Events can be delivered in a zillion different ways – in-person, hybrid or virtual.
For membership organisations, in-person conferences have always played an important role in bringing members together, enabling networking, adding value & offering learning opportunities.
But as events & learning teams are getting better with understanding technology, content & reaching wider audiences, virtual events have become the epicenter of heated discussions.
“How can you take a group of people spread all over the world and make them feel like a single community. Without moving them. With little budget. Within 6 weeks?”
Most organisations turn to webinars.
They try it once and then impatiently move on the next thing or remain in the status quo. The reality is, a large percentage of organisations are not trying hard enough to make virtual events work.
Just because the virtual experience was bad back in the day, it doesn’t mean that virtual events are dead.
Let me explain…
Innovation can only come when technology is at a maturation point. It takes new technologies to replace other technologies.
DVD replaced VHS, Blue Ray replaced DVD & today, live streaming is replacing Blue Ray.
Technology can succeed when it hits the maturity point.
Virtual Events failed the first time around. Back in the day, a lot of the technologies were quite old school. You had flash plugins, weak links in technology and no one wanted to run a virtual event to risk leaving a terrible attendee experience.
Today, we have better browser standards, HTML5, Internet Speed, Twitch, YouTube Live, LinkedIn Live & others began to mature. We also have better software, better service providers, better consultants. People are getting used to meeting online and virtual event technology has reached its maturity point.
We can now use virtual events to monetize, to educate and to save costs.
So technology itself can’t be the issue.
It’s the issue of not knowing how to engage virtual audiences, how to train speakers & how to create content. It’s not understanding how technology fits into your organisation. Or maybe even not knowing what solutions are available to associations.
Ultimately, it boils down to associations not having a virtual events strategy in place or not trying hard enough to making it work and moving on with new trends too quickly. Virtual events are not dead. In fact, this whole area might as well just explode.
Conclusion
- Innovation can only happen when technology matures
- Virtual event technology is at a level of maturity which brings in new opportunities
- Virtual events are not dead. Most organizations simply move on too quickly
- Content needs to be adapted to suit the needs of a virtual audience
Blue Sky eLearn provides a full range of learning technologies, including a proprietary learning management system & a complete set of virtual event services. Blue Sky helps organizations capture educational content from live or virtual settings, then facilitates the management & delivery of content to a global audience through its learning plat
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