Creating Virtual Experience for Meetings, Conferences and Events

The coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic created lots of constraints on physical gathering and has created a heightened interest in conducting both large-scale congresses and smaller meetings in a virtual format, with the rise of video conference technology like Zoom or Google Hangouts, virtual meetings have become more commonplace than ever.

In times when we must practice social distancing, while businesses are asking their employees to work from home and all live events, meetings and conferences have been cancelled, virtual gathering is one of the best option left for brands to connect with their staffs, audience and potential customers.⁣

How Can Your Brand Go Virtual?

While you might be experiencing feelings of panic and fear yourself, we at Doingsoon can provide your brand with a contingency option with best tools and services in setting up your virtual experience.

Whether the meeting is virtual or physical, the same principles of good communications apply, i.e., ensuring that your content is relevant to the audience and that it is tailored to achieve the meeting objectives and purpose. However, there are still additional practical and technical considerations for virtual meetings.

The following examples are types of virtual meetings:

• One-way broadcasts – presented to many delegates either live or on-demand
• On-demand webinars – most virtual meetings can be recorded for later on-demand viewing
• Two-way meetings – connecting small groups of individuals together for real-time discussion and collaboration
• Hybrid meetings – a combination of broadcast, on-demand, and two-way meeting formats

Consider some of the issues that comes with virtual gathering:

• Attendees may be less inclined to engage with speakers or other attendees if there are no interactive features.
• At physical events, physical interactions plays an important role in forging meaningful bonds. This type of meeting doesn’t happen as often during virtual events, so how do you form engagement or connection?
• Considering everything is running online during a virtual event, your platform’s bandwidth and speed are crucial especially in developing country like Nigeria where data cost is still a major issues. There is no room for websites crashing, connection errors or live streams buffering.

Most of the challenges (if not all) of virtual events can be overcome by using the right tools and being prepared. Remember why people attend events in the first place. We at Doingsoon combine in-house experience and expertise in making your virtual event successful by putting in consideration the type of event being organised and some of the technicality that comes with it.

Some of the values of virtual meetings is that your attendees can make themselves really comfortable and join you from their couch. You can save a lot on hosting a virtual conference compared to a physical one.

Conclusion

Your online virtual meeting cannot compete with all this if you don’t have the right tools and process in place, so it needs to attract attendees with valuable content and high-quality organization. That said, in order to host a successful event, you need to put effort into it and stick to the virtual conference best practices.

Bear in mind that meetings offered in a virtual format provide opportunities to engage with large audiences and the technology exists to bring an inspirational faculty and an engaging program to life. As always, start with the objectives, develop engaging content, and deliver it with impact using the right technology and the right partners for your needs.