Meet Mary Ann Pierce, the visionary force behind MAP Digital and its groundbreaking MetaMeetings platform. As an “accidental entrepreneur,” she changed the events sector by developing the most flexible and adaptable platform for sales-driven conferences.
Pierce shares her journey – where it started, the turning points, the challenges and the growing vision for MAP Digital, Inc. She also gives insights into trends and changes in AI technology and how her life lessons can inspire budding entrepreneurs. Read and explore how her principles and journey have influenced the future of the events industry.
How did the MAP Digital journey and transformation start?
I consider myself an “accidental entrepreneur, finding myself at the forefront of the World Wide Web in the mid-nineties. My journey began at a pivotal moment—being asked by a representative from what would become Verizon to apply my corporate communications expertise to bring the internet to major event hotels and convention centers in New York City. We swiftly connected twenty top venues, providing thousands of trade show booths with internet access, and enabled investment banks and major B2B conferences to use the internet to webcast live, streamline operations and enhance attendee engagement.
My founding principle is that a company’s greatest asset is its team. As a leader, my role is to provide them with the tools they need to excel. Over the past twenty years of building the MetaMeetings platform, we’ve learned that integration is innovation, and that success is ultimately measured by how effectively you support sales. These principles have allowed MAP Digital to secure global contracts with some of the world’s largest banks. By continuously reducing workflow complexities, enhancing customer engagement, and centralizing all content and data analytics on MetaMeetings, we empower our clients to accelerate their business processes. At MAP Digital, our goal is simple: to get our clients and their customers to business faster.
There were significant turning points in your journey; what are the challenges you needed to overcome?
Our mission is to help enterprises simplify their tech stacks, unlocking the power of shared data and organic media to attract customers with greater precision. Many of our clients struggle with outdated enterprise software that fails to meet evolving needs. They often describe their workflows as “drudgery,” burdened by repetitive tasks, inefficiencies, and rising costs. Our goal is to help them compress complexity, reduce redundancy, and drive down costs by integrating MetaMeetings into their operations.
For example, MetaMeetings’ Fast Pass Badging, when used globally, not only simplifies Visitor and Attendee management but also creates a unified, global CRM. This gives enterprises real-time insights into their customers’ journeys across all regions and business lines.
Additionally, we empower our clients to leverage the cloud more effectively. With MetaMeetings, conference content can be transformed into organic social media assets that amplify thought leadership and accelerate customer acquisition. This allows enterprises to fully capitalize on the long-tail value of their content, expanding reach and impact far beyond the initial event.
Interestingly, the MetaMeetings platform now assists in large-scale conferences, with over 600 sessions produced annually for a prominent healthcare investment banking conference that attracts over 60,000 onsite and online attendees. What is your strategic vision for MAP Digital?
MAP Digital’s strategy is to embed the MetaMeetings within enterprise and business to business conference organizations to provide a constant, global event workflow management, event deployment and data analytic platform. This is a bolder articulation of our “integration is innovation” mandate. Enterprises are actively looking for SaaS solutions to partner with them to expedite their business acquisition, customer service and to bring deep tech solutions.
We are also preparing to raise for “Smart Venues,” where MetaMeetings will be embedded within conference and convention centers, turning them into digitally enhanced spaces. With Smart Venues, everyone benefits—the organizer gains cost-effective efficiency, the venue becomes more competitive, and the city gets the data that will assist in attracting high-spending business travelers. The shared data collected will also contribute to building “Smart Cities.” In fact, one city wants to syndicate sector-specific conference content with the event organizers to position that city as a center, for example Singapore for deep tech conferences. This will attract the highly desirable business traveler, who spend 5x as much as a tourist, as well attract Mergers and Acquisitions and Foreign Direct investment to that Smart City.
Please describe the culture at MAP Digital and the qualities you value in the team.
MAP Digital’s culture is rooted in respect, preparedness, and interoperability. It’s my duty to ensure that our team has everything they need to flawlessly produce highly compliant digital events and continually improve MetaMeetings. We encourage cross-functional learning, ensuring every team member understands the platform and our clients’ needs at the deepest level. I seek people with enthusiasm, ethical values, and a desire to learn and problem-solve. We can teach anyone to code or webcast, but their character, empathy, and ingenuity are imperative for our success.
Can you highlight some notable success stories along the way?
At the start of the Covid lockdown in the US, March 2020, MAP Digital informed our clients that we would not need to cancel any of their conferences. MetaMeetings was able to receive a Zoom of the speakers instead of capturing them onsite. The largest virtual event we produced was a healthcare investment banking conference with six hundred and thirty live webcasts in 14 concurrent track rooms over four days for nearly 100,000 online attendees. We scaled 100 technicians working from their home and tested one thousand speakers’ computer systems for this virtual only event. All work was done within the MetaMeetings platform.
In the fast-paced world of digital innovations and technology, what trends do you observe that make the industry thrive?
A key trend we’re pioneering is transforming conference content into organic media. Conferences are the last bastion of un-optimized content, and organic media is a powerful brand marketing and audience building tool. Now, using AI, conference videos on the MetaMeetings platform can be quickly summarized, captioned, and formatted for all social media. What used to take days, now takes minutes. This is important, because for many enterprises creating event content is a significant expenditure. It only makes sense to repurpose this investment to also disseminate their thought leadership, and customer engagement long after the conference ends.
Is there any technology within your company that stands out?
Our MetaMeetings SaaS platform integrates six events functions on a single dashboard. It provides content-rich, interactive, webcast event websites, as well as Fast Pass Badging, digital signage, RFID, and content management. And content and users’ data are hosted on the MetaMeetings platform. Our open API simplifies data sharing, content optimization, and sales-driven data analysis with your existing platforms or other best of service platforms.
What is the MAP Digital edge that keeps clients engaged?
For over 25 years, we have led the production of some of the largest and most complex investment banking and B2B conferences. We operate under strict compliance and total quality management to ensure flawless execution. At MAP Digital, we listen closely to our clients’ needs and continuously develop features that help them do business more efficiently. Next year, we will introduce 1-on-1 meeting scheduling within our MetaMeetings platform, a feature requested by our clients in the capital markets, information services, and media sectors. This functionality will be synchronized across all MetaMeetings events, enhancing their ability to connect and transact. Additionally, we will analyze attendee content engagement and interactivity to better match buyside and sellside participants, ultimately driving more meaningful sales opportunities.
What is the future like for MAP Digital?
We have a secured global SaaS contract with a major bank and have a few more in the pipeline. We are diversifying into sectors beyond financial services and are looking to partner with B2B conference organizers and suppliers. Our new initiative, “SmartVenues” will make cities even smarter by embedding MetaMeetings with their convention and conference centers. We are looking to conduct a major capital raise in 2025.
What advice would you give to someone thinking to start their own business?
I am the global ambassador for AwakenAngels, funding women-led companies domiciled on the island of Ireland. I advise our founders that while ideas are essential, understanding the client’s pain points, building a product that they will BUY, and charting a clear path to scalable revenue is critical. They must be prepared for multiple iterations of their initial concept and plan for potential software entanglement, compliance, and procurement challenges. However, most importantly is that they always be networking. Building a large, diverse and global network is crucial to shepherding your product from concept to contracts.
Pierce’s journey at MAP Digital is a testimony to her commitment to client success, innovation, and resilience. Due to her leadership and vision, the company has emerged as a pioneer in the industry, leading to innovative solutions that overcame challenges.
As Pierce continues to lead MAP Digital into the future, her inspiring words stay true, “Those who believe in overnight success are dreamers. The entrepreneur’s journey is one of endurance, sacrifice, and breakthroughs. It is not a sprint but a marathon. However, no joy is sweeter than celebrating your success with the team that built the product(s) that helped your clients get to business faster and hopefully made the world better.”
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