:14:52) - And the help desk here where you can ask actually talk to somebody live when you click on this chat window opens up and you can have a conversation. So so yeah, I guess overall, you know, just to give you a little bit more of a few here is a more, lifelike experience. So this is a customer who's done quite a few events with us. This is, their event in 2022, cybersecurity virtual career fair. So in this case, in this event, they actually took, they allowed people to be interviewed, for certain roles, and they sent them to a test that happened with the environment. So if someone applied for a role and, and they lack the resume, they lacked the conversation, they would send a link to the attendee and the the they would go in to a system that we provide a learning management system. They would answer questions and do a test. And once qualified, they would move on to the next step on the process.
(00:16:05) - And obviously they had, different types of, companies that were recruiting. So, again, this is all 6Connex, but this is if you have 5 or 6 different companies recruiting on this event, you have an opportunity to go and talk live with the recruiters, schedule interviews. We have something called schedule meetings here. So you would, usually the recruiters would, go through the resumes they got they would come in a day before the event and schedule meetings with the candidates that they thought would, would be good candidates for the for the roles they were, looking to hire. Does this give you an overall idea of what 6Connex and how 6Connex interacts with people?
(00:16:56) - Yeah, it's really interesting. And for those that are listening and can't see the screen, it's a very visual and looks to be easy to navigate platform with a lot of functionality in it for users to come in, whether it's a virtual career event or a benefits fair or whatever, and go and navigate it and find different pieces of information and do all of the things and all that you're talking about.
(00:17:22) - , as you, you know, look at this or listen to it. You know, Luiz, what would you say is different or unique about 6Connex versus other platforms that are out there that do similar things.
(00:17:38) - Well, this is a tool that really help you identify, recruit, hire and retain resources, right? Because, I hope I have done a good job of of sharing some of the functionalities that we have. But but it makes it really simple for me to identify, resources that I think fit the culture. And if I am, someone looking for a role, it gives me a great opportunity to understand more about the culture and to speak to multiple people at that company before I just it's no longer just in a jar type, role. We've seen customers, hiring for multiple, roles to have people like, when they're hiring for marketing to have their marketers, there. So they actually allow, you know, people who are searching candidates to have a talk to me.
(00:18:34) - I'm a marketer at this company. Come talk to me and I'll tell you what the job is like, what the company is like, what the culture is like. So the chances of getting a good fit, both culturally and, and, obviously, the knowledge and the skill set that you're looking for increase. So that's that's number one. Number two, I think when you then take that environment and you and you make it into a, an experience that stays not only for the, the recruitment side, but you extend that and you allow for companies to, to be sharing the content and the culture and the communication through that, single, space that everybody doesn't matter where you are, geographically speaking, you have access to that information and you, you know, about new product launches, you know about, you attend town hall meetings or, or your own department meetings, and the very simple and easy way. So, so you're talking about the retention piece.
(00:19:41) - Now, the communication now, tends to improve significantly. We've seen that especially after Covid when most people were working remote almost all and, it's, it's we had this life that's like this, through, podcasts and Zoom meetings. And I think that creating an environment around those experiences helped, both on the communication side on, I guess a little bit cut down a little bit on the anxiety. So I got to see, my peers and people who work with me on the same department just by going to this area, they would all be there. I would engage in conversations, start new chats, asking questions, especially if, if you're still working remote. I think the benefits of that are, are pretty significant. And and finally, to answer your question, I think 6Connex is probably, if not the most. It's hard to say. We're the most flexible company in this space., it feels like, you know, trumping my own horn here, but.
(00:20:50) - But we're probably one of the most, flexible technologies for events in the world., we've been doing this for a very long time., the folks that are with 6Connex have 15 plus years of experience., if you look at our reviews on G2, you will see that the majority of it is like, thank you, this person or that person for helping me put this event in such a short, short notice and keeping the environment, growing, on the on demand side of it. So, so I feel like, when you combine these three things, I think we're pretty well positioned in the market.
(00:21:29) - And what type of companies would you say are the perfect fit for 6Connex?
(00:21:34) - So? So the majority of our customers are larger organizations with, you know, a significant number of, of employees., we also so, so companies like Salesforce, bamboo are Johnson and Johnson, Abbott, all of these people use this technology. And the main reason is because they want to address, multiple, teams, multiple geographies, and we kind of bring them all together virtually.
(00:22:07) - , on the other hand, we have a lot of smaller companies that run events for 102 hundred people that really leverage the technology. That's been proven, proven by this very large organizations., and they take they have the same benefits of leveraging, a tool that has a very large scale, security, GDPR compliance, and it's available to them at what I feel is a very competitive pricing in the market.
(00:22:38) - And what impact have you seen organizations that work with 6Connex experience or the kind of results that they've seen?
(00:22:46) - So, so, we have, if you are interested in the results, we have a great resource page on the 6Connex.com, website. We have a lot of content in there. But I can tell you what, what we hear the most., I'll give you an example that I remember. Salesforce runs their benefits through us and their experiences. Look what you guys have done for us. You have reduced the time of putting this together.
(00:23:15) - You have, reduced the cost of putting it together. The manpower that we used to put into creating this, the employee benefits training has gone down significantly because you're augmenting our teams. We'll give you the content and you know what to do with it. And then when they run these events, they have, you know, one of the, use cases. And I remembered, that I wrote it down a long time ago, but but they had 8500 content views. That means that 8500, PDFs or videos or forms where, visited and interacted with in one event. And their average time for duration was 31 minutes, which is a lot more than they had when they ran the the Zoom type sessions on, just direct zoom type sessions, virtually, as opposed to having a destination for people to do this. So, so the other component to it, I think, is that something that that some it's almost like an after product when when you run something virtually, you're tracking every bit of data that happens in there.
(00:24:36) - So you're looking when people log in where they're logging in from, how long they stay, the questions they ask. And you can pull that into very informative reports, which that what gives you a lot of data to improve for your next events., it's very common for us, on that quest site that I was showing when you are about to leave, there is a form that comes up and says, hey, how did you like this? How can we do it better? So so we pop up, quiz questions or, or survey questions, that that gets all aggregated into, reports that can be leveraged for decision making. And I think, you know, I remember there was a company called, ts the name escapes me at this point., I'll remember, but they were I had I had was the name of the company. They had grown to 1100 employees in a very short period of time, and they were doing their kickoff and, and, they were like, you know, these are companies that are based in different geographies.
(00:25:46) - we have an office in Miami, an office in San Francisco, an office in London. And we acquired these three companies. Now, how do we get this together? And they made a decision to do it virtually. And they were just so surprised to see that the interaction that happened on an on the environment, it was just overwhelming. People felt better about asking questions., there was a lot of questions when when you get acquired by a third party, you obviously have a lot of questions, and they were able to source a lot of information, a lot of content that people can navigate on their own time. Because the environment was on, post event for a long period of time, but they were able to navigate and, and kind of browse through those questions. And when they wanted to talk to somebody, they were available to just have a chat conversation. And then if it really got interesting, I need to talk to you live. You'd click on the button, video window would come up and you would have a face-to-face conversation.
(00:26:52) - So this is another great example of a company kickoff, or sales kickoff that people leverage the technology a lot of.
(00:27:02) - What is the future vision for 6Connex.
(00:27:06) - So we, through the pandemic, obviously, we grew a lot. And one of the things that we did is we acquired a company based in Poland that is really strong on the in-person side of events. So everything about registration, printing the badges, scanning, navigating through, a large, event venue, having all the tracking for leads. So, so we acquired that back in, the back end of 21. And we've invested significantly to do two things. One is to integrate this technology that's really good. It's really robust but mainly focuses on in-person events. We integrated this heavily into our virtual component. So so what you have is a strong combination of everything you can do in person. You can replicate virtually. So you now have a solution that you can have a very large customer event, on a venue somewhere nice.
(00:28:15) - And you can replicate this to do it, virtually. So people that cannot travel or have accessibility issues can participate on the same level, so they get the same information at the same time. They shared the platform for Q&A., they get answers the same way. So he feels like, I'm there virtually. So. So I think that's directionally where we've been aiming for the last, two and a half years. And I don't see us deviating from this anytime soon.
(00:28:51) - And what final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
(00:28:56) - Now I feel like there are so many tools out there, right, that that you can leverage, especially if you are on the air space. There are so many things that, that you can leverage to, to get your message out there, to look for new resources, to retain those resources that you have. But but I think, my, my big message is, is, you know, the the what? I really every time we talk to HR folks, I think they're a little bit conservative and they think, we've never really done this.
(00:29:27) - , and my recommendation is just try it out. Maybe you start small. You see the things that your company really, fits well with new technology, regardless if it's 6Connex or any other technology. Right? Yeah. That that brings people together. You try something small, you prove upon it, and you'll see that the power of this technology is available on the market today are by far a lot more, involving in engaging that they were in the past. So final thought is, you know, throw yourself out there, try out new technologies, and I think you get great results.
(00:30:06) - I love it. So where can our listeners go to learn more about 6Connex?
(00:30:11) - So we have a site with a lot of resources at 6Connex.com. I think that's the best way for you to get a little bit more of information of what it is that that we do, and from there you get everything and access, including access to the environment that was shared today. So you can do your own experience and your own navigation, to see what it feels like from an attendee perspective.
(00:30:38) - Excellent. Well, that's it for our show today. Louise, thanks so much for being a guest on the HR Tech Spotlight today.
(00:30:46) - My pleasure. Thank you so much for having us today.
(00:30:54) - Thanks for listening to this episode of The HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be considered for a guest spot on this program, please contact me via GrowthMode Marketing. Com or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative, subscribe. Connect with us on social media and leave a review. This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.