Adapting Your Event For A Successful Digital Experience
Brianna Vendetti, Consultant
Boulder, CO
On March 15, 2020 the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended cancelling events with greater than 50 participants, and maintaining a social distance of at least six feet between yourself and others. To this date, that recommendation remains in effect. For many event organizers, presenters, meeting coordinators, and workshop hosts, this guidance means the cancellation or virtualization of planned activities.
If you’re like our clients, your event was purposefully planned to provide critical outcomes; a cancellation would leave you in default with your stakeholders. Moreover, in our current age of technological advancement and digital connectedness, a cancellation is unnecessary. Virtual engagement has seen rapid growth and now meets its catalyst in the 2020 pandemic.
This isn’t a “Plan B”
A digital experience needn’t even be considered as merely Plan B, and I expect that virtual engagements will continue to trend even after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. There are many benefits to virtual engagement, including:
Cost savings on travel, rental space, and refreshments
Sustainable practices found in the reduction of printed materials
Expanded reach to any audience with an internet connection or telephone
Traceability and record of all shared transactions, knowledge, and information
In a virtual world, your event should be custom-designed to meet your goals, especially in the absence of once-physical parameters such as geographical location, venue availability and structure, and attendee time zones. There are numerous ways to adapt your planned event to a digital environment, and one great appeal is your ability to choose how.
Our clients have varying missions, requirements, and abilities; I believe their virtual engagements should be just as unique. Although many virtual packages are currently marketed, why choose a one-size-fits all approach if your goals and stakeholders are particular to you? To effectively adapt your event for a successful digital experience, you must first revisit what’s core to your engagement.
We find that for our clients, often the benefit of meetings, events, or similar is a communal exchange of ideas via a dedicated space and time to driving outcomes. Whether it be consuming, providing, networking, or transacting, the occasion provides an opportunity for engagement: the most valuable outcome of an event. In order for your organization to prosper, you must gather a fierce community of advocates; virtual engagement is your new avenue.
Corner Alliance can help you choose or build a virtual platform, customized for your needs; maximize your virtual attendance and participation; and measure the success of your virtual engagement. Watch for each of these elements in upcoming blog articles.
Our promise to our clients to always have their back and present creative solutions to address their most challenging needs is why we’ve leaned in to digital expositions. Having consultants positioned across the U.S., virtual engagement is not new to Corner Alliance.
Author
Brianna Vendetti is a Corner Alliance, Inc. consultant specializing in project management and stakeholder engagement. She has challenged her client at NIST PSCR with innovative meeting and event design since September 2017. Most recently, Brianna led the effort to convert the fast approaching 2020 PSCR Annual Public Safety Broadband Stakeholder Meeting into an entirely virtual engagement -- PSCR 2020: The Digital Experience -- an event that reached 1000+ in the three months her team had to imagine, build, and deploy it. Brianna’s expertise lies in strategic meeting design, facilitation, and stakeholder engagement.