The Elephant in the Room

Before the term collaboration was a thing, there was “conferencing” where I’ve spent the bulk of my business career.  I’ve seen technology evolve from having an AT&T operator dial out to connect everyone to their call to where we are today with an array of low-cost video and collaboration tools at our fingertips.  The real story doesn’t necessarily lie in how technology has moved the ball forward, but rather the profound impact it has had and continues to have in the way we get our jobs done while at the same time helping us balance the way we live. 

When I co-founded InterCall in 1991, we had a very simple premise.  Companies with a distributed salesforce or field team just could not hold conference calls.  So instead, managers had a Monday phone day, called everyone individually and spent hours repeating the same message with each team member.  So, we simply asked them to use an 800 number to dial in, have a weekly conference call and get everyone on the same page in an hour vs. an entire day and that simple concept transformed how managers worked with their remote teams and how much more those individuals felt connected to their organization and that their opinion mattered.

Let’s face it.  Most of you who are in the event industry and are listening to this podcast probably think that the online experience we all had to create over the last two years to produce our tradeshow, conference or event was a passing fad.  After all, mask mandates are disappearing, the event halls are filling back up, and people are coming out of their houses and traveling again.

Historically, the event industry has always been strongly rooted into paradigms that dictated how we should all think about our events and how we should deliver them.  Now, I’m not an industry professional, but I’ve had a long business career and attended dozens of tradeshows and conferences, so here are some paradigms that were deeply rooted in this industry before the Pandemic changed them.

The research that I’ve read about the future of live events all points to the fact that no matter what happens with the Pandemic, having a virtual attendance option is something that an overwhelming majority of organizations want to incorporate in 2022 and beyond.  But having said that, if you make that statement to event organizers, they may agree in principle, but not in practice.  It seems as if the big elephant in the room is that to them, virtual represents a set of complications that make it harder to plan, execute and fund when you’re having to create an event for both the virtual and physical world.

I’m getting ready to be the mother-in-law to a newly graduated nurse who earns her bachelor’s degree this December.  Getting an education during the Pandemic has been more than a challenge for her especially with COVID restrictions that significantly reduced the hands-on clinical experience she needed to feel more confident to work with patients as she enters the workforce.  However, as our company has been called on more and more often to deliver virtual and hybrid events for nursing associations, I realize that the challenges my daughter in law will face as an RN are going to be profound.

So, I took a deep dive into the nursing association virtual conferences that we have been privileged to deliver to learn more about how these groups are using virtual during these conferences to bring their membership together, address the challenges that nurses face, and get their members prepared for what continues to be a fast moving and ever-changing healthcare environment. 

Here is what I learned from how our virtual event customers and the key challenges that they are helping their nursing members address.

What happened after 9/11 gives us a clue as to what will likely happen to the event industry. Even though live events are returning, the industry will likely not go back to a time where there are little to no technology options to participate virtually.  Here’s why: