APU Careers & Learning Original

Are Virtual Events Here to Stay?

By Dr. Sheri Hernandez
Program Director, Hospitality Management

In the early spring of 2020, everyone’s world was turned upside down by the crisis from the coronavirus pandemic. Everyone’s world became much smaller as cities around the world closed non-essential businesses and people stayed home.

Schools and universities scrambled to find ways to get technology into their teachers’ and students’ hands. Many had to hastily plan how to keep learning going without students, teachers and administrators gathering together in school buildings.

Similarly, businesses and organizations of all kinds suddenly found themselves utilizing mostly remote workers. Some companies responded better than others. Entire industries shifted their strategies in an effort to continue functioning with all their employees in their living rooms rather than in the office.

Many Organizations Pivoted to Virtual Events with the Help of Event Planners

One industry in particular was able to pivot quite quickly and came to the rescue for many different organizations. Professionals in the event planning industry used their expertise to help businesses, schools, professional organizations, and universities convert their upcoming trade shows, conferences, and commencement ceremonies to virtual events. These events limited in-person gatherings, but they attempted to remain inclusive and to provide attendees with a memorable experience.

Technology Is Key to Online Events

To host virtual events, technology matters. Tech companies, with all their advanced technology, were no exception and faced a number of challenges reaching a remote group of people.

Some companies hold large conferences every year for their developers to share new advances and collaborate, but had to hold virtual events instead. For example, Microsoft shifted its annual developer’s conference to an entirely virtual event held in May 2020. Apple followed suit and held their annual developer’s conference as a virtual conference in June.

At both events, the companies included keynote speakers, tech announcements and tutorials. There were also smaller conversations and sessions related to the host’s technology and platforms.

Google, on the other hand, chose to cancel their annual developer’s conference. Their website stated that the most important thing to do at the moment was to focus on helping people.

The Challenges of Hosting Virtual Events

It may be easier to shift to an online format if your business is intricately involved with technology platforms. But for other organizations, the shift may not have been so easy, because they don’t have technology platforms used for collaboration as part of their core business.

Hosting a complete large-scale conference online is different from using Zoom or Facebook Live to broadcast a few keynote speakers or play a slideshow of graduating seniors. Various virtual event platforms have emerged, been refined, and become successful full-service solutions for hosting entire large conferences and events online.

The Benefits of Virtual Events

Some major benefits of virtual events include accessibility, global reach, and more flexibility, both for the planners and the attendees. Speakers who were initially unavailable for a particular conference because a conference budget did not provide the funds to transport those speakers may now be willing to use video conferencing at a much smaller expense to conference organizers.

Companies that could not afford to send more than one or two of their top executives to a trade show may now be able to have the majority of their employees attend professional training sessions at world-renowned conferences. Space limitations on how many people could attend a conference are virtually eliminated or just tied to the technological capabilities of the event platform.

Note-taking is not as necessary at these virtual events, since it is likely all the sessions will be recorded so attendees can re-watch them later. Recording the sessions also allows people who were not able to attend a particular breakout session because of conflicting appointments the opportunity to see all the sessions they desire.

Given the continued state of the pandemic that is preventing large, in-person gatherings, virtual platforms are being further refined as event planners collaborate to define best practices. Large scale in-person gatherings or at least hybrid events will resume at some point in the future. But virtual events can bring about cost savings, be more accessible to more people, and have less of an impact on the environment with fewer people traveling to and from events.

Virtual Events Go Beyond Just Video Presentations

Being engaging during a virtual event is important, and being proactive about ensuring the proper technology is in place for the event is vital. Additionally, presentations during virtual events need to be relevant and focused, and many believe those presentations need to be more interactive than just a speaker and a slideshow.

Conferences that are typically attended in person have networking opportunities, small breakout educational sessions, keynote speakers, Q&A sessions, trade shows and social time. But the key thing to remember is those people attending the conference are there in person. They and their coworkers who attend are away from their families and household distractions, and they are there to learn from other industry professionals.

Engaging the Interest of Virtual Conference Attendees

As people have adjusted to working remotely, it takes more than choosing from a few Zoom sessions to make a virtual event worthwhile and worth the cost of a conference fee to participate.

Zoom fatigue is setting in for many people, so little things can make a difference. One suggestion is to send out some virtual swag. This digital swag can include backgrounds, animated stickers, and cards.

At some online conferences, attendees could take breaks for some fun and entertainment like bingo games, trivia questions, or even streamed performances from live musicians. Some conference organizers have even sent participants little snack care packages or gift cards for a cup of coffee. In the end, a successful virtual event is about remembering that there are real people, who are not necessarily captive audiences, at the other end of the computer screen.

Probably the most important feedback that attendees of virtual conferences have provided is to build in enough time and a way to network with other conference attendees. One of the biggest challenges to virtual events is still that there is a lack of face-to-face chatting and networking opportunities.

One potential solution would be to create a virtual reality room where your avatar meets with other attendees and can step away to have private conversations, or facilitate smaller video chat rooms for a focused group of people.

Ultimately, networking is one of the most valuable parts of a professional conference. Engagement is key.

The Future of Conferences

The pandemic has taught us is that there are other ways to stay connected. Large-scale, in-person conferences will likely continue to incorporate some virtual or hybrid elements in order to increase accessibility and decrease costs. Event planners will need to engage with the digital platforms that emerge as superior above the rest because quality, the personalization of events and reliability will matter to attendees.

Not all event planners will need to make the switch to specializing in virtual events, however. Wedding and party planners will be able to one day plan those 250-guest extravaganzas in a hotel ballroom, rather than cutting back to an intimate, six-person gathering in the meadow on a moment’s notice.

But in the future, those large events may have a small camera stealthily set up so that Uncle Bob in the hospital can watch his cherished niece exchange her vows. Maybe there will be a monitor set up on the altar so that Father Jones who was called to an unexpected mission trip in Africa can still officiate the wedding of a man he baptized as an infant.

Trying times like the current pandemic call for innovation. Event planners are heeding the call to bring people together in the virtual world while those same people remain safely apart.

Dr. Sheri Hernandez is the Hospitality Management program director for the School of Business. She has extensive knowledge of restaurant operations, food safety, purchasing and training. Dr. Hernandez combines her skills as a restaurant manager with her career experience in financial commodity risk management, consulting, and purchasing to enable her to educate her students with a customer-focused, yet financially sound approach to hospitality management.

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