Virtual Events and Experiences – Lessons from Experiments in the Year of the Covid-19 Pandemic

With the escalation of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020, live in-person events became an early and significant business casualty with the industry virtually shutting its doors overnight. Major brands and marketers wondered how they were going to continue this channel of connecting and community-building with their audience of customers and partners. Within a few months, if not mere weeks, everyone was on some form of streaming platform – and Zoom became a verb just as ‘Google’ had two decades earlier.  Even though there was no official playbook for virtual success, major Fortune 500 companies, including Salesforce and Microsoft, experienced multi-fold (10x) increases in attendee numbers for virtual versions of their major events.

Pre-pandemic, the role of technology for in-person events was largely in the hands of production, logistics, and onsite creative teams hidden behind black curtains.  For attendees, tech was largely limited to apps with agendas and attendee contact information.  Streaming was a ‘nice to have’ item, and there were some experiments with the simultaneous broadcast of limited elements such as opening keynotes.

One year later, technology is the backbone of live virtual events.  There is no one elegant solution.  Every event is an experiment in what can be cobbled together to continue to move the needle toward capturing higher production quality - as live event production and broadcast production companies sort out new ways to work together. And the battle for attendees’ limited attention is higher than ever – competing not only with other brands, but with the attention-demanding technology and humans that surround and constantly ping the ‘viewer.’  

The industry is still in the midst of significant digital change – and it is a change that is permanent. This doesn’t mean we won’t gather together in person in large numbers again. But the expectations for what can be delivered and engaged in simultaneously and virtually – is definitely forever changed.

As Rafat Ali insightfully wrote about this in Skift, while the inciting incident of this change (the pandemic) was unique, this is not the first time a major industry has been upended by the sudden infusion of technology.  The worlds of music, news, movies, and TV all have similar stories to tell of dramatically shifting economics and expectations.

Reframing the Event and Experience Conversation for Virtual at Stage 1.0

With a change in the industry that is permanent, virtual can no longer be considered a second-class experience.  Thinking about virtual needs to move beyond attempts at the emulation of the lost ‘real world’ - as that pursuit will always be lacking and fall short of the ideal. ‘Reimagine’ should be the new watchword – rethinking and redefining what a live event is around its role of attracting and engaging an audience - with technology as the enabler. As creators, what are we producing for? Is it the model of the passive TV screen where everything is programmed and perfected – or – does a new vision need to be shaped around the creation of an even deeper human experience, that despite the challenges of virtual space, introduces the opportunity for a new kind of serendipity?

Three big categories of consideration arise along these questions – around the roles of:

1.     People including producers, speakers, and audience

2.     Production process and values 

3.     Platforms in terms of both the core technology and the integration of ‘add-ons’ to create the experience that enables production teams to collaborate in real-time and attendees to personalize, self-direct, and connect.

Rather than seeking answers from the frothy world of the technology platforms, I talked with two seasoned producers I have had the opportunity to work with in the past. They have bridged the old and new worlds over the past year, and out of that there are some battle scars, lessons and advice for the future.

The Producers – Chris Shipley and Orla Cunningham

Orla Cunningham: Orla is a seasoned producer of Fortune 500 technology brand experiences from main stage keynotes to simulcast broadcasts. Her worked has ranged from Google’s Developer and Global Sales Events to the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration.

Chris Shipley: For over two decades, Chris has been a curator and the Executive Producer of two noteworthy technology industry events – 13 years with the Demo Conference and the past 6 years shepherding Google’s Newsgeist gatherings.

1. People – Producers, Presenters, and Audience

Producers 

While we may currently be in a hybrid time of live event meets live TV, in the near future something else that uniquely defines this media will need to evolve from experimentation around both human and technology elements. Just as the events themselves are evolving and in a liminal stage, the same is true for production roles. For more intimate and curated events there may be an Executive Producer at the center of all activities working with a more traditional event producer, a marketing lead, and number of agencies focused on attendee management and experience design. But for larger brand events where virtual events now encompass a central studio with talent, multiple geographic locations, prerecorded elements, and live graphics calls - there is a whole new set of production relationships to be determined between traditional event and video teams. 

Orla: “For a live show that includes a host, simulated live components, and prerecorded content … you've got two different crew teams.  The live stage team running teleprompter and graphics, and the video team running cameras in studio for live video and also triggering pre-recorded video content. These two teams – often with multiple remote members - are led respectively by a live event stage caller and video director …  We’re working out who needs to be the ultimate lead in running this kind of show.”

Presenters and Moderators

The skills of a great moderator are different in virtual as opposed to physical space. To be successful in a live video environment requires great preparation matched with a high level of EQ (emotional intelligence) - knowing how to handle the silent moments and read a speaker for ways to reframe questions for deeper engagement.

One of the biggest challenges for producers in large live events has been around speakers who are prone to winging it and who in the past have used on-stage technical rehearsal time to finalize what they actually want to say.  This is a practice that is being forcibly abandoned for sessions that require at home prerecords where speakers now have responsibility for production values guided by remote producers.

The challenges of the home record are known, with as few as 50% of people actually getting it right the first time around.  Technical issues of frame rates and quality levels need to be addressed in parallel with delivering a very ‘authentic and human’ (one that feels live and spontaneous) recording that doesn’t rely on a ‘fix it in post’ attitude. In the world of virtual events, this is really a one take, no B-roll to cover cuts, environment.

Orla: “There's the technical side, that speakers never had to deal with before. You will have remote technical people to help you, but you are essentially your own technical person. That takes your concentration away from what you're trying to speak about. There's also an intimacy when you're being recorded with your laptop camera … that's not the same as when you're on stage when you can barely see the cameras capturing you. Recording at home is so intimate. It's so personal. It's difficult for a lot of people to see themselves this way.”

Audience

Understanding the audience is critical for any form of media.  This is particularly true for virtual brand events. With so many digital and physical distractions vying for an individual’s attention, the opportunity and likelihood to disengage is much higher than when they’re in person in a venue. Virtual events require a human experience with an engagement strategy that surpasses passive viewing and understands the role and need of the audience to connect with each, other – before, at, and after the event. Networking, one-on-one appointments, and virtual bars become components that are as important as the speakers themselves. 

2. Production Process and Values

With so much of the attention around virtual events focused on technology platform choices, innovation around event strategy and storytelling often gets the short end of the stick.  Too often content and production choices are driven by the limitations of technology, rather than being reimagined in ways that could be unique to virtual that also connect it to a larger marketing or experience strategy.  The human elements of emotional storytelling, community, and engagement building -  from the beginning to end of an event, as well as within individual components – are too often far less effectively addressed or even left unrecognized

Chris: “ Compeling content and compelling community are the things that combat distraction and attrition in virtual spaces.  We can’t think about attrition the way we used to.  There are new kinds of non-monetary costs around attrition in virtual space, and a very important one is reputational cost … “

3. Platforms

We’re really not anywhere near the elegant ‘does it all’ version 1.0 platform for virtual event technology – even though many companies are moving quickly to upgrade software and networks.  It’s mostly about passive delivery, and not about increasing serendipitous encounters and relationship building. Just like events in the ‘real’ world, a human touch, customization and technology savvy is going to be required to finally get it right. 

Platforms and their surrounding ecosystem run the gamut from open source to branded to app-like integration and cobbled-together systems.  Largely architected for an emulation mode defined by one-to-many interaction with live and prerecords, the interactive aspect that can deliver ‘surprise’ is still far out on the horizon.

Future iterations of platforms need to consider:

• Integration of technologies – from cameras to whiteboards to community building to private chat, comments, discovery spaces, and Q&As

• Personalization of content  – based around individual (versus ‘herd’) experiences of the event with new ways to discover and present content

•  Content creation and hosting – more seamless tools for camera – screen – video source switching of live and pre-recorded elements

• Data – defining what’s important into and out of live events

• Networks – security, privacy, and stability

 Chris: “For Newsgeist we used Gather, Google Meet, and YouTube Live.  Along with some backchannel software to create virtual walkie headsets. And the virtual bar was Wonder.me … We were trying to emulate what it would be like if we were all in the room together … and still deliver the trust, privacy, and serendipity that Newsgeist is known for … Moving forward, I think the question is how do we to move to investigating what we can uniquely do in these video platforms that we couldn't do otherwise?”

The Near Future of Events

While the events industry is forever changed, live events will not experience the fate of the dinosaur.  But they are forever changed. As the digital aspects of hybrid experiences become more robust and intuitive, the physical human element will also grow in importance. Experimentation and openness in experience and event design will need to consider both – and be willing to embrace learnings from the successes and failures that follow.