Always an interesting session, The State (and Future) of Virtual Events is a chance for each platform provider to weigh in on where they think the industry is going. This year Michael Doyle dealt topics to each of the executives to guide the discussion. Check out the video of the session if you want to hear the full hour.
Stu Schmidt - One technology that will make its way into virtual platforms is familiar: web collaboration. Stu talked about booth reps being able to launch screen sharing and instant teleconference calls from within a platform so as to engage a prospect inside a booth immediately for live demos, etc.
Ben Chodor – Hybrid Events – this year it is a buzz word. Every physical event in 2011 should have a web component.
Lance Simon – Engagement: we have the building blocks. The future will see better virtual/physical engagement tools to allow virtual audience to interact with physical audience.
Jim Parker- Changing way that education is delivered to audiences. Better tools to facilitate collective knowledge gathering.
Steve Strickland – Exposition halls need better engagement. Goal measurement and recognition for booth reps needs more attention.
Kevin Carbone - Perpetual environments will become more popular especially for companies that need to position themselves as thought leaders. This will cause tools that facilitate ongoing conversations to become better. This topic was expanded on later in the session, prompted by a question from the audience. The panel all agreed that perpetual environments were right for certain applications, but that the concept of getting a critical mass of people into the environment at a certain time was still important. Otherwise the platform is just a website.
The best distinction was made by Malcolm Lotzof, who described a “program” of events inside a perpetual environment was the only real way to make them work because there were frequent content updates as a result of the events. Unisfair also employs this method as part of its series of marketing events.
Malcolm Lotzof – Partners provide services that actually create events. The “production,” or the act of actually executing the event, is something that needs to get simpler through self service interfaces. That will make virtual events more affordable for smaller businesses.
Tom Wieser – Conversion of user activity into business intelligence value was the initial measurement goal. The next step will be measurement of user satisfaction.
Other thoughts:
What is a prerequisite for a successful event? The panel agrees that understanding business goals is the overwhelming prerequisite that matters most.
Understanding that we’re not bound by the standards created by physical events and to think outside the box about your program’s agenda was added by Jim Parker.
Content matters more than the platform. Ben Chodor bluntly puts it, “none of the platforms will make your content better.” Great point. Well put, Ben.
What capabilities are currently in development? Mobile is under consideration, first and foremost to make content available on devices, however that may not provide the best experience. InXpo is working on a non-flash based front end, but says that browser-based is going to be a continuing trend over mobile apps that need to be downloaded.
6Connex is working on an HTML5 version of their front end, but Kevin Carbone stresses that it isn’t going to stand in the way of the user by forcing them to make a choice. It is about broadening the access and reach of the technology. The overall thoughts on HTML5 were not significant.
Accessibility for ADA compliance is still almost impossible, mostly because of the massive transcription effort that would have to take place on all of the audio and video content.
The panel was noticeably more refined than last year. Everyone was agreeing on fundamentals, which I couldn’t help but notice are things that I’ve focused on for well over a year now: understand your goals, know your audience, plan out a solid agenda with relevant content, consider measurement as you plan, etc, etc. Overall it was nice to see some of the approaches maturing to the point of unanimous agreement on most of them. Anyone else have thoughts to share about the key session of the week?
Unisfair, Cramer’s Virtual Event partner for the past two years, announced today that it has been acquired by InterCall, a subsidiary of West Corporation. So, is this a good thing? Well, time will tell, but we see it as a positive step not only for Unisfair, but for the industry as a whole. I take it as a sign of confidence when large industry players get in on a new market and I’m glad that InterCall saw the same value in the Unisfair platform, business model and executive team that we did back in 2009. Nice going, guys.