This Virtual Conference Featured Its Own Massive, Fully Customized 3D City

It’s a challenge many conference producers face in their careers: How can your event offer comprehensive education and resources around a serious, sometimes dry topic while still offering an engaging, memorable experience for attendees? Now add on the challenges of a virtual environment, when you're competing with more distractions and event fatigue than ever. 

So when Avalara was planning its recent virtual conference, the tax compliance software company knew it wanted to impactfully deliver the event’s topics and goals while still being as unique and engaging as an in-person experience. The result was Avalara CRUSH City Virtual: The Future of Global Tax Compliance, an online event that aimed to help businesses in any sector understand trends impacting the global tax landscape and navigate their tax compliance challenges.CRUSH City was broken into 18 different zones according to offering or industy, which included retail, manufacturing, tobacco and communications. Each area had its own look, color scheme and activities.Screenshot: Courtesy of ATTND.live

Inside each industry area, attendees could watch topic-specific keynotes, get market insights from Avalara experts, join a networking lounge or live chat, download documents and more.Screenshot: Courtesy of ATTND.live“Knowing virtual events were struggling to keep participants engaged, Avalara came to us to break through the limits of the medium with a new and entirely fresh solution,” explained Shiraz Creative founder Shai Tertner, whose team was brought onto the project by event producer Brian Riha, chief experience officer and executive producer for 82 South. Shiraz Creative hosted the gathering on ATTND.live, the company’s immersive virtual and hybrid event platform that debuted last summer.

“Our team of creative thinkers and doers produced a highly bespoke, immersive virtual experience that created curiosity, piqued interest, prompted extensive interaction and brought to life the personality of the Avalara brand,” Riha added. 

The virtual event’s live portion was held from May 24-27, while content is on-demand, for free, through June 27. Tertner called the event an “immersive experiential destination”—the 3D, city-inspired environment was broken into 18 different “neighborhoods," each focused on a different industry or offering, which allowed attendees to choose their own adventures. Between scheduled keynote speeches and networking appointments, guests could explore the world on their own, tapping into resources and tools that solved their own personal pain points. To keep guests from getting overwhelmed, a central hub allowed quick navigation to different industry tracks, as well as to attendee-wide events like the keynotes. Speakers included journalist Soledad O’Brien, Groupon’s Brad Caproni and Urban Institute’s Kim Rueben, who discussed topics ranging from the impacts of international macroeconomic trends to the challenges of doing business in the COVID-19 era.Screenshot: Courtesy of ATTND.live

“Taxes can be complicated, complex, frustrating and boring to many,” said Riha. “Understanding these underlying perceptions, we narrowed our creative approach to inspire, engage and empower each participant. This led us to propose presenting the content of the event in a city-like environment, where attendees could wander on their own and encounter specialized content topics collected in various ‘buildings’ they could explore throughout the city.”

For most of the event, guests could explore the world on their own, tapping to find videos, tools and downloadable documents that related to their specific industry.Screenshot: Courtesy of ATTND.liveHighlights included on-demand industry keynotes and topic-specific videos, roundtable discussions, and downloadable documents and tax tools. A quick navigation tool allowed attendees to quickly jump between areas to avoid feeling overwhelmed. And as an added level of immersion, the entire world capitalized on Avalara’s branded color scheme, with the goal of giving the event an “energizing and attractive look that would lure attendees to dive deeper into the rich supply of available content throughout the environment,” said Riha.

Tertner added that the self-guided nature made sense for a virtual format, where “attention spans for content delivered via presentations is much more limited than in a live event. The self-exploration aspect of CRUSH City Virtual compensated for this, keeping attendees engaged by following their own motivation to interact with content at their own pace," he said. "Many virtual events are prescribed journeys, and we wanted the attendees to have complete freedom to go where they please and connect with the relevant people as easily as possible.”The event featured four headliner keynotes, 21 industry keynotes and more than 100 activity stations—along with free on-demand access through June 27. There was also a live concert from Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc.Screenshot: Courtesy of ATTND.live

Overall, the event drew more than 6,000 prospects, customers, and tech and accounting partners from around the world. In addition to including a global audience, Tertner found that the virtual environment allowed the team to dream a bit bigger than they might have in person. 

“With virtual," Tertner notes, "you can really break boundaries in design." Added Riha, “We approached the project as if we were designing a brick and mortar innovation center for Avalara with a twist of whimsical, low polygon appearance. … We loved giving attendees a vivid, branded experience they would not even have been able to have in a ‘live’ event.”

Check out the sizzle reel for a further look inside the experience.