Virtual Summits CAN Work for People

If you assume online conferences and leadership events have to be a series of high production webinars, you are missing a trick. Here's why.

CONFERENCES WERE BORKED BEFORE COVID

I’ve spent many, many years experimenting with ways to re-architect conferences and global meetings - augmenting physical formats with virtual platforms - to improve delegate experience, build community and nurture collaboration.

It frustrates me that event organisers continue to deliver against the same old blueprint. In my humble opinion, that model was way past its sell-by date before COVID.

You know the score. Pay for a ticket. Book a hotel room, get on a train, plane or automobile. Schlep over to the venue. People sell things; ideas from stage or products and services on exhibition floors. We sit through endless keynotes, panels, interviews: sometimes making notes, usually catching up with emails. Worse still, we know most of the people on the stage are there, not through merit, or because they have anything fresh to say, but because they are sponsors. Most other speakers are selling their latest book or talking about stuff that’s just a click away on YouTube.

But we’ve paid our money, made the effort to get there, so we do what humans do so well: post-rationalise the expense by persuading ourselves that it’s worth wading through the treacle for the bits that really matter; the exchange of ideas, conversations, serendipitous encounters, unexpected connections with people you might be able to do business with, collaborate with, who inspire you to think in new ways. 

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD B.TWEEN

To be fair I am not an easy delegate to please. For those of you who didn’t know me back in those long gone heady days, I started b.TWEEN in 2002; a digital summit convening leaders from tech, media, advertising, film, mobile and TV, research and art. Big companies, small companies, corporates and creatives, researchers and artists congregated to learn from each other, to explore the potential of digital and the convergent spaces between.

We soon realised that bringing people together from different worlds; who speak different languages, have different drivers, is not easy. So we experimented. We learned to be creative with formats, to find clever ways of sculpting experiences, to inspire and incentivise people to connect with potential collaborators they wouldn't otherwise meet.

We learned the best way to get people to understand the potential of “digital” was to learn-by-doing. We learned what worked, and what didn’t. Our delegates didn’t expect a traditional event: they expected an engaging, inspiring, connected experience. We did everything in our power to provide it.

b.TWEEN was the first event to livestream, to use twitter as a back channel to ensure that people inside and outside had a voice. We invited delegates to co-create programmes. We held a conference across 5 cities and used pioneering technology to incentivise connected thinking, collaboration and networking in ways that had never been possible before.

People travelled from across the world to attend our annual “digital ashrams.” b.TWEEN people, our community, arrived at venues knowing they would be active participants in a collective experiment. Things “going wrong” was welcomed.

After a couple of years at the UN, I drifted away from the world of conferences to focus on cultural and operational transformation and employee experience... how to connect people in companies so they can be more than the sum of the parts.

Conferences continued to deliver against the same tried and tested blueprints. We continued to travel - on trains, planes and automobiles - to plough through the dross, yearning for those magical moments of interaction and connection.

COVID: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR INNOVATION

Fast forward to corona drenched 2020. Event organisers were forced to move online. At last, a perfect opportunity for innovation. To rethink what conferences can be.

You’d think !? But no.

Most organisers have made the classic mistake; trying to recreate that same broken blueprint online. Guess what. It doesn't work.

I’ve MC’d, spoken at, and attended a LOT of virtual summits since this madness began. Most have been forgettable at best; fitting somewhere on the spectrum between drab and intolerably dull. More of the same with none of the serendipity sparkle.

Endless talking heads and panels. Confusing interfaces. No signposting. Dreadful communications. Worse still, to make sure nothing goes wrong, organisers decide it’s a good idea to pre-record. No sense of presence, no chance for conversation or unexpected connections...

Meanwhile, the sun beckons through the window, the kids and the dog want our attention, the floor needs polishing, the cutlery drawer needs tidying.. the cutlery drawer somehow starts to feel more appealing than watching yet another talking head on that screen in the office we call home.

REARCHITECTING A BIENNIAL 

ELIA Biennial is 30 years old this year. It is the global gathering for ELIA’s network of Arts Universities. This year’s Biennial was supposed to be in Zurich but the pandemic forced a move online. The topic was trans-disciplinarity, exploring the spaces between.

The organisation needed an Experience Architect to design a virtual gathering that is different, but every bit as good, as anything that could have been delivered at their prestigious host venue ( Zurich’s University of the Arts.)

How could I refuse? It was a rewarding design journey. The team, the host and the advisory board were an absolute joy to work with.

As with any good design process, we started by agreeing clear principles. Every decision thereafter was made through the lens of these principles (including It is all about THEM not US, experience wins over production quality and unexpected beats predictable.). 

This has stopped us drifting back toward the comfortable broken "mental model of normal.”

We resisted the temptation of technology obsession and focussed on the important questions: What Speaker/ Delegate experience do we want to offer? Where are people? What do they want? How do they feel? Why do they go to conferences? What do they expect to come away with? How can we make this more engaging for presenters and delegates alike? How can we present an experience where everyone feels an active part of something bigger than the sum of the parts? A collective, collaborative, co-created experience.

We invited presenters to join us in the collaborative design process to ensure everyone had an engaging, inspiring learning journey. Every speaker dug deep, each designing smart ways to engage delegates, to fully involve them, wherever they may be.

THEN, and only then, once we figured out our why, what, who and how … we decided which suite of technologies would best enable the experience.

Technology is never a solution. It is only an enabler.

The event was so much more than the sum of the parts. 4 days of interactive engaging playful activity.1600 people registered. 80+ session. 8 technologies. No seams. Revenue target exceeded. Delegates were presented with a smorgasbord of experiences. They were invited to sit forward, embrace the unknown, be part of active conversations and creative collaboration, workshops, walkshops and networking as varied as the attendees (including "meet you in the sauna...") 

The truth is we don’t have to lose anything moving online. Take the transport, the hotel rooms, the venue limitations out of the picture and the opportunities are endless. Viewed through the lens of opportunity, not challenge, you CAN present a much bigger, more diverse, more inclusive, more engaged meeting of minds. 

Virtual summits are an entirely different proposition and offer an entirely new palette of opportunities. The trick is, to shift your mental model and approach the design process with fresh eyes through a different lens.