“We opened as virtual presenters to the virtual audience before people saw the welcome address and the keynote at the actual location,” he said. One of them couldn’t get it to work because their webcam wasn’t cooperating, but the second person came on, and this is in the last few minutes of the session, you could feel the other attendees come to life when they saw one of their own asking her question, and she got promoted, so to speak, because messages came in from other attendees of like, ‘Woo hoo! She said that the evolution of digital events is not a surprise; we were moving in this direction for a while. A key part of the overall event design was launching with the first session solely for the digital audience, Kothari said, instead of merely streaming the keynote or the welcome. Convene spoke with Kothari — CEO of Mindcurrent, a startup that uses AI to predict behavioral, biometric, and stress patterns, who has been serving as a digital events consultant for PCMA — about takeaways from the session and the event itself. Learn how to grow and build your games with sessions from Microsoft and Industry experts. Data will you figure out the best experience to provide, and it will help you figure out who will get what experience when the event is over and done. “So, if you’re going to be in your hotel room,” for that period of time, Kothari said, “why wouldn’t you just present from home? This is a digital take on the classic murder mystery dinner party, where guests attend as different characters and must work to reveal the murderer among them. Join technical experts, business leaders, and other professionals who want to take work to the next level. This is the first event of this kind in Asia Pacific that the PCMA team has done. Monetize your event. Events. There’s a lot more exposure through the virtual reach.”, The design of the event, Kothari added, “was inversed. The Digital Experience Institute® (DEI), the definitive authority for digital and hybrid meeting strategy and production, is a global organization dedicated to advancing engagement around digital events, meetings and learning. Thankfully, the Watson Media digital event solution was able to connect to the existing registration system so registrations for the digital experience could be managed by the same system. She offered the example of WebinarWorld, ON24's live event. While we know that virtual events do not hold the same power of face-to-face interactions, circumstances may necessitate going virtual, sometimes on very short notice. We talked about the difference between paid digital events and free ones;. This global, two-day event is the digital experience for all-things modern teamwork. IBM Think Digital will take place May 5–6, 2020 with a focus on responding to the impacts of COVID-19. Register now. So, the first piece was really embracing a hybrid design from the get-go, because even some of your best speakers would not have been able to go to the physical location.”, The attendees who arrived in person at ICC Sydney were chatting with the online audience, Kothari said, posting messages like, “’Hello everybody on the virtual. This seamless payment process ensures you can focus on delivering a great digital event experience without worrying about collecting fees. The back end of the experience was built to track user engagement, content consumption, interaction behavior and route it accordingly. But Kothari said that you can scroll down and pick a comment and call that out. Enable reps to promote your events with HCPs and provide networking opportunities to create an immersive experience. “We’d say, ‘Wait. “And there were many, many colorful answers there, and also some insightful ones,” he said, with people adding details about their events and concerns — “I would’ve never gotten any of that on a poll.”, Kothari said that “as we warmed the chat up and we got people chatting with each other,” people started to say where they were from — including Europe, South America, and North America. “There was no precedent. For example, Kothari said, before the end of his session’s Q&A portion, “I asked: ‘So folks, you’re wondering about how you’ll introduce hybrid in Asia Pac, what are the first things to do, what are the things to look out for? DEI supports and contributes to research, education, thought leadership, promotion and the digital events community. q Offer a digital incentive in exchange for writing a review (ex. It was even hard to get people to travel across Australia to come to the event. Join developers, creators, and innovators across every industry to learn about the tools and practices that power more connected teams and help unleash your full potential. Artificial intelligence continues to weave its way into business. Did you miss one of our recent live events? With physical events, every person that attends is passed on to Sales, with an assumption of their intent and interest. A digital event experience starting May 11, 2021. Log in or sign up now to revisit your favorites or find new solutions to accelerate your digital transformation. You need a different strategy and process for digital events. The first inclination was to respond individually to those who said they were having technical issues in the first few minutes and take the comments out of chat so it didn’t take focus away from those participating in the session. Physical events shifted to digital fast, a little too fast, and the time wasn't taken to think about how to create a more engaging digital event experience. Created under Creative Commons License, some rights reserved. Integrated. Through this means the digital experience was bridging a gap between a traditional event marketing objective and sales teams’ end needs of lead generation. By making THINK 2020 a digital event experience we will be making it accessible and free of charge for everyone, all around the world. Digital events - it’s about the right experience, and getting the right data, right technology is only part of the answer, The art of virtual events and webinars - from mediocrity to excellence, Why cloud data warehouses are catching on, A Structured Approach to Belonging and Diversity, Focus on Your Strategic Outcomes with Nonprofit Accounting Software, 22 tips on how to create an effective online onboarding program. USA, +1 877-827-7262 (toll-free) “If they don’t know how to do that, if they don’t know how to wrangle cats in real time and have people lean in instead of be defiant or defensive, then this isn’t something that you should do.”, Chat messages come in fast and start disappearing as more comments come into the chat window. Data is probably the most significant advantage of holding a digital event over a physical event. And now throw in your responses, or vote.’”, When you ask people to respond via chat, everybody’s response comes in with their name, he said. April 20-21, 2021 . Digital experiences are single interactions, whereas digital customer experience is the sum of all digital interactions that a person has with an organization. “It was a few hours, and it was over.” In addition to managing the duration and having a “small number of participants” it was made very clear that risky behavior would not be tolerated, he said. Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene. When you do it right, the data you can get will be better and more useful. Zoom’s PayPal integration allows you to charge a registration fee for events hosted on the webinar platform. In closing, adding virtual events as a key digital strategy to your meeting and event program is a good idea. Chatbots will aid customer service. Suite 500 A roundup of the best digital, social media, mobile, design and virtual reality conferences in the world! In this situation, you could only source physical participants and speakers in Sydney. Some formats Barron has seen work well include having a live webinar-style event and then several break-out sessions on-demand, or holding your event over two weeks with prepackaged sessions delivered in different formats, or across different timezones. Run polls to engage your audience and to understand their intent (what do they want, what matters to them, are they interested in your product). The suggestions Barron gives will help companies think more carefully about how they plan their events and what happens at them, but it will also help them think about what happens after. Experience. Because they can’t! I've appreciated the opportunity to attend events that were once physical that I am not usually able to attend (many like me are in the same situation). Take this opportunity to proactively transform your digital event strategy so that you increase engagement with HCPs. Chat messages in the digital environment allowed attendees to communicate with each other and sometimes with the speakers. As the “event before the event,” Kothari said that his session was the “guinea pig” for what was to follow, and sure enough, there was one initial tech hiccup. When you have a physical event, you can create 1-1 experiences with some of the people that attend. Read the next blog in the series, Transform your digital events: Rethink the format. Design Thinking Virtual Experience 2021, an event for designers, web developers and digital dreamers, will take place on 13-14 April online. There have been a lot of free events available; however, some companies are having paid digital events. Barron doesn't believe that physical events are over. Better for your brand. The price was very reasonable, so it wasn’t like we had to lock them in early and work them to get them to buy.”. The networking part of the digital platform enables you to arrange meetings before, during and after the event. Image credit - Four people's hands holding mobile devices showing analytics by @rawpixel - from Unsplash.com. Explore at your own pace but remember: This content is available for a limited time only. BizReport: Ecommerce: March 26, 2021. Explore new ways of working, solve the most pressing issues facing business and society, and engage with the experts leading the way. But… If we redesign the experience from a digital-first mindset, it’s possible to provide a complimentary digital experience that bridges offline conference experiences 365 days a year and can supplement the value we aren’t able to deliver during times like now with the Coronavirus. Easy to set up, host and speak. We need to always remember that any technology we incorporate into our event design experience needs to address attendees’ needs for a personalized experience. It’s an experiment for the brand in that region,” he said. You can't just spin up some type of event software, get some well-known experts to speak, and assume that every person that attends is interested in your products and services. (On Nov. 10, Sydney had only 10 new reported cases of COVID-19.) Yet the topics were attractive to so many people in Asia Pac and speakers, really good ones, were located outside of Sydney. It’s customary at events for presenters to ask questions and participants can respond via a poll — “you can get all the data and it’s neat, and then you can have it to report later,” Kothari said. PCMA’s hybrid event, Convening Asia Pacific: Global Recovery Forum, took place physically in Sydney, Australia, and digitally around the world. While the bulk of Q&As for Kothari and Kingen Kush’s session came via text, participants were encouraged to open their audio and webcam so they could be seen and heard by other participants. You can do things differently with a digital event. Event technology is crucial for the digital transformation of our events, but just because we use technology doesn’t mean that the attendee is going to benefit in the end. There's a lot more to think about before and after your event. I’m here in Sydney — I’m actually here in person. CCW Digital's conferences bring thousands of customer contact, customer experience, technology, marketing and operations professionals together for inspiring keynotes, actionable case studies, interactive discussions and unparalleled networking. “Generally, the only time people use Safari is on their iPhones because they forgot to switch it. digital $25 gift card, customer loyalty points) q Encourage attendees to visit your digital review experience: q Add event bonuses such as additional sessions exclusive for reviewers or “Become a Customer Advocate!” q Develop publicity pieces that direct people to your event Chicago, IL 60601 “This was really challenging from a design perspective,” Kothari said. The Virtual Event Experience. But digital events are not easy to do. Loved by your audience. Content is not enough of a benefit for a paid event; there needs to be some tangible outcome. “How do you pick a platform that has that rich experience, but yet your cost per attendee is reasonable?” Selecting Bizzabo, he said, provided a platform with “a really good experience which could be driven by a few people who were engaged but it could also handle a lot of engagement if more folks showed up. Jack Delosa presents his live session, which was streamed to virtual attendees. We work on whatever time we want.”. Such is the case with PCMA’s Convening Asia Pacific: Global Recovery Forum, held Nov. 10 in Sydney, Australia, and online around the world. “Immediately, the attendees become aware of who is doing what. After a live event, there was a five-part on-demand webinar-based certification. Isn’t it 1:30 in the morning for you?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, and I’m loving it.’ It’s like, oh my gosh. “So you’ve got two things happening now, and this is very interesting because it’s happening in Asia — and the concept of saving face was very evident in the first few minutes because as people started to report in, ‘I’m having a problem connecting,’ traditionally, you don’t highlight that in Asia.”. “We did that twice, and the second time you do it, the response is even greater than the first because now everyone has seen the value of responding.”, The second question Kothari asked the group was about the timing of their next planned event. “Maybe people who said they’d show up would show up. Virtual Events as Part of Your Meeting and Event Program. +1 312-423-7222 (fax). This is the new reality during COVID. Every person that attends a digital event is not a potential customer. Digital. Upcoming Events. “I think that was an eye opener,” he said. Digital-Experience-Plattformen und virtuelle Events; Dirk Kosellek (Head of Marketing bei der JustRelate Group) gibt einen Überblick darüber, wie Unternehmen mit einer maßgeschneiderten Digital-Experience-Plattform erfolgreiche virtuelle Events durchführen. “And finally, after a bunch of questions via text, two people raised their hands. By the first session, we had the Safari issue resolved.”. And both happened.” More than 500 virtual attendees logged in to the program. Explore the best digital events in 2021. For your next event, are you planning a hybrid event or are you planning a virtual only? But they are a potential audience and influencer. Even so, any speakers outside of the country would have had to quarantine for 14 days before attending the event in person. All you need is a personal or business PayPal account. Still, you can create an event strategy that enables you to create those 1-1- experiences after the event - with the most important people. The “event” will still be held 5-7 th May 2020 and will feature live-streamed content, interactive sessions, certification opportunities and locally hosted smaller events. IDC Digital Accelerate Events provide an invaluable opportunity to interact with industry stakeholders online. She said the typical field marketer has never dealt with more than 500 leads at a time, but with digital events, that number can grow into the thousands. A digital event focused on all things game development. ON24 didn't charge attendees to get this certification, but it's an example of something you could offer to make charging for a digital event worth the money. The PCMA Digital Experience Institute® (DEI) is a global organization dedicated to advancing engagement around digital events, meetings and learning. Barron said you need to build events based on the data you want to collect. As is the case with digital events, the PCMA team really didn’t know whether to expect 250 or 2,500 virtual attendees, Kothari said. “I think this is a matter of platforms doing their testing, being confident across all browsers, and making updates as frequently as they can because of demand, but I would say that Safari is definitely the red-headed stepchild because it’s not the default browser for most things,” Kothari said. Held last month in Sydney, PCMA’s Convening Asia Pacific: Global Recovery Forum provides a few lessons in hybrid event experience design that prioritize safety for in-person attendees and interactivity for digital participants. There also was no sense of how many would go to the breakout sessions. If you think about it, the reach, the impact, the conversations, the relationships were built much more significantly on the virtual attendees than the 100 or so people that showed up in Sydney. Barron explained that her company held the same event across four timezones to bring a live event to everyone at a time that is best for them. Data from activities like polls and surveys, from QAs, from the sessions people attended, and the time they spent at the event, gives the field marketer the ability to segment people and prioritize leads for Sales. You can have these meetings as one-to-one chats, or invite others for a group discussion. You don’t know what to expect, and there is the precedence in Asia Pac that folks will not want to interrupt the speaker or ask a ‘dumb question,’” Kothari said, so this interaction was an unexpected and welcome development. The ON24 Digital Experience Platform makes it easy to create, scale and personalize engaging webinar, virtual event and multimedia content experiences. Barron said that's fine, but when you are charging for attendance, you have to think carefully about what is the benefit to your audience. Convening Asia Pacific was based in Sydney “for a lot of the right reasons,” Kothari said, including the fact that the city has successfully quashed the virus. How to use digital events to create a better experience As brands were forced to take in-person events online to comply with COVID-19 guidelines, marketers quickly realized that it wasn't an easy switch to turn physical events into virtual ones, with factors like networking translating poorly in this new format. +1 312-423-7262 (main) There will always be a mix of the two. Best Practice: Einführung Create a long lasting digital experience that can be live and on-demand, showcase your content, and create a community. A consummate events professional with at least three years experience, passionate and articulate about the role events play within the marketing mix to add value and connect with target audiences. … It takes very few clicks to do things, but it’s optimized for Chrome, not Safari,” he said. Digital customer experience management is a major ongoing program of improvements, and you will need to recognize the scale and timespan, as well as the seismic potential for improvements. But she does see the physical event getting limited to a tent pole event - one of several major parts of a bigger campaign or set of campaigns. Learn how SpotMe helps you deliver digital experiences. The new normal includes rooms set up for social distancing at physical events, and working at whatever time makes sense for digital events. Benson Looi, managing director and technical producer at Utopian, presented on engaging virtual audiences in a virtual environment. Bizzabo “is very user friendly. Barron told me that it's important to have the ability to differentiate intent. A look into the pivots being made and what companies need to consider when moving to digital events. Too many leads cause the process of sifting through MQLs to break down. Include things like surveys and embedded CTAs to provide similar insights. Mai I Digitale Event für die Welt der Arbeit I Branchen Logistik, Automotive, Anlagen- & Maschinenbau I > Zum kostenlosen Ticket! So you have to think about what the experience will be like for them during and after the event. Digital experiences | SpotMe Anywhere Go beyond the webinar and virtual event. For more on getting virtual events right (or not), check Jon Reed's ongoing diginomica series, The art of virtual events and webinars - from mediocrity to excellence. And you can use that information to create relevant conversations with the right people when the event is over. Because of the ease of use of the platform, Kothari said, “we were able to — and I think this is loads of fun — have attendees identify themselves and say, ‘I would like to ask my question in person,’ as in, ‘Will you switch on my video and audio, please?’”. 4 Key Insights from the ASUG Best Practices: SAP for EAM Conference, Agility and Resilience: Themes and Takeaways from Maximize Roundtables, Why High Tech Is Still Ahead of the Competition, Development Musings – Allow me to IEnumerate the Reasons, 9 Ways to Improve Supply Chain Resiliency in Response to Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains, The People Behind IFS Cloud | Champika Subasinghe, Deploying Automation to Create Time for Innovation, New User Management and Access Security Reduces Toil, The impact of asset performance on food safety, Four ways concomitant medications can complicate your clinical trial, Marketing agility in the digital age: treat different types of work differently, ServiceNow tech traineeship: changing the narrative for refugees - ServiceNow Blog, Digital transformation: Explore the real business benefits of automation and analytics, Hankook Tire Switches to Rimini Street Support for its SAP Applications, Bring on new IT capabilities faster with API-centric integration | featured in Diginomica, Big questions, big answers: What’s top of mind for CX leaders in 2021, How to Improve Incident Management with a DDM-Powered CMDB. But as more chimed in saying they couldn’t see the session, the team was able to quickly troubleshoot: Only those using Safari were having a problem accessing the session, so that was posted in the chat box. Held last month in Sydney, PCMA’s Convening Asia Pacific: Global Recovery Forum provides a few lessons in hybrid event experience design that prioritize safety for in-person attendees and interactivity for digital participants. Discover an extensive archive of event content ─ from keynotes, technical breakout sessions, demos and tons more. And what happens is people then want to connect with other people who are doing what they’re doing, and some people put in answers that have a little bit more color, like, ‘We’re doing virtual now, but hopefully hybrid by the end of the 2021,’ and someone else responds to that, ‘We are also hoping we’ll do hybrid.’ And it starts a dialogue.”, Even though those conversations are “messier” than a straightforward poll, Kothari said, “the difference is you’re giving your attendees a voice instead of just a vote.”, This approach requires that speakers are able to “manage the focus and attention and intent of your audience,” he said. jQuery( ".gsearch" ).click(function() { jQuery('input[name=search]').focus(); console.log('fire')}); Business Events Recovery Dashboard: Mapping Out the Future, Convening Asia Pacific: Global Recovery Forum. Kothari thinks level of enjoyment was directly related to the short duration of the event. Well done,’ and, ‘It’s so nice to see you,’ you know? 35 E. Wacker Dr. As events have been shuttered due to COVID-19 companies have moved to a digital event strategy. On-Demand Technical Support But she indicated that for many brands, setting up a digital event was a panic move to make up for the pipeline lost from not having a physical event. The Digital Experience Conference was created for those involved in strategy, investment, implementation, or management of digital experiences for customers, employees, or partners. I had a conversation with Tessa Barron, VP of Marketing for ON24, about the increasing growth of digital events. Physical events shifted to digital fast, a little too fast, and the time wasn't taken to think about how to create a more engaging digital event experience. ZP Digital Experience I 3.-7. “My issue with polls is that nobody knows what anybody else said because they’re designed that way, and they can only give me the answer from the options that I gave them.” While Kothari did use the polling feature, he also gave participants the option to respond to questions in chat. Since travel was no longer required to attend, the Think Digital team expected the number of online attendees to dramatically increase. When Is It OK to Prioritize Business Growth Over Business Debt? Why haven’t virtual events or online conferences replaced offline conferences? “The in-person attendees were coming in, registering, and settling in during this session for the online audience only — they’re your primary audience. That was a lesson, but again, you roll with it. But what I found is that much of what I learned listening to sessions is information I could easily learn reading blog content or a book. If you have the right technology, you can capture your audience's behavior and interactions in ways you could never do at a physical event. This is a guest post from Adam Azor, Senior Vice President, Jack Morton Worldwide.You can connect with him on Twitter @adamazor. Most brands simply try to do a direct transfer of the physical event to digital, she said, and that's a huge problem. But most of the time, Sales waste a lot of time figuring out which leads are viable. I don’t remember the last time I did this.’ There was a lot of excitement, and from what we could tell from the video that we saw of the attendees and especially during the keynotes, people were very focused, most people were smiling — they were clearly happy to be together at an event, even though the social distancing was in play.”. Whether they had a physical event or not, many brands are launching digital events to help build their pipeline. Now you can relive the occasion with our Events On Demand, unique 100% digital experiences with our respected speakers, available whenever and from wherever you’d like to watch them. It may be that in-person events will be held specifically for key prospects and customers - the ones a brand determines through one or more digital events and other campaign activities. As part of their event, they offered a form of event certification. Digital Experience Conference 2020 will take place at the JW Marriott in Washington, DC between April 27 - April 29, 2020 and will focus on creating and managing compelling digital and customer experiences. Library The suggestions Barron gives will help companies think more carefully about how they plan their events and what happens at them, but it will also help them think about what happens after. Accenture, Avanade, and Microsoft present Envision. Powered by. Digital participants engaged in content created just for them, including the intro session, “Together Apart: Engaging Your Audience With Digital Events,” presented by digital event strategists Sourabh Kothari and Jennifer Kingen Kush, Kingen Kush Solutions. While hybrid events are nothing new, the focus during COVID times has been flipped: Much more emphasis is now placed on designing a holistic experience from a digital perspective vs. designing an in-person experience with a digital component. EVENTS ON DEMAND. You can't necessarily do that with a digital event. The digital experience platform custom built by industry professionals to thrive in the future of virtual and hybrid events Summit.events specifically meets the needs of event planners with a solid streaming platform that is adaptable to the full range of digital experience situations, complete with MVS as a built-in production partner.