Don't have a Flat-Bummer of a Virtual Convention this year - here's how to make it even better than a Real Life Event

The future of the big budget Corporate Convention is hybrid. A combination of live studio audience and virtual attendance will be the sweet spot, CEO's will have to combine live audience inspiration, camera skills and virtual engagement. If making a presentation ranked up there with dying or getting a divorce for stress levels in the past, the new normal will send some running for the hills.

But before we get there, we have to get this year over with. Most companies are planning to go online this year, and their attitude falls broadly into three groups:

• Everything will get back to normal by September so let's just distribute a video message and send everyone a hamper
• Let's do what we've always done, just do it online.
• What can I get from Virtual which I cannot get any other way? How can I leverage this new technology to bring my people back together again and make them feel part of something great?

Those in groups 1&2 are missing a trick. Getting a virtual conference right will bring you into every single corner of your business, and if designed cleverly, give you priceless insights. It will enable you to find out what your people are thinking, where your talent is, who your blockers are (and how much damage they could potentially do), and make your people feel proud to be part of your team and ready for anything the next twelve months can throw at them.

This requires a mind-shift. You have to make it all about them, whereas, in the past, the various elements have been all about you:

The Presentation Arms Race: who gets to present? In what order? How long for? If the CEO gets a stage and dry ice the Sales Director wants to ride in on a Harley (this did happen).

The Human Face of The CEO: If you've been getting it right over the last twelve months your people have had more fireside chats with the CEO than they have with members of their own families. We all know what you think, do you know what we think?

The Networking Event: In reality micro-organised like a presentation at Court. The select few get a few minutes "In the Presence". Imagine an environment where anyone, from anywhere in your company can tell you how your strategy lands for them? What is working, what isn't and why. What would those insights be worth to you? Imagine being able to collect these flashes of inspiration at warp speed, instead of over months using a consultancy company 'virtually' sitting on everybody's desk?

Five ways to make your Virtual Conference deliver more than your Real Life Event ever did.

1. Shift from what you want to tell them, to what you want them to tell you, then wrap the technology around that priority.
2. Shift from assuming they want to see and hear you, to demonstrating your commitment to see and hear them. Set interactivity as your target. How many opportunities will participants get to tell you what they think? Investigate all the platforms which enable conversations rather than polls.
3. Shift from seeing your conference as starting at X and finishing at Y. Your conference can start way before you open the virtual doors, and carry on afterwards. How can you engage and involve people before, during and afterwards?
4. Shift from seeing virtual as limiting. Virtual can bring anyone from anywhere into your participants' deskspace. Who would your people really like to "meet"? Who would inspire them? Interest them? Spark creativity in them? And think outside the sports box, please. Or the motivational speaker box. Think about who has the very best stories to tell.
5. Shift from a western time zone. You're a global company, why is every meeting organised to suit Europe/North America? Why do the same teams always have to do the pyjama shift? It might be novel and thought provoking for your European/North American teams to engage and function outside their usual hours for a change!

Finally, get the right people in to help you. Virtual facilitation is an exceptionally difficult skill to master, so is anchoring a five hour show with multi media inputs. If you're working in the Southern Hemisphere Andrew Klein is brilliant, based in Sydney. Highly experienced and a superb calm presence in the chaos. Also if you're shifting time zones Team Event in Sydney, headed up by Mikey Filler relayed their considerable live experience to studio based events for a wide range of clients from prestige car companies to banks. Their production is flawless. For a novel, fresh, original take on the look and feel of your event The Fine Group based in Johannesburg produce totally original design.

If you're over here in the Northern Hemisphere Westminster Live are used to dealing with politicians and world leaders with quiet, bomb-proof professionalism, your CEO will be a walk in the park for them. Donnie Kat at Beyond Certainty can deliver the impossible and frequently does, A Studio of our Own is an unconventional finger-on-the-pulse of right now boutique agency who can social media-ise anything should that be your thing. And of course we, at Amavanti have been specialising in virtual since 2017. We've just been waiting for you all to catch up!

Sarah Dodd is an expert in virtual communication. Find out more at Amavanti.com