Being an event producer and content creator, I’ve followed the rise of the virtual event with a mixture of curiosity and fear. If people no longer gather in a single, physical space, is it really an event? And what elements of my skill set and experience become obsolete? What elements are more vital than ever? How should I adapt?
First off, I accept that virtual gatherings will play a larger and larger role in the coming years, commanding a greater share of event marketing spend and man-hour execution. Many smaller meetings that were not long ago the bread and butter of business travel have already been replaced by WebEx and similar technologies.
Larger meetings, especially internal and leadership events, are also going virtual as companies rein in travel expenses and the sometimes irresponsible behavior of its jet-setting attendees. Still, most physical events have never been “the junkets to Vegas” that President Obama criticized with careless flip.
Some givens:
1. The live event will not go away. It’s not naïve to say that human nature craves face-to-face interaction when forging trust and relationships. Avatars and chat go only so far in that endeavor.
2. More live events will have virtual components so that a larger audience can consume content in more ways. The content is also available long after the event as tools for further study and nurturing the community across the calendar.
3. The ROI — while far from proven — seems indisputably in favor of the virtual. What will take time to prove is how many deals, sales and impressions — and how much exposure and new business development — can be conducted virtually versus live.
4. What’s unquantifiable, it seems to me, are elements of learning and growth that most events engender — training staff and customers, managers and leaders. How do you measure inspiration?
5. Industries will adopt virtual events in broadly staggered ways. Hi-tech is well on its way both internally and externally. For industries where touch and feel are vital – fashion, food, even automotive come to mind– the progression will take much longer and will depend on serious advances in the virtual and experiential design (see final section). Then there are industries and organizations that are hard-line tradition; the thought of forgoing lavish travel and funny hats (I’m talking about you, politicos) might never be won over.
The experience.
To be sure, the virtual event technology is embryonic. The UI and content are still being designed by engineers.
A few weeks ago, I attended a live event here in Silicon Valley, centered on virtual events. There was the typical live atmosphere of people mingling and eating off little napkins, waiting for the next presentation. Some members of the audience were on the vanguard of virtual, others on the trailing edge, their eyes wide with curiosity and an air of loathing.
What struck me about this event (which was also being served up virtually) was how poor the content was. Presenters rambled; that can be charming in the room but puzzling from a remote perch. Slides were crammed with verbaige and unreadable data. If you’re in the room, you can ignore that mess (but we usually read it all anyway for sensory satisfaction).
Some of the presentations were altogether incomplete because photos and other media were not compatible with other software present in the server lines. This will surely be worked out in the short term, but as content grows more robust, producers will have to work closely with engineers to ensure that everything is compatible.
In the virtual experience, most UI’s I’ve seen — including ones created in-house and ones sold as shells by the leading virtual event companies — retain the motif and navigation of the convention center. To me, I’ve always found the chilling vastness of such places to be a drain on the human spirit.
This concept seems like a misguided evolutional leap, not unlike hitching stagecoaches to train engines.
It also creates a lot of needless clutter with busy backgrounds, clumpy icons representing “booths,” confusing maps of contrived real/virtual spaces (e.g., theater, lounge, etc.). Plus, there are scrolling text, crawls, chats, pushy avatar hosts and come-ons. It can be quite off-putting and steepens the orientation curve for users, new and old. Plus, is your brand a convention a convention hall? If not, why would you want it to feel like one?
Imagine this…
…A real live convention. You arrive and register, pick up your packet. Maybe you’ve made a plan, maybe you haven’t. As you walk to your first activity, you take in the sites and get acclimated with the space. Maybe you run into an old friend and invite them to join you at the keynote. While you’re waiting for the address, you check the adenga for breakouts you want to see and participants you want to meet. The cocktail reception sounds like a good networking opportunity. You brush up on your plans a few hours later at lunch.
Now, imagine all of this acclimation occurring in a single second, the moment you log in to the virtual event. BAM! SPLAT! SHRIEK! Everything, all at once, in your face. DECIDE DECIDE DECIDE! It’s like a scene from a sci-fi film where the aliens bombard humans with the kind of sensory overload that makes heads pop like over-ripe watermelons.
Get organized.
Why not simplify the UI to be more life a good website? After all, a virtual event is a glorified web presence — glorified in that the traffic and content is more focused while the offerings (more partners, more presentations, more attentive demos and “live” interaction) are vast. There are many places you want to visit, people you want to meet, products you want to see, keynotes you want to hear. There’s a lot you want to consume over time…just like the internet itself.
Which brings me to…
The Content.
Content is and always will be king. Video, media and presentations that deliver the message and strategic ends. My self-serving opinion is: more, more, more and better, better, better.
When I say More, I don’t mean cluttering up the experience with videos popping up everywhere. I mean using video in more ways that truly engage the consumer in the experience and the brand. Use video instead of disembodied voices and slide decks. Make it easy for interaction and linking to other content. Embed video into PDF’s for product overviews. Live video chat, as opposed to avatars and text chat, also humanizes the experience.
By Better, I’m talking about heightening the presentation of the brand and the impact of the content. Content – in all its delivery forms – should still embody the elements of good communication like storytelling, cohesion, momentum and clarity. And production value matters. Can you really express your brand with a $200 video camera in the hands of a sales rep who then posts it raw into the endless ether of YouTube. I’m amazed at how some of the most important brands in the world allow this to go on.
The Future
Finally, as I noted earlier, the virtual event industry is embryonic. Designers and producers now entering the field are equipped with skills in robust interactive media creation — most notably, gaming. When the immersive visual and experiential art of modern game technologies is introduced into the event environment, it will truly be game on.
Until then, the incremental evolution of the medium needs to keep quality content and consumer-centric navigation front and center.