Did you know there’s a small group of people changing the reality of events in Mexico?
It all started when researcher Alejandro Perez-Duarte returned to Guadalajara after 12 years in Brazil.
Back in academia, he faced new challenges: how do you organize events quickly and simply in a country that isn’t used to using platforms for academic events?
He already knew the answer. Brazil had taught him.
“I discovered Even3 through UFMG’s events — I’d already taken part in several activities there. We couldn’t find such a complete platform in Mexico.” — Alejandro Perez-Duarte, ITESO
But how do you deal with language, cultural, and financial differences?
And is it even possible for a Brazilian platform to reach an international audience?
These were the challenges taken on by Even3 and the 4th Congreso Internacional del Hábitat y Sustentabilidad, hosted by ITESO Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara.
And this story has a lot to teach us about investing in international events and connecting knowledge to people all over the world.
Get inspired:
ITESO before Even3: why change?
Imagine having a developer working on your event website. That sounds like a great idea, right?
But what if that developer is in Japan while your event is happening in Mexico? How do you make real-time changes?
And worse: if your organizing committee is huge, how do you manage everyone’s tasks and keep track of what each person is doing?
ITESO proved, in practice, that some solutions can help to a point, but aren’t ideal for every kind of event. It all depends on your goals.
For an event as large as theirs, speed was essential — and so was bringing every stage of the event together in one place.
That’s why spreadsheets for tracking participants, finances, certificate issuance, and emails simply stopped making sense.
Besides, does that kind of chaos really help anyone effectively?
For a large-scale event with a sizable scientific committee, it was getting harder and harder to track which tasks had already been done and who was responsible for what.
But everything changed after Even3. For Alejandro, being able to organize the entire event in one place made all the difference.
“The platform is really well built. It helps a lot with organization from the pre-event stage onward. Other things that help a lot are payment management and certificate issuance. That used to be manual work that ate up a lot of the organizers’ time.” — Alejandro Perez-Duarte, ITESO
As a result, the entire ITESO committee gained access to a self-service event website with real-time updates.
On top of registration tracking, sales monitoring, automatic certificate issuance, and notification sending, among other features — this is what sealed the partnership between Brazil and Mexico.
Knowledge that crosses borders
By investing in an events platform, ITESO broke new ground in the Mexican landscape.
Since it wasn’t such a common solution, they did extensive research looking for alternative platforms.
In interviews with the candidates, they noticed a major difficulty: it was hard to find a complete platform for academic events.
Something was always missing. Sometimes the focus was on the event’s logistics, sometimes it was only on receiving papers.
“They didn’t even have a Publication module, like Even3 does. So when we compared everything, we saw that the other companies fell short on one side or the other. Besides Even3, we only found one other option that delivered everything we needed, but the price was much higher.” — Alejandro Perez-Duarte, ITESO
As a result, only Even3 remained competitive against the event’s needs, offering great value for money.
Among the key features, Alejandro highlights the full support for the scientific committee and how easy it was to quickly publish the event proceedings, complete with a catalog record and identifiers.
With the ability to create academic and scientific events even for free, the tool has since been adopted by other events at ITESO Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara as well.
But a lot had to change to get there.
Cultural adaptation: how Even3 changed to welcome ITESO
Organizing an event in another country brings cultural differences among its biggest challenges.
After all, to build a welcoming and engaging environment for participants, you need to connect with them and create a sense of familiarity.
In this case, language differences could have been a barrier.
As Alejandro points out, despite its similarity to Spanish, Portuguese isn’t a common language in Mexico, so it tends to feel unfamiliar.
For that reason, translating every page of the event — handled by Even3 Global — was essential to attracting more people.
On the platform, all content automatically appears in the participant’s language.
On top of that, dedicated support was a priority for the Even3 team, who provided full support in Spanish.
This meant both organizers and participants had the help they needed in their own language.
“João [Even3’s Customer Success Manager] was always there. I think that was a key factor. That support made things so much easier.” — Alejandro Perez-Duarte, ITESO
Beyond that, the platform itself changed to accommodate ITESO’s event.
For example, some academic practices were different from Brazil’s, such as requiring signatures to assign copyright for publication in the event proceedings.
So the platform had to be adapted to support that requirement — all tracked and mapped by Even3’s dedicated support team.
And that wasn’t all: ITESO was also the first to try out international payments here.
International payment methods
Marking an important milestone in Even3’s globalization, ITESO was an event that evolved alongside the platform.
It was the first event to accept international currencies. And we can say it was a success.
Curious how that actually works in practice?
On Even3, it’s possible to accept payment methods specific to different countries.
That means more than 150 options, ranging from Pix for Brazilians, Oxxo for Mexicans, Baloto for Colombians, and many more.
This matters a lot because it expands your event’s payment options well beyond traditional credit cards.
It also builds a connection with participants, who are more likely to complete a purchase when they see a currency or payment method they’re already used to. After all, familiarity builds trust, right?
Another important point is that the platform automatically handles currency conversion — cutting down on fees and red tape in the process.
That means no matter what your participant chooses at checkout, you’ll always receive payment in your event’s official currency.
Global scientific support
Finally, ITESO’s event certainly pushed the boundaries of academic and scientific output.
For Alejandro, this is a trend that’s pushing academic events toward an increasingly global format.
In that context, a platform that offers the full paper submission cycle becomes even more essential.
With the ability to receive papers in any format, distribute reviews, send out results, organize presentations, and publish the event proceedings, Even3 stands out as the ideal solution for any academic event, anywhere in the world.
For ITESO’s organizers, these features made all the difference.
How about you? Ready to give it a try? Discover Even3’s solutions for international events.
