A recent International Data Corporation (IDC) survey confirms that conferencing applications were already in wide use at home and at work prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. When the pandemic created the need to move in-person events to virtual meetings and conferences, these “connected consumers” brought along some expectations. To a large degree, they were looking to replicate their “in person” experiences in the virtual world.
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A recent IDC report examines what worked and what didn’t work when in-person events transitioned to virtual meetings and conferences due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of the most common activities when attending an event in person are engaging in conversation, socializing, and networking with other attendees as well as exchanging business cards. Attendees at virtual events want to pursue similar activities by posting to social media, interacting with other social media handles, and exchanging LinkedIn addresses. In fact, IDC found that nearly half of all attendees at virtual events engage using social media, compared to just 16% at in-person events. But few event organizers actively facilitated this kind of attendee interaction with less than half of the events offering live chat to ask questions of speakers or for audience interaction.
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“Live events are an important source of information for attendees and this is a function that organizers can handle very well with live streaming and content downloads,” said Wayne Kurtzman, research director, Social and Collaboration at IDC. “But an equally important reason to attend these events in person is the opportunity to meet and network with other people. Organizers still have some work to do here to deliver an experience that will be equally beneficial to a remote and distanced audience.”
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