In our previous blogs, we have been exploring this changing era in virtual events. We were giving our insights on how to design in this ever-changing space. In this blog series, we wanted to make sure we were giving different perspectives. Silver Fox has many partners in the event space, and they, like us, have been evolving to meet this shift during this worldwide outbreak.

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Last time, we interviewed Jim Endicott from Distinction Communications. This week, we are sharing great tips and tricks from our friends at HUBB, who recently put on a great webinar on why “Virtual Events Don’t Have to Suck” in partnership with Story Craft Lab and Opus Agency.

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How can we adapt our events to virtual spaces? It’s essential to start by creating a virtual journey for your audience that will get them excited and foster a sense of agency where audience members can choose their adventure. This means modeling what audience members are used to experiencing at a live event by utilizing conference engagement architecture like a “floorplan.” Audience members can map out their journey virtually much like they would in a physical experience.

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Event professionals are seeing that virtual attendees are craving engagement that goes beyond chat features and the limitations of virtual event platforms. To remedy this, virtual events can introduce elements such as offering behind the scenes opportunities, share product demos, and vary session formats in interactive and dynamic ways. Another way to vary virtual engagement is found through offering small group curated sessions where audience members interact with other attendees, which can alleviate the feeling of being an anonymous attendee and elevates their experience as an active participant.

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Will live events be the way forward in the future? The biggest question for event professionals is, will virtual events be the new normal moving forward? While we are unsure of the future of live events and are curious to see how they will evolve, we currently have the opportunity to practice innovation and introduce new event technologies that can later be integrated into live events in the future. We are seeing this innovation in real-time, as event professionals curate and produce virtual events from their living rooms. If this paves the way to incorporate mixed reality into events, we will see more freedom of movement and choice for attendees, opportunities for unique attendee experiences, and providing solutions for venue limitations.

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There is no doubt that speakers and event professionals will continue to adapt in ways that embrace imagination and ideation! We wholeheartedly agree with HUBB to “be bold, dream big, do wonderful things—one step at a time.”

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Thank you to HUBB for putting on an excellent webinar for event professionals and providing insightful content. We are looking forward to HUBB’s upcoming event, Untethered 2020, to reimagine future events! In our next blog, we will ask some questions of Rick Portin from Rick Portin Productions to give you the perspective of how to create new types of virtual event productions.