Virtual meetings are reaching a new phase of development with platforms designed to help the transition back to in-person events. The professional audiovisual industry will be a critically important partner for event planners in this process.
Take, for example, Convene—a company that provides high-end workplace, conference, and event facilities—which has developed interesting new virtual options that go beyond the talking-heads format.
"Challenges always bring great innovation," says Michael Judeh, senior director of AV technology with Convene. "Everyone's had to adapt pretty quickly, and that creates an amazing opportunity for workplaces and hospitality venues to look at how can we utilize technologies to create unique experiences."
Virtual Convene offers an array of audience engagement tools, including peer-to-peer and larger-group networking designed to bring the spontaneity back to events. The platform also provides tools for creating better connections with presenters, offering customizable networking capabilities to keep the conversation going with attendees.
All of these virtual offerings provide a natural bridge back to physical locations. Even while social distancing standards are in place and capacity is still limited, speakers can gather safely in one location, and limited groups of attendees and sponsors can also meet there.
"If we can keep our customer base engaged and find new customers as a result of this, and get them back into a hybrid environment where we can marry the virtual component with our industry-leading physical product, we're in a really great place," says Judah. "The functionality of our audience interaction tools is available to presenters across virtual and physical spaces. So, the experience is different, but the same."
Judeh acknowledges that there is still work to be done to realize an ideal blend of virtual and physical location experiences. "Hybrid is going to be a challenge for a lot of people to solve because historically the virtual audience was secondary," he says, adding that this has been flipped on its head to a degree. The virtual and physical may now need equal weight, or in some instances, more focus on virtual is necessary if a substantial number of participants are online attendees.
Market intelligence data indicates that the need to provide digital event options during the pandemic recovery has only accelerated an existing trend towards remote or digital content production. AVIXA's 2020 Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis reports that the leading professional audiovisual product category in the venue and event vertical market is streaming media, storage, and distribution. This underscores how important digital streaming is to venues and events.
Events that strategically and innovatively use pro audiovisual technology will be best positioned for success in this transition. As the hub for all things pro audiovisual, AVIXA, the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association, connects event planners with the technology knowledge and providers needed to create exceptional virtual and in-person events.
