Learnings From 1 Million Events and What You Can Really Do with a Zoom Background
Hi there, welcome back to The Lookout! Here are some of the things I’ve been excited about in the online event world this week.
Online event takeaway of the week: Bring your speakers together digitally with a common backdrop
Messy and cluttered backgrounds behind speakers can ruin the carefully created atmosphere of your online event. Provide each speaker with an image that they can set to their background, to develop a cohesive look and connect your event’s themes. You can even connect themes and tracks during your event by choosing a distinctive look for each speaker’s background. Prior to the event, ensure your speakers have been coached appropriately to utilize the backgrounds provided.
Recent happenings in remote events:
Eventbrite has hosted over 1 million events in 2020: Joel Crouch, Eventbrite’s General Manager for Europe shares that more than ⅓ of the audience of UK online events logged in from abroad, showing how online events can attract a global reach. After lockdowns were eased, many events continued to stay online, which Eventbrite suggests could be a response for a greater overall demand for online events.
Takeaways from Digitale Leute: The Digitale Leute Summit pivoted to an online event this year (with some assistance from PIRATEx!) and it was a resounding success. Here they recap some of the biggest impacts and learnings from going remote– including increasing registrations by twice the amount as last year. They also went global, welcoming attendees from over 30 different countries, who sent over 12000 messages on the conference’s messaging feature, Talque.
“KubeCon was my last virtual event. We need a better way.”: I’ve been thinking a lot about this piece by Chris Short about his experience at KubeCon’s online event. Some of the critiques are sharp (disclaimer: PIRATEx was not involved in this production), but attendee feedback is necessary for online event organizers to improve events for the future. The Developer community has been putting together online events (such as All Day DevOps) for a long time now, way before Covid put a stop to in-person gatherings. But it seems that there is a lot that event organizers have failed to learn from those experiences. Online events can be a great experience, if organizers design them to be. I hope this is a wakeup call for some, because bad online events can impact participation rate for attendees in the future.
Elsewhere in the PIRATEx Universe:
Like everyone else we’re preparing for the merriest season of them all! Our product team has spent the past few weeks (virtually) decorating and setting up virtual Christmas parties. And it has been a lot of fun to put together these packages for a number of new clients, and to see the creativity that the team is putting into them. I think they are going to be really special. First times are always something exciting. Amongst others we’re working with Veertly as a platform, probably the closest you will get to a good old Christmas gathering. So for those of you who are not waiting for a Christmas miracle to happen in order to host a physical party, hit me up for your first online Christmas experience!
My top reads this week:
- Virtual events are here to stay: and they’re a digital channel: Martech Today
- Virtual monetisation: Exhibition News
- 4 Ways to Leverage Virtual Event Design to Increase Engagement: Event Manager Blog
- How Hubilo pivoted from physical to virtual events in 20 days (and nabbed big-name backers): VentureBeat
- Going green; the ‘New Normal’ of the events industry: Environment Journal
- Hacking the virtual event stack: Martech Today
- Why companies are now aiming to use virtual events for recruiting: Glossy
- 80% Of Marketers Report Shift to Virtual Events Drives Greater Audience Reach: Martech Series
- Eventbrite Executive Sees Potential in Virtual Concerts Post-COVID: EDM News
- How Virtual Events Can Improve Your Digital Marketing: Forbes
- Planner Tips: Event Strategy and Design for Hybrid Meetings: PSAV
That’s it for this edition of The Lookout and our online event world news. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out our Guidebook and stay subscribed to catch all of the updates. If there’s anything you would like to read about when it comes to remote, or digital events, let me know! I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions.
Don’t forget, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter to always be updated on the news from the online event world!
Thanks for reading!
The Lookout Newsletter #3
Written by:
Felix Josephi
PIRATEx Managing Director
