What is Project Barnum?
Project Barnum is idloom's AI programme. It covers every AI capability idloom is building into the platform: the assistant tools available today, the features currently in development, and the longer-term direction for AI in event management. The name Barnum also refers to the AI assistant itself, which runs both inside the organizer back office and on attendee-facing event websites.
The design principle behind Project Barnum is straightforward: AI should handle the repetitive, configuration-heavy work so that event teams can focus on the parts of their job that require human judgment, creativity, and relationship-building.
What can Barnum do today?
Barnum is live across two distinct areas of the platform. Each serves a different user and solves a different problem.
Barnum for organizers: instant answers in the back office
Barnum has been available to organizers inside the idloom back office since September 2025. It works as an in-app assistant: when a question comes up during event setup or configuration, organizers can ask Barnum directly instead of searching through documentation or waiting for a support response. Barnum draws on idloom's full knowledge base and returns a precise answer in context.
The practical effect is a shorter setup loop. Questions about module configuration, registration logic, payment settings, or attendee management get resolved on the spot. For teams managing multiple events or working under time pressure, the reduction in back-and-forth is measurable.
Barnum for attendees: AI on your event website
The attendee-facing version of Barnum, released in May 2026, adds an AI chat widget to idloom event websites. Visitors and registered attendees can ask questions about the event and receive accurate, immediate answers without any human agent involved.
Even before any custom configuration, Barnum can answer the questions that arrive most often before an event:
- Whether registration is still open or can be modified
- Whether cancellation is possible and what the conditions are
- Which tickets are available and at what price
- Event dates, location, and other public details
Barnum learns from content you provide. At the account level, you add information that applies to every event you run, such as your company background or refund policy. At the profile level, you cover content shared across an event series or brand. At the event level, you add the specifics: agenda, speakers, venue, and any event-specific FAQs. Barnum draws on all three layers when answering a question.
Barnum for attendees is available on the Premium and Corporate plans. A full setup guide is available in the Barnum AI assistant for your event website user guide.
What is coming next in Project Barnum?
The next release on the Barnum roadmap is an event creation co-pilot. Provide a short brief about your event and Barnum will generate a first draft of the structure for you: sessions, ticket types, registration form, and key settings. It will also flag anything that looks incomplete or could be improved before you go live.
Beyond that specific feature, AI assistance is now part of how idloom evaluates every new capability it builds. The goal is that any complex configuration task in the platform should have an AI layer that reduces the learning curve and the risk of setup errors. As idloom's feature set grows, so does the scope of what Barnum can help with.
How idloom builds AI: ethics, privacy, and security
Every component of Project Barnum is built against the same compliance and security standards that apply to the rest of the idloom platform.
On data privacy: no attendee data is shared with AI processing, and any data used in AI operations is fully anonymized. idloom follows GDPR requirements across all AI features without exception.
On security: Barnum components are built to the same standards as the rest of the platform, covered by idloom's ISO 27001 certification, SOC2 compliance, and PCI DSS compliance.
On human oversight: every AI output in the platform is a suggestion, not an action. Organizers validate what Barnum proposes. No AI component in idloom takes autonomous action on an event or a registration without explicit confirmation from a person.
Download our ISO 27001 certificate
Is AI replacing event planners?
No, and that is not the direction Project Barnum is heading.
Event planning depends on judgment calls, stakeholder relationships, and creative decisions that cannot be automated. The operational and administrative layers of event management can be made faster and less error-prone with AI assistance. The strategic and relational layers remain human work.
idloom's position is that AI is a co-pilot: it handles the configuration load, the repetitive support questions, and the first-draft work, so that the people running events can put their time toward the parts of the job where they make a real difference. The full idloom support team remains available alongside Barnum for complex requests that need a human answer.
