With his impressive background in technology and digital media, Ciaran Quinn has been at Wiz-Team’s side since 2018 to provide important strategic advice. Last week, he became the company’s Advisory Board Chair and shares his views on WT’s potential and future.

Why did you decide to become a board member of WT? From the moment I met the leaders together I knew they had something special. It’s rare to find such a great combination of personal and professional characteristics combined with a vision on how to use terrific technology to change a stagnant corner of industry. I knew I wanted to get involved at some point and figured that I could help them navigate through some of the startup and growth challenges that I had personally gone through over the prior decades. I’d planned to take the rest of 2018 off, so when they called late in that year and said they were forming a Board, the timing was great, and I enthusiastically accepted their offer to join.

What excites you about WT’s activities as we emerge post-COVID-19? WT is one of the lucky ones. We are fortunate that for us COVID-19 has not wreaked the damage and devastation that it has for so many people, including some of our clients. It’s not been easy, but we’ve stuck by our clients, extending support for those in need, and they’ve stuck by us. Sure, we’ve had to make some concessions and changes, but you do that when others are struggling more than you are. And we’ve used the extra downtime to make some great product developments and position ourselves for the re-opening of live sports as well as the growing collaboration with governmental institutions moving more towards virtual events.

How do you see the company’s future? Bright and getting brighter. While WT’s technology is the best in the business, the great part is that the team knows how to find, attract and engage with great collaborators and new colleagues. Since business is about “people working with people”, not “companies working with companies”, this will help drive their future success in making things work really well for colleagues, partners and clients.

It’s been an action-packed week for WT as events pick up again! Just one day after wrapping up the European Athletics 2021 Team Championships in Silesia, Poland, the delivery team was back on the road. Destination: Paris for the resumption of the European Boxing Road to Tokyo Qualifying Event.

Working side-by-side with delivery partners IGNITX, WT was on-site to oversee the sport entries processes and deliver the accreditation operations for the event. From registrations to accreditations, sport entries, communication, and reporting, it’s been a particularly exciting week for WT in both events.

Have you ever wondered how athletes are officially entered into an international competition? Introducing Sport Entries and Qualifications. Sport Entries and Qualifications is the highly integrated process of monitoring competitor eligibility and managing the official entry of athletes into a competition. Event-Works supports these processes through our Sport Entries and Qualification (SEQ) module which not only delivers the flexible tools needed to configure a system supportive of complex sport qualification rules; but leverages the power of Event-Works’ core modules like reporting, forms, triggers, and communications to create a seamless and efficient experience for both event organisers and teams entering their delegations. 

The SEQ Module is one of the more specialised and nuanced modules in the Event-Works suite. It is a critical component to international sport event management as it brings together accreditation data, qualification data and inscription data to define the field of athletes who will compete in a major sport event. This tool has been informed and designed in close collaboration with IGNITX who brings experiences from a variety of stakeholder perspectives including a range of major event Organising Committees, International Federations, National Federations, and National Olympic/Paralympic Committees.  This more 360-view approach to application design ensures our tool captures the perspectives and experiences of those stakeholders who truly understand the particularities and complexities of the ongoing qualification tracking, athletes’ eligibility monitoring, data collection, quota allocation, quota verification, and finalisation process of Sport Entries and Qualifications.  More to come from our SEQ Module as we prepare for a major release in the near future!

If you are interested in learning more, get in touch.

Why did you join Wiz-Team in 2019?

I was using Event-Works in the European Institution I was working for and I always got a good impression when meeting co-founders Johann and Tim. At some point, I wanted another challenge in my professional life and Wiz-Team offered me the opportunity to evolve and see another aspect of event data management that I was very curious about.

What do you do at Wiz-Team’s Brussel office?

My role involves first and foremost communicating with clients to understand their needs and supporting them with tailor-made solutions aligned and integrated with their processes. That includes discussing and developing new projects, adapting the front-end and back-end of our platform according to our clients’ needs, explaining and applying GDPR recommendations, and managing the events database. I’m also the day-to-day contact point for our Brussels-based clients, which include the European Parliament and European Commission.

What’s one thing that has surprised you about working at Wiz-Team and that you’ve learned through your experience here so far?

I am used to working in a multicultural and diverse environment, and I was very happy to see that my colleagues were from all over the world with different backgrounds and experience. One of the greatest lesson’s Wiz-Team has taught me so far is that a dedicated small team with the right skills can achieve great things.

During last week’s Open Question Webinar organised by Wiz-Team, European Athletics Logistics & Events Senior Coordinator Marie Anne Midy shared her learnings from the European Athletics Indoor Championships 2021, held earlier this month in Toruń, Poland. In particular, she explained how Wiz-Team’s event management platform “Event-Works” (EW) facilitated the automation and monitoring of COVID-19 testing and the management of access control to venues within the pandemic context.

“It was the first time we operated a physical event since the pandemic outbreak”, said Marie Anne. “It was quite challenging, and we learnt a lot, but we managed it successfully.”

She shared: “The keys to this success were the integration of each participant’s medical data into Event-Works; providing a QR-Code on the accreditation card linked to this data and controlling access accordingly; and the professional on-the-ground assistance by Wiz-Team.”

More than 2000 participants underwent a comprehensive testing regime prior and during the event. The results of the tests were entered manually into the system. If a test was positive, access would be automatically denied when scanning the accreditation’s QR code at one of the 13 venue access points. “It was a very user-friendly system, but make sure you have more than enough volunteers at hand to be able to operate all access points and to combine the sanitary and security check for the participants’ comfort”, advised Marie Anne to the 30 or so event experts participating in the webinar.

For the athletes’ warm-up zone with restricted space, access control proved more complex, and athletes were only allowed to enter this zone ahead of their competition, in order to ensure compliance with the social distancing rules.

Considering the sensitive nature of medical data, Wiz-Team founder and CEO Johann Woringer clarified: “All of the data processed by Wiz-Team is in a secure cloud. In addition, Event-Works allows us to clearly define who can see which kind of data. In Toruń, only the medical team was granted access to the medical data. Post-event, all this data was deleted.”

In the future, it is aimed to automate the medical data integration into Event-Works via a specific API in order to speed up this process.

Click here to read the detailed case study.

Wiz-Team and WeTrack announced today that they will team up to optimise the planning and delivery of events around the world. It’s about complementing each other’s expertise, software and services in order to provide smart turnkey solutions to current and future clients. 

WeTrack provides planning and operations software to major events, venues and organisations, with products incorporating planning, sustainability, readiness, and event control which links well with Wiz-Team’s know-how and its all-in-one event management platform “Event-Works”. In addition, and just like Wiz-Team, WeTrack has many clients in the world of sport.

Tim Goethals, COO of Wiz-Team, said on the occasion of the announcement: “We constantly strive to optimise event operations, be it through technological innovations, by developing the skills of our team members or forming new partnerships. We look forward to working closely with WeTrack, making the best use of their impressive expertise in event planning, risk management and incident control.”

Peter Ward, Managing Director of WeTrack, commented: “After first meeting Tim back in 2018 at a conference, I’ve been constantly impressed with his and his team’s integrity and industry knowledge. Wiz-Team and WeTrack now share a number of clients, predominantly in Europe, and it made sense to partner up and start exploring how we can integrate better to improve the experience of our clients.”

Learn more about WeTrack.

It’s been a year of working virtually and no major sport events but this week, Wiz-Team is pleased to be back on the ground supporting long-time partner European Athletics and the local organising committee with their European Athletics Indoor Championships Toruń 2021 kicking off today in Poland. Wiz-Team’s Event-Works technology is being used creatively to manage accommodation, travel, accreditations, access control, the organisation of sessions and the implementation of sanitary measures adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In numbers, that’s 15 scanning devices used with Event-Works Accreditation to automate and monitor testing and safety protocols across 13 venue access points in order to keep more than 2200 athletes, staff, officials, and event stakeholders safe.

Wiz-Team is providing European Athletics and the Local Organising Committee with all the tools they need to create and manage COVID-19 PCR testing workflows for accurate and up-to-date monitoring of participants’ health. Through its solutions, Wiz-Team is also helping to ensure communication remains consistent and efficient with critical information and PCR results being shared instantaneously to stay at all times one-step-ahead of COVID-19.

This event is proving an invaluable learning experience and a demonstration of how the different Event-Works modules can be used to track the movement of people within and around the European Athletics Indoor Championships, where a maximum capacity of attendants has been set in order to respect the social distancing protocols and other COVID-19 policies put in place.

It’s taken five PCR and LAMP tests and counting to get there, but Wiz-Team’s Head of Operations Ameline is on the ground to support with training volunteers, troubleshooting and jumping in to help wherever its needed. A great opportunity to experience first-hand operations of a major sport event held during the pandemic.