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...]
Virtual Events: Strategy Before Execution
My mother used to tell us that “things are going to be different” as we drove home from our annual summer beach vacation. It was her way of getting the family focused on the upcoming routine and discipline of school and work. I remember feeling that her words were both a warning and a promise of adventures yet to come. That lesson is easily applied to the challenges that lie ahead for associations considering alternatives and augmentation of their future live events. While live events are … [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...]
[Video] 5 Tips to Guarantee Engagement at Your Virtual Event
To design a virtual event with the participants in mind, you need to create an engaging, interactive experience that provides relevant content and promotes knowledge sharing and networking value—often the missing link in our new virtual reality. In this short video, we give you five tips to ensure that you’ll achieve amazing and impactful engagement with your next digital event. … [Read more...]
Renegotiating Live Event Agreements When All Parties Are Innocent Victims
This is the third 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. The U.S. hotel industry is projected to report a 51-percent decline in revenue per available room (RevPAR) in 2020, according to a special forecast revision from STR and … [Read more...]
Conference Go/No-Go Decisions in a Pandemic
This is the second in a series of blog 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. Scenario Planning Where lead time permits, work through at least three scenarios – optimistic, pessimistic and somewhere in the middle. We like using an outside resource to set … [Read more...]
Leading Through the Pandemic: Generosity + Empathy = Future Brand
This is the first in a series of blogs posts, written collaboratively by our team, which uncover lessons learned in advising our clients on their events in the time of COVID-19. Over the past 30 days, the VCC team has helped dozens of conference and show organizers with their decisions on how to respond to the pandemic. Although each situation has its own unique issues, we wanted to share some of what we’ve learned to help you with your disruption response and planning. How your … [Read more...]
Will Work for Goodwill
Living in Orlando (not the happiest place in the world today) provides a close-up view of the horrific impact the pandemic is having on people and businesses in the live-event, hospitality and travel industries. Nearly all of our association clients are making enterprise-changing decisions to cancel or postpone their marquee events while saying goodbye to their primary revenue source. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of the individuals, families and businesses who are impacted by this … [Read more...]
