The most common virtual events that companies create include virtual trade shows, virtual job fairs, virtual sales meetings, company-wide meetings, or virtual summits. Examples of virtual events range from daily business meetings to annual inaugural events. Even Apple has moved its annual product launches to a fully virtual experience. In addition to 80,000 livestream viewers, Salesforce said the one-day event generated 1.2 million video views on social channels.
However, perhaps the most impressive thing was the response time. The decision to make the World Tour virtual only was made in mid-February. So, according to Salesforce VP of Marketing, Renata Bertram, the team “in just 10 business days reimagined the way (they) deliver (their) annual flagship event in Asia-Pacific. The virtual betting and gaming industry event, which took place from April 27 to May 1, was designed to provide attendees with an interactive experience.
The SBC Digital Summit used “an advanced digital platform (to provide) delegates from (the summit) access to full virtual event spaces, with many of the benefits of a conference and physical exhibition. The festival featured artists performing on virtual stages in front of thousands of virtual fans on a 3D virtual island. There were special effects, fireworks, laser shows, sound effects and more, like a real music festival. Organizing a virtual event is usually a challenging prospect for many, more specifically, for the unknown group.
At the same time, it has now become the new norm, thanks to the global pandemic. Covid-19 has successfully generated countless negatives that many of us never imagine on a daily basis. However, this pandemic has also revealed some bright spots of human resilience at the same time. The best ability to connect, bond and laugh together while experiencing joy with others through 100% virtual means is definitely one of those bright spots.
In all history, virtual events have never been so normal. It may not be a surprising statistic, but it's important that you take advantage of it as soon as possible with unique ideas for virtual events. We all know that content is king, but do you know who we call the queen? It's the delivery. There are a lot of ideas to consider in virtual events, especially for events with a lot of content.
This is because the delivery must be 11 out of 10 in every possible way. You can get people to vote for a selection of movies and get everyone together for a movie night. Watching the film at the same time, even if you are not physically together, is another creative idea for virtual events. Since going out to the movies is another prohibited activity due to COVID-19, a team movie night will satisfy the desire for a fun movie night with co-workers or friends.
Over the past decade, conferences and summits have increased both in demand and in popularity due to their incredible results. Virtual conferences and summits follow the same principles. The goal of a conference or summit is to bring together colleagues and industry experts. These people then bring new ideas to the table and hold debates, and the general public also participates.
Virtual conferences and summits are becoming increasingly popular with event organizers. This is because powerful engagement tools and cost-effective solutions have allowed them to improve their metrics. Apidays is an industry-leading conference series focused on educating companies and corporations on the use of APIs, and has organized more than 50 events in 13 countries. For the APIDAYS LIVE Paris, the group organized a 3-day event that featured more than 100 sessions and more than 100 speakers within a fully branded digital environment.
Using the Hopin event platform, they created custom virtual spaces for the reception (called “Agenda”), workshops and roundtables, and an exhibition-style “Partners Village”. In the Partners Village section, apidays designed virtual stands for its 23 sponsors, including IBM, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle, linking visibility and booth size to the sponsorship level. Ultimately, the event attracted more than 3,000 attendees and 2,000 participating companies from all over Europe and the rest of the world. Inside Hopin, the event team customized their virtual venue, configuring two scenarios (a main disruption stage and an Extra Crunch stage for additional content), break areas and rooms for individual or small group video networks.
The IPADE Business School of the Universidad Panamericana, in Mexico City, invited more than 42,000 graduates to a virtual delivery of its annual Alumni Global Graduate Meeting, a meeting that focuses on regional and global business developments. The 2-day program included keynote speeches, roundtables with business leaders, and case study sessions. As an alumni gathering, the event also included separate virtual rooms for different graduation classes to meet and reconnect, as well as 1-to-1 video networks. The half-day event featured a series of talks, including those by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, as well as live technology demonstrations and individual video networks.
Attracted more than 10,000 attendees. After the event, the team reused the content of the live event as video on demand on their YouTube channel. The success of virtual events depends on aligning business and event objectives, identifying key performance indicators to define the success of the event prior to the event, and analyzing event data and review. With messaging features in a mobile app, attendees can meet virtually and host meetings.
Virtual open days allow students to understand the reality of university life, housing fairs help students find accommodation, and education fairs allow institutions to present lectures and demonstrations to an open audience. By using the data collected during virtual events to weigh costs and benefits, you can demonstrate the success of your event. Some event platforms provide detailed information on attendee engagement and satisfaction and allow organizers to use this information to iterate and improve experiences. From meeting icebreakers to gamifying event apps, attendees can enjoy more than the content you provide: they can enjoy the full event experience.
The same goes for the events industry, which, in essence, is based on bringing people together to interact in the same physical location. Virtual events are not a substitute for other types of events, but a new type to add and improve the entire program. Today, there are dozens of companies that offer software for virtual events, each with unique features and advantages. Another option is to create a special virtual conference playlist to share with attendees and get them excited.
Consider placing a time limit on availability to drive demand, and then leverage your virtual conference content in your generation broadcasts. While not as effective in terms of engaging leads and networking as an in-person event, virtual conferences allow attendees to view presentations in real time, create their own agenda from relevant content on demand, and interact with other attendees. As you can imagine, virtual events bring a lot of advantages and opportunities to most industries. If you're tired of the same old get-togethers at virtual events and you're still struggling to look for new creative ideas, this list of ten creative ideas will really work.
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