Physical event X Digital event

The pandemic has brought all of us a huge amount of changes and all of us needed to adapt to everything we were used to doing physically — From working at the office to home office, until participating in digital events instead of physical ones. I have been organizing events for freight forwarders for the past 8 years, in total, I managed 9 events in 4 different countries, 7 of them were physical, and 2 digital.

Until March 2020, I had only created physical events, and in August 2020 Parnity was launching its first event, a digital one — Forwarders Online Conference. We had less than 2 months to change our entire mindset from physical events to digital ones. We learned a lot during the 48-hour non-stop event, talking to users, and gathering all feedback we could.

Physical events Mindset

In all the 7 physical events I have developed during my career, I had the main focus: Offer an amazing experience to the attendees. So, from the location to the event colors, I thought about the complete path of the attendee, and how it would affect his experience on that specific moment, and humor.

Our team was always happy and ready to assist on whatever they needed, the agenda was built with breaks and social events on the times we believed would improve their moment with us. And providing that experience was something that WOWed the attendees in ways that we never imagined, and why we got an average of 98% satisfaction rate.

From 2014 to 2018 we improved the attendee experience to its best, and in 2018 we saw that to improve that even more, we needed data. Since no event app in the market solved all our needs, we developed our own event app and used it for the first time in 2019.

From that point, we could see lots of gaps in the attendee experience that were not mapped before. One of the mapped gaps was that 73% of the attendees canceled their meetings until 10 AM — this happened because on the night before they went out with other attendees to network and socialize (which is also super important in an event like that), and they couldn’t wake up — So for the 2020 event, we opened the meetings at 10 AM, and instead of ending the meeting slots at 5 PM, we ended them at 7 PM, exactly the time when the social events started. This way, the attendees didn’t even know why, but their entire event changed, and they were happier.

Bringing the Offline to the Online

So, when you have learned how to do events, you just have to digitalize it, right? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Well, I had the same focus when I needed to make my first digital event: Offer an amazing experience to the attendees. But when you think about the online attendee path, it is completely different from an offline attendee.

Then why should you just bring the offline experience to a completely different environment?

Yeah, you shouldn’t. But that is what I have seen all over the internet in digital events.

Digital booth, Digital hallways, digital badge, digital sponsorship banners…. and so on.

Once you decide to make a digital event, you have to rethink your client path from bottom to top. The environment is completely different, and you cannot control lots of details. Your client will probably be at home office, each one of them in a different time zone (In our case, that we are worldwide), they will have personal chores to do, they will need to solve something workwise, etc.

Forwarders Online Conference

So, Parnity’s first digital event — Forwarders Online conference — happened in August 2020, and was the first digital event for freight forwarding companies.

We built a completely different experience:

• 48 hours non-stop event: As we have users from more than 180 countries, we are talking about lots of different time zones, so they could schedule their availability on their own timezone. The main goal was to give flexibility to all our attendees
• Networking rooms: We do not believe that social events can happen online when you have more than 10 people simultaneously (It is a mess!), so we have developed a networking room, but with a facilitator from our team with multiple themes to add to the discussion, and organize who should speak at which time. The main goal was to bring a more relaxed atmosphere but in an organized and non-stressful way.
• Discussion groups: Similar to the networking rooms, but these groups had discussion themes such as “Project cargo experts” or “How was your business affected during the pandemic”. The main goal was to generate experience exchange, and more personal connections from the 1 on 1 meetings.
• Logistics Lectures: Bringing content more than connections, we wanted the attendees to be able to learn new things and apply to their forwarder business. So we had lectures and 1on1 meetings at the same time, so people who liked lectures could choose the ones to participate in or not. The main goal was to bring useful information to the logistics community
• 1on1 meetings: With the possibility to talk and see each other, the 1on1 meetings were like any other one. The main goal was for the forwarders to present their companies and exchange business.

Check out the video:

System

This is something highly important when making a digital event. Lots of companies use Zoom, Skype and google meet, to host the event, and that is a HUGE mistake.

On those platforms, you cannot host different room types, or manage meeting schedules, everything has to be manual, and it affects directly how the attendees feel about the event.

Find a system that can hold up everything you need to offer to your attendees in one single place.

It’s all about the experience

We got lots of good feedbacks from our attendees, and more than that, we were the first event they have attended, so we hear a lot until today that we were the best digital event they have participated in! And I truly believe that it was because we thought about their journey of an online event, and did not bring the offline to the online.

One thing that collides in physical and digital events:

Deliver experience in an event (Either physical or digital), is to deliver mini WOW-moments so the attendee is happy all the time, and they don’t even know exactly why!

My biggest piece of advice either on physical or digital events:

Always think about the experience

PS: Remember that the journey and environment change everything that needs to be offered.