MACH ONE Conference

The Client

Conceived in 2019 and already with 60+ members around the world, the MACH Alliance has become a phenomenon. Members range from global tech giants such as AWS to startup martech platforms like PersonifyXP – with everything in between.

Commerce Futures delivered an exceptional customer experience at MACH ONE, this first critical event for us. With so many uncertainties around how this event would be received by members and delegates we really valued the commitment and skill set of the team, and in particular their focus on the delegate experience and content. Looking forward to many more successful events with this great crew

Jasmin Guthmann, MACH Alliance Vice President

The Challenge

Whilst MACH is a term with a growing understanding amongst technology businesses, those organisations who might adopt the architecture are largely unaware of the acronym and its meaning. The MACH Alliance’s mission is to popularise and explain the elements of MACH, leading to an increase in adoption. To achieve this, the message needs to reach potential adopters, but in a controlled manner – using best-of-breed examples delivered with credibility.

The MACH Alliance needed to bring this message to life for organisations while creating an inclusive environment for its members to network and collaborate. Not an easy task, especially given the fact that the MACH Alliance is a non-profit and, therefore, only has access to limited funds and staff resources. 

Our events practice designed and executed MACH ONE, the MACH Alliance’s first-ever flagship conference, in London in June 2022 in partnership with the Alliance marketing team. 

The Project & Outcomes

From our initial plans for a two-day event focused on highlighting examples of MACH in practice, the Commerce Futures team:

• Worked with all 60+ members to encourage & coach their customers to tell their transformation stories on stage

• Designed the sponsorship rate card and then encouraged all members to participate commercially, raising over £700,000 to fund the conference and an awards dinner

• Looked after all 3rd party suppliers, from the venue, delegate registration and livestream through to entertainment and all F&B

• Ran the invitation program to drive attendance from technology leaders across a wide range of sectors, yielding 400+ registrations from enterprise C-suite tech roles

• Organised and executed the first MACH Alliance awards dinner for 250 with entertainment

• Built the speaking agenda, recruited 39 industry speakers (with a near 50/50 gender balance) and then ensured a successful set of content on both days – including video interviews with some of the leading speakers that the Alliance are now using to promote its mission.

What Did We Learn?

Venues took time to recover from COVID - staff were poorly trained

• It was tricky to maintain a level playing field for members of the Alliance, tech firms are notoriously pushy :)

• We were nervous about drop-outs AND being ambushed by non-members - neither scenario transpired :)

• We learned to trust our judgement in the main. Whilst we had wrinkles most passed unnoticed (other than to us and our MACH clients), and we were pretty overwhelmed by the feedback we received.