I recently produced a virtual meeting for a Fortune 100 company, where the CEO said that while it was great to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror, he was holding off on his new year’s celebration until March, because that was when, in his opinion, we might really start to see some things changing for the better. And, sure, his statement might’ve been a little tongue in cheek, but I think it’s a realistic approach.
What we look forward to in the next few months is a slow transition from the world of 100% virtual events to events with both live and virtual attendees, what people have been referring to as the hybrid.
Using March as a jumping off point for this discussion, it looks like for the first few months of the spring things will remain status quo. I expect that we’re going to continue doing 100% virtual events with virtual and prerecorded presenters through May. As the weather warms and the vaccination numbers continue to grow, the hope is that by June we’ll start to see some opportunities for outdoor events and maybe even some small indoor events.
Moving into the summer, we hope to be producing events with live audiences, but still expect that many presenters and attendees will still be virtual. I think heading into the fall of 2021, the hybrid meeting will become the norm for the event industry. So we need to start planning and preparing for that now.
We need to understand that unlike live events of the past, the virtual audience can’t be an afterthought. For the hybrid event, both live and virtual audiences need to be considered and fully engaged. As an industry, we’ll need to adapt once again to a new way of producing events using experience and technology to bring people together.
