How can you create an engaging, interactive, virtual conference, that will keep people interested, even though they are hundreds of miles away? This is the challenge that we at IMTC is facing this year, while planning its annual event.
IMTC's Annual event is a meeting point of industry experts in the fields of video communication and interoperability. This year we decided to do a full day conference virtually, using available technologies. We are doing it because of three reasons:
1. This is the conference of the future: Though nothing can replace a handshake, virtual conferences are appealing from economic and efficiency perspective
2. This is what we do: IMTC is all about collaboration, unified communication, and content delivery. Virtual conference is best way to practice what we preach. We also would like to support our members by letting them showcase their technology in real life scenarios, and not only in booths and exhibitions.
3. This is the right thing in the current economic climate: With companies cutting their travel budgets, we should, as an industry organization, enable as many people possible to be a part of the experience. Virtual conference is a great solution for those who can't travel, but still interested in the content or participants of the event. Also, in times when companies invest a lot in order to reduce their carbon footprint, virtual events are the way to go to help our planet a bit.
So what is the biggest challenge?
For me, the biggest challenge is not technical, but the experience :How can we prevent the conference from turning into a string of webinars or a list of audio presentations?How can we encourage people in the "audience" to interact with speakers and with each other?What should be the role of social platforms in the event?And how to make an extraordinary event, that pushes the boundaries of virtual conferences, with a shoe string budget?
Luckily, I am a part of a great team that is trying to make this project a reality, including Anatoli Levine from Radvision, Andrea Basso from AT&T, Shantanu Sarkar from Cisco, and many other volunteers.
Want to be a part of the effort to create the conference of the future? have a relevant technology? Consider this as an open call for the industry and drop me an email at kfir AT Pravdam DOT com
Published originally at IMTC's Blog
3 Comments
Hi Pravda,
I am in the events industry. This year, I have been to several video webcasts. I will be interested to see how things evolve with your event. Here are a couple of lessons that I have learned from some of the events that I have attended:
(1) Implement an Event Social Networking Tool:
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Tools like Pathable, Crowdvine, EventVue help the community learn about the other attendees and start discussions even before your event begins. The key is to select tools where the participants can create profiles, share contact details and have discussions before the conference. Some of these tools have links to sessions and calenders. They are not budget busters.
(2) Turn on the BackChannel:
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The backchannel (like twitter) helps get more questions out from the audience, allows participants to build upon the dialogue, and there is a log of the comments. All of these things will help you offer people a better experience. I have been to online conferences where the backchannel was on fire.
In one case, a subgroup broke off to have a post-panel session discussion among themselves for 90 minutes. The session lasted 90 minutes and the entire discussion was then archived in a wiki.
(3) Get Speakers to Blog, Join Discussions, etc in addition to speaking
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Your speakers can provide the community more value if they will write a few blog posts, join some pre-event or post event chats, etc. Also, this is a great way to extend the duration of your event and create lasting value.
Good Luck!
- Sam Smith
Twitter: @samueljsmith
Sam – Thanks a lot for your lengthy comment! We were looking into Twitter integration. I'll check the additional apps you've mentioned. Please visit this blog again, we are going to write posts about every step of the way, later on publishing it as an ebook.
I agree with the “nothing can replace a handshake” and actually doing Virtual Events. The ArtJerusalem Virtual Fair at artjerusalemfair.com or writing “art jerusalem” in Google.