Virtual Event Attendance Should Never Stop

I’ve been attending industry conferences for decades.?AV, Collaboration, Consumer Tech, Staging and Lighting, Digital Signage – you name the technology subject and I’ve been either an attendee, a presenter, a planner – or sometimes all three.?The smallest ones are usually local / regional get togethers of about 25-50 people.?The largest ones, well I’d guess CES qualifies there, with nearly 200K people in the city attending or supporting the event.

For many years I’ve implored event organizers to make the educational and presentation content available to those that could not attend.?I have always felt that the content is usually much too valuable to be shared only once with a small audience then forgotten.?The only ways I’d been able to accomplish that were indirect.?Things like someone bringing a camcorder and then posting the session to their private channel; or working with a start-up that wanted to obtain rich content for their site.?I always made sure we had signed releases and had no other rights issues – which was very important.?These best efforts however have never been “live.”?They were always available days or weeks after the event.

The reasons I was told we couldn’t do live events on-line were many-fold.?“The union staging company would require union video camera operators” was one of the reasons I was given.?While a half-dozen people in the audience front row recorded the event on their phones we couldn’t do so as the event planner because it would cost the equivalent of a 1980s video production crew.?“The connectivity from the venue would not support the feed” was another reason, as if that in and of itself shouldn’t disqualify that venue.?A third reason was the concept that if the sessions were available on line, less people would sign-up (and pay) to attend – which is sad for the obvious reasons.?Whenever I suggested making the content available over the internet it was almost always shot-down.

Then came COVID19.?All events were forced to go virtual.?Some admittedly did it better than others, but it became the only thing events could do.?As a result, an interesting thing happened.

Many traditional event attendees (including myself) were generally disappointed about how these virtual events went down.?In way too many cases, it was the equivalent of watching a YouTube video at a required, fixed time.?There was no interaction from the audience, no way to ask questions, and no way to get involved in the discussion. ?I disliked a lot of the experiences.

Do you want to know who didn’t dislike them??Everyone that could never travel to events before.

Many people with physical or other disabilities that have always wanted to take part in these events – seminars, conferences, presentations, etc. – were always shut out because of the challenges with getting to and/or around them.?Suddenly this large, often ignored group was on an equal playing field with the rest of us.?There were no longer physical barriers preventing them from sharing in the experiences of a conference or sharing their opinions and voice with everyone else attending.

Clearly, equal access for the disabled was an enormous silver lining to the horrific pandemic in general.?When no one could travel to an office and everyone had to attend meetings virtually, suddenly the people that always had difficulties traveling to an office had equal footing with everyone else.?That’s just another reason why you’ll keep hearing about Meeting Equality for Hybrid Workers in the weeks and months ahead.?It’s equality for people that both choose not to commute to an office and/or those who have that choice made for them through no fault of their own by their circumstances.?

However, in the case of events, I fear organizers will have a short memory.?Already many of them are clamoring for a return to in-person events in arguably less than safe circumstances (location of the venue, size of the meeting, availability of local emergency medical care, etc.)?Make no mistake about it – they speak from the heart about the need for people to get together and put the horrific pandemic behind them, but they are nearly completely motivated by the need to raise funds for their organizations – regardless of their for-profit or non-profit status.?No matter what lipstick they put on it, rest assured it’s really about the money.?Don’t get me wrong – I hold nothing against an event planner that wants their organization to survive.?My scales of judgement about the value of their event and their organization have much more than just a desire to stay afloat in the equation.?I do fear that many of these organizers will forget the barriers that have been busted open as soon as they possibly can, and will again close the proverbial doors to the disabled and other attendees that can-not travel for whatever reason.

If we don’t want that to happen, it is up to you to speak-up.?Yes, please do comment here, but that’s not enough.?Event exhibitors – ask the organizers what they are doing to bring a live remote experience to the disabled before you agree to any contract.?Speakers and presenters – before you sign a release make the organizers include a clause that the session will be made available live on the internet for the many people who cannot attend in-person.?Event attendees – write to or email the conferences and seminars you go to and tell them how important it is that we keep the virtual doors open for the disabled.?Event organizers – refuse to sign any contracts with staging companies or venues unless they facilitate live streaming video at a reasonable price that can be absorbed by the local and/or remote attendees.?Let’s do whatever we can to raise our voices for those who were shut-out in the past.??

The only thing more cruel than a pandemic that took hundreds of thousands of lives would be forgetting about those we finally let have a seat at the events and shutting them out again when it’s over.

==============================================================

Please click the "like" button if you liked this blog as it will allow others in your network to see it. Feel free to comment / share as well.

Follow @NJDavidD on Twitter for real-time collaboration news and insights, business travel insights, and the occasional social media snark.

==============================================================

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has over four decades of experience providing problem solving leadership and innovation in media and unified communications technologies for various firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He now works as The Director of UC Strategy and Research for Poly. He is also the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging Technology. David can be reached at [email protected] and his full bio and other blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info.