(Tough) Love Letters to the Meetings & Events Industry, Vol 2: Sudden Expertise, Knee-jerk Reaction Edition

As meetings & events industry professionals (and I am specifically using the term professionals), how familiar are you with this dialogue:

• Meeting/Event Pro: "Hey (insert name here)... how was your weekend?! I saw on (insert preferred social media platform here) some awesome pictures of your (insert family member here)'s (insert home-made party, i.e. birthday, graduation, etc. here). Looks like everyone had a great time!"
• New-found Event PRO: "OMG it was so much fun... but SO stressful! I had (insert number under 25 here) people in my house and it was non-stop... the catering (a.k.a. calling the local pizza joint), the entertainment (a.k.a. connecting the mobile phone to the bluetooth speaker and starting a Spotify list), the decor (a.k.a. the string of letters that say Happy (insert party type here) above the door and some garden signs), seriously... so much fun but so much work. You know, I think I'm going to be an Event Planner now just like you!"

This is an all too familiar scenario that professionals in our industry hear about, and more likely than not, this tends to happen during times of opportunity and/or times of need for change. Remember the housing boom in the USA back in the mid-2000's and again the the mid 2010's? How many new-found realtors did you know? Or once the new gig-economy took off, how many people do you know suddenly became part-time Uber or other app-based ride-share drivers? Opportunity knocks, but for some reason, everyone thinks that they need to answer the door. Unfortunately many times that knock happens once they are stepping out of the shower and they end up answering the door with the equivalent of just a towel on and suddenly that towel slips right off and they are totally exposed.

So what is the newfound sudden expertise that just about everyone you talk to in our industry has discovered? Well it turns out, and we all just didn't know it before, that everyone you know - whether planners or suppliers- are suddenly experts in...

VIRTUAL MEETINGS.

Even worse than that... suddenly everyone has had these virtual platforms in their back pockets available to them for years and everyone is selling access to their newfound platform in order to take advantage of the tremendous demand for virtual meetings. We have all been so quick to respond to clients and new potential clients on the question "Do You Have A Virtual Meetings Platform?" that we have stopped to ask clients.... "Do You Know What An EFFECTIVE Virtual Meeting Is?".

There are dozens upon dozens of platforms out there. And no, they do not all do the same thing. Just like meeting and event professionals - I do not plan concerts, and my concert producing friends do not plan medical conferences. They have been around for years. For those that don't know, it's those guys who have generally been in the back corner of the major industry trade shows in that "Event Tech" section of the show floor that so many have avoided because they felt those virtual platforms were the enemy and were trying to take over the face-to-face world of meetings. The people who seem to come up with some really funny names for their businesses that you wonder if they just took the initials of the names of the founders' kids and jumbled them together. The people who in reality have known for so long what we "professionals" have avoided for so long... that the future of the meetings and events industry is the integration of a hybrid solution to the ever-evolving face-to-face meetings. But more on HYBRID later on.

What has always set apart the meeting planners from the meeting professionals in my mind has been the ability to take a step back and help a client understand their strategy behind a meeting. The want vs. need. The goals and objectives. I have always been of the mindset focused on what some may call "Strategic Meetings Design" with the focus being on the end-users experience and working backwards from there. But this pandemic has taken the professionalism back a few decades. It has led to so many people just telling clients "Hey, this is what you NEED and we can do it for you!" - when in fact, you have no idea. We all look at these platforms and say to ourselves this is awesome and act like kids in a candy store going through all the features and sit and wonder oh how this would be so great for my or my clients' events, where were these platforms hiding? (again, they were in the back corner of the trade show floor).

I get it, we are all suffering, which was evident in my Volume 1 post of this series. But this is an opportunity for everyone to, in the words of my dear friend and amazing industry tech-guru and situational realist Dahlia El Gazzar, "shmivot" - because that "P" word is overused and overrated. But to shmivot on a dime you need to have a strategy in place and no strategy happens overnight. It takes a professional - like everyone who is reading this I would assume is - to understand the need to take a step back and realize what is needed in order to make a virtual event happen. We are not all experts on the platforms, but we are experts in planning meetings and events. We need to take a step back and look at the 50,000 foot view of what is going on and determine IF a virtual event makes sense, and IF it makes sense, then WHY does it make sense. And if you can figure out the WHY then you can move ahead with the who, what, when, where and how. Organizing a virtual meeting/event for the sake of organizing a virtual meeting/event can not only be a disaster but it could have longer-term negative impacts on the image or reliability of the organization that is holding the event. That does not just mean the organization that is inviting the guests, but also the organization that is planning it. Unless that virtual event comes off without one hitch, you will set your professionalism and image back a very long time. We always talk about under-promising and over-delivering. A virtual meeting or event organized in a hasty manner will result in the absolute opposite, just like anything else that is new and flashy. You will over-promise clients the world, that this is the greatest thing ever, yet unless you have truly planned out your virtual event properly, you will severely under-deliver. And we are starting to hear stories like this more and more. In fact just the other day I had a conversation with a family member who exhibited in an online trade show that he exhibited in person last year and said the virtual version was an absolute waste of time and money and every other exhibitor he spoke to complained. Why? Because the key components - an effective method of networking - were not readily available for use. Sure it was pretty, but the most basic premise of exhibiting - the ability to connect and talk to people - was not there!

My company has "shmivoted". We have developed a platform - in PARTNERSHIP with an event tech company that has been around for years - that will answer the very specific question of the service that we work with (international sponsored groups and global conventions). Why do I emphasize PARTNERSHIP? Well, because we are being honest with ourselves and with our clients/partners. We are not a tech company, we did not invent anything online, we are not the geniuses of coding. But we are taking the lead in front of house and our partners providing the major support back of house. It's a team effort that we recognize and are transparent about. I am extremely skeptical of any company that comes to us - and there are plenty that have - that say "we have a virtual meetings platform that is awesome for your clients" - selling it as if they had a team of 50 experts sitting in a backroom for 1 week at the start of the pandemic crunching out code and developing what others have taken years to create. Our team has done a ton of due diligence, reviewing and interviewing and demoing over 35 platforms out there and have seen a lot of creative and interesting things. After all of this, we found what we feel to be the right partner and fit that can provide us what we need based on our plans, and are also, well to be totally honest, available!

So what pray-tell have we done over the past few months to shmivot our services and prepare for the upcoming need? We went the old-fashioned route and asked the 5 W's (+ 1 H):

• WHAT has been the unique service offering we provided our clients (pre-pandemic) and what can we do to "virtualize" this service from start to finish. We are not reinventing the wheel. We are changing the rims.
• WHO is this service going to benefit? And don't just say "the organization and its attendees". Think what differentiates your services or even your event from all of the others. You must look at the stakeholders and decide the importance of the service and how each stakeholder is being supported. In our case, we have developed a sponsor-driven platform that will give additional benefit to sponsors to take part in the main virtual convention that global organizations plan.
• WHERE can we offer this service? Is your event going to have a global audience? What is the timing going to look like, and very important - are you prepared to support the platform and event in multiple time zones around the world?
• WHEN can we start offering this? We are not just going to say "HEY we've got something you want!!". We know that to shift to a virtual platform, we are going to need to make sure that the system is set up the way we need it, the way we know it will work. Our team needs to be properly trained and prepared, SOPs need to be planned, and prepping the platform for client use will take time as well. This is why we have set a time-frame of offering the platform to conferences that may go virtual starting in October, giving us time for sales and planning now.
• WHY does the client or organization even need this service? If we cannot figure out the why then we may as well give up. We truly believe in our service and if you have a conversation with me about it you will see, I am passionate that this is the way of the future. If you cannot answer the why, then you can be sure this will be a case of over-promising and under-delivering.
• HOW is this going to get done? This is the question of questions. HOW are you going to make this happen in a way that your attendees at the end will say this was worth my time and I truly got something out of it? The HOW is what is going to separate the planners from the professionals.... the sudden knee-jerk reactionary planner from our intro dialogue from the ones who know what they are doing.

The topic of virtual meetings has so many areas to review that I could go on and on about it - but we can leave that for discussion in the commentaries. One of those in particular being pricing for virtual platforms - and more importantly the price gouging that we see going on out of desperation from those that feel they need to move to a virtual event now. Same goes for hybrid meetings, something that must be discussed and planned for well in advance of any major event going face-to-face again and just saying we will be "hybrid" - whatever that means. That's for a future discussion, when we have had time to really think about it.

So my suggestion if you believe opportunity is knocking at the door? Don't just run towel wrapped around your body to hastily answer risking the embarrassment of exposing yourself (and considering the "Quarantine 15" it may not be so flattering anymore). Take the time to dry off and get dressed before you open that door. Whoever it is on the other side can surely wait a few more seconds for you to answer so you are presentable and ready to take on whatever is on the other side.