The Pros and Cons of Virtual Events
With corporate budgets being slashed across all industries, conferences and tradeshows have experienced dwindling attendance Worldwide. Many companies simply cannot justify the expense of sending employees to industry events, which has caused many events to migrate to the virtual space. Convenience and cost-cutting are two major benefits of online events, but what is lost when an event moves to the Internet?
Conferences, tradeshows and other industry-specific events have traditionally served several notable purposes including professional networking, exchanging ideas and learning about new-and-notable trends throughout the business. While this face-to-face time with peers and competitors is valuable and important, it is rapidly being replaced with digital networking, virtual discussion forums and other means of communication.
Although conferences and tradeshows seem to be losing on-site attendance, they are gaining more active participation and valuable discussion by moving online. Virtual events offer several major benefits, including the instant exchange of thoughts, ideas and opinions. Online discussion forums and message boards have replaced traditional networking circles while providing the added bonus of freedom and real-time response. Professionals can now comment freely on topics, and companies can quickly see exactly how people perceive their presentations and events.
Another benefit of hosting an industry event online is the ability to track participants. Each attendee becomes an automatic lead as they enter the virtual event. Their activity can be easily tracked as they navigate throughout the digital event, providing the host company with valuable feedback about how their information is being consumed. This is not only a bonus for the host company, but also for the industry as a whole as this information leads to insight to develop more effective communication.
Despite the many benefits, there are also drawbacks to virtual events. One aspect that cannot be replaced with technology is old-fashioned, face-to-face communication. Physically interacting with peers, competitors and brands creates meaningful and memorable experiences – which is exactly what brands hope for when hosting and participating in industry events. Although nothing can replace this type of interaction, the virtual space offers many notable advantages that traditional events will need to implement in order to stay relevant and successful.
At the 2011 SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas (SXSWi), many of the discussions took place through Twitter forums, where participants received information about various discussion topics, free food and company giveaways. These forums utilized pre-determined hashtags so that all participants could instantly exchange notes, thoughts and impressions from the multitude of available sessions. Although the SXSWi conference was a physical event, the majority of learning and participation took place online. If traditional industry tradeshows, conferences and events of the past wish to continue their success, they will need to quickly adopt these practices and principles of the virtual conference.
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