Over the past nine months, many industry experts have proclaimed that meetings and conferences are forever changed and hybrid is here to stay. While I agree in principle, I think the future is so much more than hybrid. Meetings of the future will be improved and monetized by embracing the tenets of strategic product management. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we should optimize the benefits of the best, most-advanced and relevant content from your annual conference by … [Read more...]
2021 Virtual-Conference Big Ideas
In 2020, attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors were more forgiving of our virtual conferences than they will be in 2021. They, like you, are all experiencing Zoom fatigue and will have much higher expectations for conferences this coming year — especially those they are investing their precious time and money. Don’t waste a good crisis. Use this opportunity to beta test changes that can be carried over to the next in-person conference. While in the second half of 2020 many virtual conferences … [Read more...]
Normal is Over(rated) – For Now
This is a guest post by Joy S. Davis, CAE, based on an email she sent to me after reading Lisa Block’s recent post, “I Am Sorry, But We Are Not All Fine.” Joy is Managing Director, Member Products, for the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. Not too long ago, I gently asked my Executive Director to stop opening her weekly columns to members with a depressing reminder of COVID-19 and how weird things are right now. She’s a very upbeat, can-do kind of person, and her columns are … [Read more...]
Six Attributes of Successful Women’s Conferences
This article was originally written for the April issue of PCMA’s Convene magazine. The timing was right before the lockdown and a couple months before the 2020 social justice movement eclipsed. While things have changed, these tenets will hold true and the principles can be applied to other D&I conferences and events. After studying and consulting on several successful association women’s conferences, I can confidently say – they need to be very different than other conferences in your … [Read more...]
Expos Don’t Work Well in a Virtual Environment
Virtual Expo Truths Nearly every conference and trade show professional is searching for that perfect virtual platform or pricing model for replacing lost expo revenue. I’ve got bad news for you. Virtual expos will never be able to come close to replacing the revenue generated from your face-to-face expo. Here’s some of our learnings: 1. Corporate Booth In the good ole days, companies would hire a booth builder to design, build and maintain their displays. In the virtual world, we ask … [Read more...]
Event Recovery Food Chain
The harsh reality of an elongated recovery for the live events industry has settled in, as we wrote about back in March when we crafted the Event Recovery Food Chain. At the time, we stated, “Hotels and the entire events supply chain need to understand that we won’t fully recover until we help conference and show organizers regain their top-line attendance and revenue.” In fact, full recovery for U.S. hotel demand and room revenue is unlikely to happen until 2023 and 2024, respectively, … [Read more...]
Monetizing Your Virtual Conference When Competing with Free
If you’re inbox is anything like mine, you could spend a good portion of our day consuming webinars, virtual events and networking in Zoom or Facebook Messenger Happy Hours. We’re on content overload and it’s only going to get noisier as the pandemic lingers. The dynamics that we’re seeing impact conferences and their business models are very similar to the Freemium movement we experienced way back in 2009. I’ll never forget a blog post, entitled “Malcolm is Wrong," which Seth Godin penned … [Read more...]
Steps You Should Be Taking Now for Your Fall Conference
This is the fourth in a series of blogs posts, written collaboratively by our team, which uncover lessons learned in advising dozens of our clients on their events in the time of COVID-19. Although each situation has its own unique issues, we hope you find nuggets to help you with your disruption response and planning. Over the past couple weeks, conversations with our clients have shifted from crisis decision-making for conferences occurring in the near-term (reactive) to scenario planning … [Read more...]
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