The sudden onset of remote work has impacted companies and organizations across the United States and around the world.

At a trade show, we used to say you have three seconds to capture the attention of someone walking by your booth. But in a virtual event, engagement isn’t just earned once. You have to earn it again and again.

The past few months have reshaped the events industry, but now is the time to accept changes and retool. Virtual events might look a little different, but the goal is the same: to tell your unique story.

There's a lot of "shiny object syndrome" driving our decisions as we try to adapt to changing conditions, but our best strategy might be to focus on the fundamentals.

I read an interesting quote about Jeff Bezos. He said that everyone asks him what will change in the future, and really dismissed the question as interesting but irrelevant.  

Yeah. Irrelevant.

It seems like every trade show and event is “pivoting” to virtual right now. For those live events that didn’t integrate a virtual component before COVID-19, it’s been a painful lesson as they struggle to adapt – and quickly. Regardless of what’s happening in the world, virtual should now be a natural extension of any live event, one that provides an even greater opportunity for any organization to further its mission. 

It’s safe to say no one knows precisely what the future will hold in the post-COVID-19 world. Things change by the day, from the science surrounding the virus to CDC and state guidelines for safety. As a convention center whose reason for existence is to bring various size groups of people together, we are constantly researching the latest best practices from all sources, so we’ll be ready to keep our attendees safe when our convention center reopens for “The New Business as Usual”.

We are living in some of the worst economic times in the event industry. We don’t know when we can safely host events again, or even set a date for our next event. 

The annual NFL Draft has become an event that cannot be ignored. The pundits love to talk about how they hate mock drafts. Then they love to point out that grades are pointless. But the public consumption and demand is such that there is no way any credible reporter or publication can avoid participating.  

As business demands shift in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have moved from hosting in-person meetings and events to virtual ones. Clearly, many businesses continue to move forward, even as many places remain closed. They are finding a new way to stay connected while properly socially distancing.

In fact, our data indicates a majority of internal and external meetings, including town halls and sales conferences, will be virtual for the next six months. Possibly longer. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we’ve seen a 320% increase in demand for virtual events.

Given that a full 90 percent of workers favor hands-on, experiential learning, it’s no surprise education is one of the top reasons people attend face-to-face corporate events.

But what happens when those events go virtual? How can organizers ensure attendees still achieve their learning objectives, even without the face-to-face experience?

Just a few weeks ago, we were feeling optimistic about holding our yearly APAC and EMEA Unite conferences in March. What happened then, was out of our hands, with the COVID-19 pandemic spreading and turning the entire events industry upside down. We did not want to give up on Unite, so we sat together and worked on a virtual conference concept that would still cover the great content we were eager to share with our customer community.