How Dr. Barış Onay‘s simple productivity hack became a free tool used by 400+ events worldwide and what it means for the future of our industry
Every event professional knows the drill: a new project lands on your desk, and you’re back to square one. Competitor research, market analysis, strategic positioning – the same diagnostic dance, different venue. For Dr. Barış Onay, this repetitive cycle sparked an experiment that would eventually reshape how the events industry approaches strategic analysis.
The Problem: Reinventing the Wheel, Every Single Time
Working across multiple projects for event organisers and private equity investors, Onay found himself trapped in a familiar pattern. Each new engagement demanded the same foundational work: market orientation, competitor mapping, sector signal analysis, and strategic option development.
“I kept rewriting the same framework for every board deck,” Onay recalls. “The process was valuable, but it consumed enormous amounts of time and offered little differentiation from project to project.”
Sound familiar? In an industry where speed-to-insight often determines competitive advantage, this inefficiency represents more than just wasted hours – it’s a barrier to strategic thinking.
The Solution: From AI Experiment to Industry Standard
What started as a personal productivity hack has evolved into something far more significant. Onay’s Event Strategy Bot – now deployed across 400+ events globally – demonstrates how artificial intelligence can transform industry workflows without replacing human expertise.
The journey began simply: Onay started pasting event URLs into his AI workspace to extract basic overviews, competitor lists, and sector trends. The early results were rough, but they were consistent. And in the events industry, where comparable baselines are often elusive, consistency proved revolutionary.
A Disciplined Approach to Event Intelligence
Today’s Event Strategy Bot follows a rigorous ten-step methodology:
Foundation Building:
- Event overview and performance signal extraction
- Competitor comparison tables with standardised metrics
- Sector evaluation and positioning analysis
Strategic Development:
- Industry calendar integration and timing analysis
- Content and programming assessment
- SWOT analysis with sector-specific frameworks
Action Planning:
- Technology stack evaluation
- Growth opportunity synthesis
- “Where to play, how to win” strategic recommendations
The key differentiator? Every output uses normalised units, controlled vocabularies, and schema-based competitor tables. This means you can finally place two different events side-by-side without interpretive gymnastics.
Why This Matters: Privacy, Speed, and Industry Evolution
Privacy by Design
Unlike many AI tools, the Bot runs entirely within users’ own ChatGPT environments. No data sharing, no external storage – a crucial feature for teams working under NDAs or handling sensitive competitive intelligence.
Democratising Strategic Intelligence
Perhaps most significantly, Onay made the tool completely open access. His reasoning cuts to the heart of industry collaboration: “The true value in the strategy process doesn’t lie in the initial analysis. That’s just the starting point. The impact comes from leveraging experience to interpret and act on it.”
Real-World Impact
The numbers speak volumes: 400+ events analysed across diverse sectors and geographies. Consultants report faster project kickoffs, organisers gain clearer competitive positioning, and investors make more informed decisions with standardised baselines.
The Human Element: What AI Can’t (and Shouldn’t) Replace
Onay is refreshingly candid about limitations. The Bot doesn’t replace primary research, financial modelling, or stakeholder conversations. Instead, it accelerates the diagnostic phase and ensures obvious questions aren’t overlooked.
Three critical pitfalls emerge when teams over-rely on automated analysis:
- Treating outputs as absolute truths rather than testable hypotheses
- Neglecting citation verification and source credibility assessment
- Failing to adapt recommendations to specific organisational contexts
“Teams lose their edge only if they stop thinking,” Onay cautions. “The framework is just the starting point. What matters is the thinking and decisions that follow.”
Industry Implications: A New Operating Model
The Bot’s success hints at broader transformations ahead. Onay predicts role evolution across the events ecosystem:
- Consultants will become insight integrators rather than data gatherers
- Organisers will operate more like portfolio managers with systematic decision frameworks
- Investors will make quicker, more evidence-based decisions with standardised due diligence
For M&A activity and new event launches, the implications are particularly significant. By compressing the path to credible first analysis, structured AI introduces discipline and stage gates that accelerate decision-making while clarifying next-step priorities.
Looking Forward: Efficiency Meets Human Judgement
Onay plans to keep the core Bot narrow, free, and transparent while exploring modular add-ons for enhanced efficiency. A second bot is already in development, suggesting this is just the beginning of AI-powered industry transformation.
The broader lesson transcends any single tool: the highest-performing teams will combine structured AI capabilities with human judgement and proprietary data. It’s not about replacement but about amplification.
The Bottom Line
What began as one consultant’s attempt to avoid repetitive work has become a shared industry resource used by hundreds of events worldwide. The Event Strategy Bot represents something larger than productivity improvement – it’s a glimpse into an industry operating with greater transparency, comparability, and strategic focus.
In a sector where competitive advantage often comes from superior intelligence rather than proprietary technology, tools that democratise baseline analysis while preserving strategic differentiation may be exactly what the industry needs.
The framework provides the starting point. The real value – as always – lies in what we do next.
The Event Strategy Bot is available as a free, open-access Custom GPT. Users can access it through their own ChatGPT environments, ensuring complete data privacy and control.
