AI and Events

Event Information

What is – and will be – the impact of AI on events? We’ll look at the state of AI today, and what’s coming in the future, with a specific lens on how the technology impacts race directors.

This webinar will cover:

• Our AI Strategy
• AI for Development
• AI DIY
• AI Customer Support
• Upcoming Releases

View Slides

Webinar Summary

This webinar provides an overview of RunSignup AI, including the infrastructure behind it, current AI features, near-term product plans, and demonstrations of how AI can help both participants and event directors. The central theme is that RunSignup is building AI directly into its platform so customers can use it securely with their event data, rather than exporting data to outside tools.

RunSignup’s AI infrastructure

RunSignup formed a dedicated AI development team and is building its AI infrastructure on AWS Bedrock and Bedrock Agent Core. This architecture is designed to be secure, scalable, and flexible enough to support tens of thousands of customers.

A major benefit is that RunSignup can select different large language models depending on the task. One model may be faster, another may be better at reasoning, and another may be more cost-efficient. This flexibility also helps RunSignup keep costs down, with the stated goal that RunSignup AI features will be free for customers.

Knowledge bases and real-time data

RunSignup AI uses two primary sources of information:

• Knowledge bases built from Website V2 content.
• MCP tools that retrieve current data directly from the RunSignup system.

The website knowledge base stays isolated by event and is updated whenever website content changes. MCP tools add another layer by allowing AI agents to retrieve current information such as registration status, pricing, results, and other event data at the moment a question is asked.

This combination helps make responses both event-specific and up to date.

Human-in-the-loop protections

RunSignup is intentionally building safeguards around AI actions.

Any AI action that changes data—such as creating a coupon or changing a participant from a 10K to a 5K—requires human confirmation before it is executed. The AI can prepare the action, but a user must review and approve it.

This human-in-the-loop design is intended to reduce the risk of AI making unintended changes and to preserve RunSignup’s transactional reliability.

Where AI will appear

RunSignup plans for AI to be available across several interfaces:

• Event websites for participants and ticket buyers
• Race and event dashboards for directors
• Partner and timer dashboards
• Eventually third-party AI interfaces such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini

The long-term vision is that users may be able to interact with RunSignup through natural-language chat regardless of where that conversation happens.

AI Assistant for writing

One of the existing tools is the AI Assistant embedded in dashboard text editors.

It can help users:

• Generate copy
• Rewrite existing content
• Add paragraphs
• Change formatting
• Convert paragraphs into bullets
• Improve event descriptions or waivers

The goal is to make event setup faster without requiring users to leave the RunSignup interface.

Website chatbot V2

A major focus of the webinar is the upcoming RunSignup AI chatbot V2.

The new version is built on the updated AWS architecture and is designed to be faster, more scalable, and capable of more complex behaviors.

The chatbot is trained on event Website V2 content, including FAQs and other pages, and can also call MCP tools to retrieve current system data.

Participants can ask questions such as:

• What events can I still register for?
• What is the current price?
• Will the price increase?
• Will there be water stations?
• Is parking free?
• Can I register on race morning?

The chatbot can return answers along with direct registration links when appropriate.

Why Website V2 content matters

Website V2 is important because the chatbot’s knowledge base is generated directly from its structured pages, sections, and components.

When a race director updates website content and saves the page, RunSignup sends an update to retrain the AI knowledge base. This helps keep the chatbot synchronized with current event information.

The webinar emphasizes that well-developed FAQs and complete website content improve chatbot performance.

AI-powered results search

The chatbot can also query historical results.

Examples demonstrated included:

• How has a specific runner performed over the last few years?
• Who won last year?
• How many runners broke a certain time?
• If I run a 10-minute mile, approximately where would I finish based on prior results?

Instead of manually navigating result pages and filters, the participant can ask in natural language and let the AI retrieve and analyze the data.

AI-enhanced Contact Us

RunSignup has also integrated AI into the Contact Us workflow.

Before a participant sends a question to the race director, AI can try to answer it instantly using website content and system data.

For example, a participant might ask several questions about:

• Pets
• Parking
• Race-day registration
• Other logistics

The AI can answer the questions it knows and clearly identify anything it cannot answer. The participant can then either accept the response or still send the remaining question to the race director.

The goal is to reduce unnecessary support emails while giving participants faster answers.

Conversation history and retraining

RunSignup logs chatbot conversations so race directors can review what participants are asking.

This creates several potential benefits:

• Identify common questions.
• Improve FAQs.
• Review AI responses.
• Retrain or improve future responses.
• Understand participant concerns before race day.

The team also discussed future possibilities such as automatically identifying recurring questions and suggesting new FAQ entries.

AI Insights

On the director side, AI Insights is designed to help users analyze event data through natural-language questions.

Instead of manually building reports, directors could ask things such as:

• Show registration trends.
• Compare this year to prior years.
• Show a financial summary.
• How has donation revenue changed?

The AI can return charts and visualizations rather than only text responses.

This is intended to make complex data easier to understand without requiring users to know how to build reports or export spreadsheets.

Keeping sensitive data inside RunSignup

One important benefit highlighted in the webinar is data security.

A director could export financial or registration data and upload it into a third-party AI tool, but that introduces additional security concerns.

RunSignup’s approach is to provide those AI capabilities inside its own system so the data remains within the RunSignup environment.

AI Actions

One of the most significant features demonstrated was AI Actions.

Instead of manually completing forms, a director could tell the AI what they want done.

For example:

Create a coupon for $10 off.

The AI prepares the coupon, displays the proposed action, and waits for the director to approve it.

The real advantage becomes clearer with repetitive or bulk tasks. A director could ask the AI to create multiple single-use promotional coupons at once instead of filling out the same form repeatedly.

The broader goal is for AI to reduce tedious dashboard work while still requiring human approval.

AI Briefings

RunSignup also plans AI Briefings, which would allow directors to schedule recurring AI-generated summaries.

A director might configure a weekly report showing:

• Registration performance
• This year versus last year
• Financial trends
• Other custom metrics

The AI would then generate and deliver that briefing automatically.

Broader product roadmap

The webinar outlines several AI product areas:

• Customer-service chatbot
• AI results
• Participant management
• AI Assistant
• AI Insights
• AI Reporting
• AI Actions
• AI Briefings

RunSignup expects AI functionality to expand progressively across its dashboard pages and products.

Because the platform contains hundreds of dashboard screens with different underlying functions, this expansion will happen incrementally rather than all at once.

AI across races, tickets, memberships, and volunteers

The development team is designing AI features to be as reusable and entity-agnostic as possible.

That means features built for races can eventually be extended to:

• Ticket events
• Membership organizations
• Volunteers
• Other RunSignup products

The same approach is intended to accelerate rollout across the overall platform.

Development speed and AI

RunSignup is also using AI internally for software development.

The company expects AI-assisted development to significantly increase its release velocity. The webinar notes that RunSignup completed roughly 2,000 software releases in the prior year and expects that pace to increase substantially as AI becomes more integrated into development workflows.

Reliability over speed

A recurring message throughout the webinar is that RunSignup wants to move quickly, but not recklessly.

The company is intentionally spending time on:

• Reliable infrastructure
• Secure data access
• Strong MCP tools
• Knowledge-base quality
• Human approvals
• Audit history
• Testing

The goal is not simply to add AI everywhere, but to make it dependable enough for event operations where incorrect information or unintended changes could create real problems.

Final takeaway

RunSignup views AI as a new interface for event technology rather than simply a standalone feature.

Participants will increasingly be able to ask questions, explore results, and eventually manage registrations through natural language. Event directors will be able to analyze data, create reports, and complete dashboard tasks by describing what they want instead of navigating multiple forms.

The strategy is to combine natural-language interaction with trusted RunSignup data, secure infrastructure, and human confirmation, making AI useful for real event workflows rather than just generating text.