By Dan Curtis, chief strategy officer at emc3
Whenever a new technology arrives, it takes a while for the industry to catch up with the early adopters and welcome it with open arms. Event tech 2.0 (20.20??) namely virtual conferences have been adopted possibly faster than any other upgrade to tech I have ever experienced. From the start of the pandemic, it took a matter of weeks before virtual events were everywhere… and just a few months before they were being seen as a long term solution, and not just during a pandemic. Now, in 2021 we, and others like us, are producing as wide a variety of virtual events, in style and design, as we ever produced in IRL.
So, looking forward to 2022 there are exciting times ahead; here are some predictions for the year ahead in events:
· Having had an enforced break from in-person events, companies will take the opportunity to refresh and relaunch their event brands—even those which had been super-successful.
· Event Owners will invest a greater proportion of their budget in content creation than ever before.
· As storytelling through well thought out content keeps improving, a professional host, who brings it all together will become a must.
· The social aspects of events will return in person but with less emphasis – big blowout parties will be nice-to-haves.
· All sessions, including breakouts, will (should) be filmed to use as secondary content (why wouldn’t you?)
· Virtual events will provide a bridge between larger, annual, in-person events; they won’t be seen as an either/or, but rather as an essential marketing tool for a live event strategy.
· Keynotes will be delivered remotely to a live audience; this will open up more opportunities to hear from speakers who don’t want to fly around the world unnecessarily. With high production value, the experience will not be significantly worse for the audience.
· Business cards are dead! The integration of LinkedIn profiles into in-person networking, through QR codes on badges or event apps, will become the norm.”
To read other contributions from companies such as Hubspot, Github, LinkedIn, Zapier, Hopin, Goldcast, The Delegate Wranglers and Tiktok, click here
About the author:
Daniel is the CSO at emc3 whose passion for hospitality began when he started his career as a chef in hotels, restaurants and event catering fresh out of university. Combining creativity with high-level organisation, Daniel used the expertise, knowledge and contacts that he built up over the years of providing concierge services to highly demanding High Net Worth clients, to innovate in the conference industry. He takes pride in focussing on the conceptualisation, design and messaging that underpins emc3 client events, bringing stories to life with strategic insight.
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