A month of show floors and demo rooms tends to sort itself into two kinds of evening: the one where the tech surprises you, and the one where the room does. November gave us one of each.

Two London evenings, two very different rooms

Over the last month the Solarflare team have been out and about seeing what's happening across events and technology. Two stops worth writing up.

Event Tech Live, Excel London

Event Tech Live returned to Excel London, and for us this show has long been a useful date in the calendar. Past visits have introduced us to emerging experiential tech, boundary-pushing hardware, and a community of creators, technologists and producers shaping live experiences. It's the kind of place where you stumble onto a new interactive display or a sensor rig that quietly sparks an idea on the way home.

This year's visit painted a slightly different picture. The floor felt smaller, with fewer exhibitors showing the tangible, hardware-driven work that has historically pulled us in. App developers and software companies dominated instead, mostly built around guest management, ticketing, event analytics and audience insights.

Those tools matter. For organisers and brand teams running data-led events at scale, they smooth operations and sharpen the picture of how an audience actually behaves. But for a team like ours, built around physical interaction and experimental tech, it was hard not to feel a little underwhelmed by how little new hardware or creative content was on display.

That doesn't mean the work isn't happening. The experiential space is wide, and there are specialist shows around the world where prototypes and installations still take centre stage. Our visit this time was brief, and the chances for unexpected discovery were fewer than usual. The show is still a valuable touchpoint for the industry, and the shift toward software probably says something honest about where event operations is putting its attention right now.

Unreal Evening: MetaHumans at Epic Games

From there to the Epic Games Innovation Lab near St Paul's, where the Unreal Evening: MetaHumans session ran live demos in the studio space. Face and body tracking solutions running in real time, with guests pulled up to try the rigs themselves and see how they held up under untrained input.

The room was full, which says something on its own. There's real appetite for what comes next with MetaHumans, and Epic and Unreal are clearly the ones setting the pace. For anyone looking at digital ambassadors, branded characters or real-time avatar work, this is the toolkit to keep close.

Get in touch if you've got a brief that wants a MetaHuman or a real-world activation behind it.