bXb Online | Blog

Today’s guest post is from Dennis Shiao, Director – Product Marketing at INXPO. When it comes to social media content on virtual and hybrid events, Dennis has it covered, with a vibrant Twitter presence and a fantastic blog called “It’s All Virtual,” that covers virtual worlds, tradeshows, meetings, and more. He’s also the author of “Generate Sales Leads With Virtual Events.”  For all those reasons and more, I’m excited that Dennis is sharing his view today on virtual and hybrid events – both recapping the last four years and looking ahead four years to point to what we have ahead of us:

Introduction

When I attended my first virtual trade show four years ago, I said to myself, “This is the future of online lead generation.” At the time, I was managing webinar programs for technology advertisers. They’d do 60-minute, audio-based webinars and hope to generate leads to fuel their sales pipeline. At this virtual trade show, those same “leads” attended an online event for hours and had the opportunity to have real-time engagements with those same advertisers. The users loved it and the advertisers loved it.

Fast forward to today and we’ve significant growth in virtual trade shows. But we’ve also seen the underlying technology platforms applied to many other uses, including virtual job fairs, virtual product launches and importantly, hybrid events.

While some appear before Congress and state that they’re “not here to talk about the past,” I’d like to quickly look back and enthusiastically look forward. Let’s take it in four year intervals, shall we?

The Last Four Years

1. Awareness

Today, when I meet someone new and tell them what I do for a living, they’ll often say, “Oh yeah. I’ve attended one of those.” During parts of the last four years, however, the common answer was, “Huh?” Digital events are harder to explain than you might think. Today, with awareness at an all-time high, it’s much easier to explain.

2. Technology Maturation

During the last four years, virtual event platforms performed pretty well. But we sure did have some events (in the early days) that crashed, had poor response times or were just plain hard to navigate. The good news, for all of us, is that the technology has matured. Availability is up, response time is down and the user experience has improved. Companies who sat on the sidelines in the past are now “all in,” in the sense that the technology is no longer holding things back.

3. Mostly 100% Virtual

While we’ve seen the emergence of hybrid events during the past four years, the majority events during this period were “100% virtual.” This was fueled by B2B publishers, who discovered virtual events and virtual trade shows as a neat vehicle to monetize their audience (online) and grow revenue, especially as print revenue was declining. As I’ll cover later, I expect the next four years to significantly skew in favor of hybrid events.

4. User Experience

The first four years of digital events had a user experience that tried to mimic your experience at a physical event. It took us four years to conclude that users don’t care about “furniture,” they care about content. So don’t put stands, walls, lobbies and sofas in the way. Get your “customers” to the event’s content as efficiently as possible and they’ll be much happier for it.

The Next Four Years

I think the next four years will be about hybrid events, mobile access and new business models.

1. Hybrid Events

Commerce and connections are still best done face-to-face. That’s why physical events will never go away. But every physical event can have a digital extension. With companies like bXb Online leading the way, I expect to see massive growth in hybrid events. It all begins now. Four years from now, we’ll be able to look back on this from our retirement home on the beach (just kidding, though perhaps not!).

2. Mobile

Mobile apps, mobile experiences, QR codes, augmented reality, location awareness. These aren’t just popular buzzwords, they’re the future of events and they’re ready to transform the event experience. We’ve migrated from PC to laptop to tablet to smartphone – and over the next four years, I expect much of our digital experience to occur from these smaller form factor devices, which happen to have constant connectivity and location awareness. Digital and hybrid events stand to benefit. And savvy event planners will figure out how to knit these technologies together to blend the digital and face-to-face experiences.

3. New Business Models

Innovative business models will emerge during the coming four years to create a “hockey stick shaped” adoption curve in hybrid events. Despite the fact that “digital” should result in a lower cost structure compared to “face-to-face,” cost remains a barrier preventing some organizations from entering the digital and hybrid arena. New business models will make it more likely (or, perhaps guarantee) that ROI and profit margin are far in the positive direction.

Conclusion

While the past four years have been a joy ride, it’s the next four years that excites me most. Let’s work together to create great things. Our hybrid event attendees are standing by. - Dennis Shiao