Greater and more international attendance: Many event hosts have been forced to move the F2F meeting to a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Corbin Ball & Co. - Meetings Technology Headquarters (. The major players are high-volume video steaming services and/or learning management systems. For an exhibitor, it is often the best way to meet so many qualified buyers in such a short time. Virtual events are flexible and faster to deploy than traditional meetings—perfect for when you want to host a last-minute team building experience. Did you know that the use of virtual meetings have grown more than 80% — and counting. Virtual trust. At the minimum, we share a social contract to at least look like we are paying attention at a F2F event. Without ongoing communication and tools like virtual meetings, virtual teams cannot develop cohesive work relationships, and in turn, group goals suffer. Actually, both face-to-face (F2F) and the range of virtual meetings have their strengths and weaknesses depending on the length and goals of the event. Have you ever encountered one of these scenarios? Reasons for a virtual meeting might include: Budget: Virtual meetings are roughly 10% of the cost of a face-to-face meeting. represent participants in high-definition and often life-size as if they were sitting across the conference table. Let’s get real: How many people actually like raising their hand in a crowded ballroom or scooting down an aisle to the microphone to ask a question? Putting the cards on the table – while this is difficult to quantify or prove, I believe that participants are more “at ease” in a virtual meeting and more likely to reveal thoughts that they’d otherwise be hesitant to do in person. Also, in these days of significant pandemic concerns, a big benefit is that they do not require travel and possible exposure to contagions. Most virtual events are substantially less expensive that their F2F counterparts. These meetings can be more time-efficient because travel time is significantly reduced. Physical meetings are now being complemented more and more by virtual meetings as organizations embrace technology, globalization, and access to the best talent, regardless of location. These meetings can enhance productivity in your business, especially when MeetingKing is used to prepare the agenda, write the minutes and keep … According to Lee E. Miller, author of UP: Influence, Power and the U Perspective: The Art of Getting What You Want, “ The biggest mistake people make is assuming that influencing when you are meeting face to face is the same as influencing when you are interacting virtually. Many of the virtual event platforms have excellent online metrics measuring attendance numbers, time spent online, sessions attended, text chat comments/questions, polling counts and more. They can be used for business meetings with colleagues and staff members, holding training sessions with employees, client interactions, document reviews and sales presentations. By holding a destination meeting, the tone is set to ensure employees have cleared their calendar and know that they are expected to participate. Video conferences are the virtual equivalent of a group of people sitting around a conference table. F2F meetings bring people together, provide significant points of business interaction, and very significant economic benefit to venues and event stakeholders. The 360DG team is here to help you weigh the pros and cons of each option and find the perfect fit. New virtual event platforms are being released daily. That’s why team building should be leadership’s priority as the workforce evolves. With virtual events, planners can easily increase engagement by creating a safe and comfortable environment for attendees to ask questions, answer polls, and engage with presenters in real time. Additionally, they provide many of the benefits listed in the next section. Are they more like a telephone call or a face-to-face meeting? If your online meeting invites are eliciting more eyerolls than excitement your team may be suffering from virtual meeting fatigue. Plus, in virtual meetings visual communication is limited, if existent at all. While virtual meetings are definitely beneficial for companies with offices worldwide, we sometimes fail to remember one downside to it – the difference in time zones. Eli Mina, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based management consultant, has outlined the advantages and drawbacks of e-meetings. Unlike webinars and webcasts, they focus on the event rather than the presenter. These guidelines are to help you to organize more engaging and ultimately more productive virtual meetings. Weaknesses:Similar to webinars, there are time limitations based on how long you can hold a passive viewer sitting behind a screen with, usually, very little audience interactivity. A time that works well for you might be really inconvenient for someone from the other side of the globe. This was incredibly informative. They make it easy to keep a team on track, productive, and efficient. During this pandemic, the major reason for the explosion of virtual meetings is the travel shutdown for F2F events and the fear of contagion in group gatherings. The hard truth? "On a scale of 1 to 10, your session was a 20! They don’t even have to turn on their camera and they’ll be equally (if not more) engaged with the content. These features vary substantially among companies. Attention spans for remote attendee interacting with a screen tend to be much shorter. Often times, the attendees would not come anyway due to cost or travel concerns. Weaknesses:Video conferences are usually limited in the number of people and locations that can be accommodated and do not work well for large group training or interaction. Multipoint videoconferencing allows three or more participants to sit in a virtual conference room and communicate as if they were sitting right next to each other in a meeting room. These systems are the closest approximations to boardroom-like F2F meetings and can last as long as material needs to be discussed. The opportunities for networking, brainstorming, and relationship building are usually far greater at F2F events than online. Take your next company-wide initiative, client call, or virtual product launch to the next level and they’ll be talking about it long after they’ve logged off. Until there is a widely dispersed, effective COVID-19 treatment or vaccine, there will be many people that will be unwilling to attend events for lack of travel funds and/or a fear of contagion to themselves or loved ones. ", "Way beyond the best I could have imagined!". Virtual meetings can be tricky at times. Don’t worry, we’ll help break down the metrics to form a narrative for you to share with your stakeholders. I could easily listen to your information all day. Some event organizers have expressed concerns that hybrid events will cannibalize there F2F event; the hybrid event will reduce the onsite event attendance. You have no excuse for missing out on your family’s Thanksgiving traditions. Corbin was inducted into the EIC Hall of Leaders in 2018, the premier recognition program for the events industry. May virtual meeting platforms have recording capabilities built in making it very easy to distribute this content online on demand. As the attendees can be invisible to the presenter and to each other with some of these companies, there is no social contract to even look like they are paying attention, unlike F2F events. Several have provided online registration, payment processing, event metrics, event apps and other event details for years. Don’t worry, 360 Destination Group is here to help! How to Host a Virtual Meeting. On the other hand, a room that has soft & carpeted furnishing ~ meeting inside such a room will create the best audio sound. Some event organizers have expressed concerns that hybrid events will cannibalize there F2F event; the hybrid event will reduce the onsite event attendance. If, however, your event is time-sensitive and deals with a pressing situation or a single important breakthrough, a virtual meeting may be more appropriate. However. One extreme example is Microsoft, which has banned all F2F meetings greater than 50 persons until June 2021. They are less expensive than F2F with no room rental, catering, AV and travel costs. Strengths:Some of these companies come from the event world with an understanding of the complexities of large F2F events. This, in turn, will mean lesser costs and increased productivity. There is much competition in this space with many of the providers offering these services for free or very low cost and they do not require travel. Strengths:Hybrid events can be the best of both worlds. Our mixology and Broadway experiences are turnkey and engaging so you get more bang for your buck and access to top talent at your fingertips. As everyone is visible to each other in a video conference, there is a social contract to look like you are paying attention leading to less distraction and more group involvement. Virtual meetings use advanced technology to bring people in various locations together so they can conduct business. Whether it’s a corporate social responsibility activity for your office or a multi-day conference, virtual events are the perfect fit. hbspt.cta.load(455190, ‘0455f399-a600-43a9-848f-986da3f8ea8e’, {}); Challenges:This pivot to virtual is new to many of these companies, with some forced there by the impact of COVID-19. Many virtual event platforms will likely expand and build out their hybrid options as a bridge back to F2F events as we reemerge from the pandemic. Going virtual will likely save time for both meeting planners and attendees. Similarly, if you have to acquire a new office building and just need to have a preview, you can also do this without traveling. A virtual meeting is a meeting using technology to bring the participants together other than physically meeting. IT leaders can keep participants engaged during the meeting by using poll and chat options to solicit feedback on key issues. Meetings take employees away from tasks that they feel are more important or relevant, so often times, they'll continue to try to work during a meeting. This allows people involved to share and exchange data and information in real-time without being physically located in one place. A meeting planner is likely interested in local meeting places, hotels, upscale restaurants; while families might be looking for family-centered attractions, more inexpensive hotels and kid-friendly restaurants. As long as attendees are informed, entertained and fed, event hosts can keep them engaged for days. These systems are the closest approximations to boardroom-like F2F meetings and can last as long as material needs to be discussed. Here we go: Create your own Professional workspace. Many meeting leaders actually plan less for a virtual meeting than they do for a face-to-face one. They are often not scalable, take a lot of effort to deploy, and give a different user experience in each meeting room. This is a trick question. All 360 degrees of it. Greater and more international attendance: Many event hosts have been forced to move the F2F meeting to a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, studies indicate that this is not the case. Several have found much larger audiences in doing so. The facilitator should be skilled in group dynamics and cross cultural and language appreciation, as well as asking relevant questions and managing time. Virtual meetings are real-time interactions that happen or take place over the internet or via a conference call with participants from all over the globe. That’s why we’re thankful for virtual meetings. Hybrid events can greatly expand the audience size, and can even increase attendance future events by increasing visibility. This makes for a more complex meeting taking more time and resources. Any meeting is more effective with a well-thought-out plan. An added bonus: Sessions can always be recorded for future access. There are no travel costs, catering expenses, and other onsite expenses such as staff, security, audio visual equipment, and room rental. Virtual events are flexible and faster to deploy than traditional meetings—perfect for when you want to host a last-minute team building experience. Here at 360 Destination Group, we are at the leading edge of a new frontier in meetings and events. The facilitator of the meeting does not always have to be the person who calls the meeting, although it often is. Here are some quick and easy “Dos” and “Donts” for virtual meetings. Often times, the attendees would not come anyway due to cost or travel concerns. Environmental Protection Specialist, U.S. Face-to-Face Vs. If you can, send this agenda over a reasonable amount of time before the meeting. We’re all human after all! The sensory input is and the networking opportunities are much greater with F2F than virtual. With virtual, meetings are truly on demand – you create the meeting with the click of a mouse and the participants arrive with the click of a mouse. By their nature, virtual meetings are more complex, require more planning to be highly effective, and must be executed in a different way to drive engagement, buy-in and commitment to action. Going virtual will likely save time for both meeting planners and attendees. However, creating an effective virtual experience takes a greater level of planning and facilitation than regular meetings. There is much competition in this space with many of the providers offering these services for free or very low cost and they do not require travel. Due to increasingly shorter attention spans, webinars generally should last no more than one hour. In essence, the challenge for the event designer is making a satisfying, compelling event for two very different audiences. F2F events can also be affected by weather, strikes, riots and other types of social discord. We offer a variety of platform options to store your content indefinitely and keep you basking in that successful event afterglow. Get inside our brain. 1. General benefits of virtual meetings over face-to-face: Virtual events of all types have seen explosive growth due to the travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic. Leadership teams are always trying to increase their event’s reach—whether it’s to deliver content, raise money and awareness, or to provide networking opportunities. Let’s get digital! Ready to learn more about how virtual meetings can benefit your bottom line? Virtual events can be set up in much less time. Typically, there are recording functions for on-demand playback at a later time. Typically, the webinar size ranges from dozens to a few hundred people. As a general rule, virtual meetings tend to be more efficient as there is an acknowledgement that no one wants to stay online longer than they … As mentioned, there are concerns regarding disease exposure. Virtual meetings don't have to be a disappointment; in fact, they can actually be more engaging and productive than their face-to-face counterparts. While perhaps easier to establish initially, trust in the virtual world is much more fragile than in face-to-face relationships. A webcast is a video distribution of a presentation via the internet. It’s so exciting to be a part of shaping how our industry, society, and humanity will experience events now and in the future! This information can be sent to you immediately after your event to help you communicate value and ROI to sponsors, exhibitors, and your leadership team. As with in-person events, we all want to create opportunities for face-to-face interactions. As such, the meeting is as real as a face-to-face meeting, it has real people involved, the Agenda and business of the meeting are real, as are the decisions and outcomes of the meeting, the Minutes and the follow-up. That said, larger virtual and hybrid events such as conferences require just as much thought, if not more, than a live event. © Corbin Ball & Co. - 506 14th Street, Bellingham WA 98225-6107 USA Ph: 360.734.8756, As everyone is visible to each other in a video conference, there is a social contract to look like you are paying attention leading to less distraction and more group involvement. Virtual meetings are a key part in the lives of project managers today. When planning a virtual meeting, be mindful of your participants’ various time zones. As the name implies, this involves meetings where people meet together in the same physical location.Strengths: Meetings take people to a more focused environment with fewer distractions. I for one am not the least bit surprised by this statistic. Virtual events eliminate the need for air travel and ground transportation making them much more environmentally friendly. A hybrid component can fill a need for these individuals. As F2F events slowly reemerge after the pandemic, it is likely that hybrid meetings will be a significant part of many events. Virtual meetings (also referred to as online meetings or remote meetings) are an excellent option for when distances between participants are very great. F2F meetings usually require several months, if not years, of advanced planning and negotiation. Virtual meetings mean distributed teams can work together more easily, without incurring costs for airfares, hotels, rental cars, and meals, or wasting time in airport security lines. Easier to use than ever, virtual meetings are integrated into daily workflows and have a permanent place among worker productivity tools. “If your team needs to resolve a conflict or make a decision, for example, video conferencing tools or collaborative software can be your best bet,” says DeRosa. Well, they are a combination of both and should be treated differently. Running (or attending) effective virtual meetings is not easy as “normal” rules are complicated by the lack of “physical” presence. There are many software options in terms of pricing and capabilities with a variety of presentation options including sharing of PowerPoint slides, screen sharing, polling, Q&A functionality, audio/video streaming, level of security and some type of registration automation. 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