PETAR MINEV: THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EVENT OPERATIONS TODAY

Organising an event with hundreds and thousands of attendees is a challenge that should not be underestimated; a single error can turn it from a time and place of fun and happiness into something that makes news for all the wrong reasons. Petar Minev, Technical Director of WeTrack, Momentus Technologies, knows this well – after all, this seasoned IT professional has expansive expertise in managing event operations. For him, the recent transformation that the tech industry is going through is already changing the way events are organised and managed, becoming more effective, fun and safe.

The tech sector is undergoing yet another transformation. What are the main game changers in it?

Over the past 15 years, we have witnessed several waves of disruption that transformed both businesses and IT: flash, JavaScript, data warehouses. Artificial Intelligence, however, is the most disruptive of all. Small and medium enterprises are becoming fiercely competitive, even against larger, slower corporations. I believe that we will witness a profound shift in how business is conducted.

What does this change look in the field of event operations?

In event operations, the advent of intelligent agents is transformative. Today, control‐room teams are beginning to offload routine monitoring and reporting tasks to autonomous Agents to ensure that standard issues are identified, categorized, and even resolved without human intervention.

I anticipate three major shifts in event‐ops systems. Instead of clicking through a series of menus and forms, operators will converse with a virtual assistant in natural languages. By continuously analyzing sensor feeds and historical incident data, Agents will soon predict potential issues and automatically trigger preventative measures or alerts. Agents will also serve as collaborative partners, detecting patterns of repeated access‐control failures, for example.

Over the next few years, we will witness event-management platforms evolve into dynamic, AI-powered ecosystems that deliver safer, smoother, and more memorable experiences for attendees.

Which trends and technologies in this field you follow with particular interest?

It is becoming increasingly clear that future platforms will embed AI at every layer. That means not just bolting on machine learning models, but designing underlying communication protocols and data schemas so that human teams, software services, and autonomous agents can seamlessly exchange context, signals, and directives in real time. By building these low-level "conversation" layers into the architecture, event-management systems will be able to coordinate complex tasks-like dispatching resources, adapting to shifting conditions on the ground, or escalating critical alerts – with minimal human intervention, yet still under human oversight.

Where is the place of AI in these processes?

Over the past decades, organizations have transformed rudimentary spreadsheets into vast data lakes, aggregated and analyzed by powerful BI engines. The next frontier is feeding these datasets into AI models so that products can learn from historical patterns, anticipate user needs, and deliver more intuitive, efficient experiences for people's daily tasks.

What is crucial for quality risk management?

The most important element of qualitative risk management is to establish a clear, structured, and consensus-based process for identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risks. Defined criteria and scales are a must, based on agreeing on uniform definitions for impact and likelihood. Engagement of stakeholders and experts should involve representatives from all affected functions (finance, operations, IT, etc.) and leverage expert judgment to produce realistic, balanced assessments. Structured risk identification is required to run workshops and brainstorming sessions with cross-functional teams and use checklists and historical data to avoid overlooking critical risks. Transparent documentation provides recording of every identified risk, its assessment, and the rationale for its prioritization, while communication makes this easily accessible to all stakeholders. Regular review and update are a must to revisit the risk matrix and criteria on a scheduled basis or when significant changes occur, and adjust assessments according to new information and feedback from past incidents.

By combining clear, consensual criteria with expert input and ongoing updates, qualitative risk management becomes a tool for informed decision-making and loss mitigation.

What does a "mega event" look like today, in 2025?

A "mega event" in 2025 is defined by three interlocking pillars: safety, automation, and data-driven decision-making.

It is safer by design. Predictive security means that networks of IoT sensors, CCTV analytics, and biometric checkpoints work together, including with AI models, to flag unusual behavior or crowd surges before they become hazards. Health monitoring is improved by wearable devices and environment sensors that track air quality, temperature, and even vital signs for at-risk visitors. If conditions deviate from healthy thresholds, alerts go out instantly to medical personnel and venue operators.

Deep automation is based on agent-orchestrated operations performing routine tasks, from check-in to cleanup: automated kiosks, mobile-robot ushers, and drone-based inspections. This frees human staff to focus on complex guest services. On the other hand, dynamic resource allocation means that AI engines continuously ingest data on foot traffic, concession-stand queues, and transport links, then reassign staff, reroute shuttle buses, or adjust digital signage on the fly to keep things moving smoothly.

Entirely data-driven, the organisation uses real-time analytics dashboards so that operations teams see live, interactive heat maps of crowd density, concession sales, and social-media sentiment. Custom alerts notify stakeholders when moment key metrics breach predefined thresholds. And then comes personalized attendee experiences, based on event-app AI that recommends customized schedules, merchandise offers, and food options based on each guest's past behavior and live location. Post-event, organizers analyze aggregated data to fine-tune everything from seating layouts to sponsor activations.

pminev@hotmail.com