The need for human connection is strong.
While we are unable to gather in groups, our need for social contact and the recognition of its value have never been felt more acutely.
Social media and video conferencing are designed to help, but are imperfect and offer only a temporary fix. Some media designed to bring us together are driving greater isolation. Witness the growing body of research linking social media and depression. Video conferencing has been a godsend while I work from home, but I also find it exhausting and inefficient as the go-to medium for meetings.
Even when covered by masks and stinking of Purell, it will be amazing to get back together at the office, restaurants, retail stores, theaters, concerts and live events. Heck, just meeting a friend for coffee will be pure magic. Clearly there is substantial pent-up demand for face-to-face interaction. And that need is growing in our personal lives, our communities - and businesses too.
The events business was hit early and hard by the outbreak. Cancellations quickly grew among organizers, attendees and sponsors - and then more catastrophically with entire nations banning large gatherings. By mid-March, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research "CEIR" reported a $20 billion loss to the economy from US exhibition business alone.
There is substantial pent-up demand for face-to-face interaction
Our industry may be "first hit, last back" and many sources suggest large events won't resume until the final phase of reopening. It is clear to me the event industry cannot sit idle waiting for events to resume. We must embrace our position of authority and show the way forward. It must be our urgent mission to build confidence among organizers and attendees, inspiring their return to events.
Creative thinking, development of practical systems and quick deployment are needed - and are the perfect match to this community's skillset. We must join forces to address event attendees' health, safety and comfort. Further, we must help marketing agencies, brands, venues and producers build tools which model the new economics of events. Organizers need help recalculating the rationale and return on their events in this new world.
Face the cold facts for a minute: large gatherings will not happen with the frequency, size, or ease they did before. Events will start slowly, will have lower attendance and will feature clumsy new safety measures. They will be small and regionally-focused, as a limited number of people will use air travel, and international numbers in particular will suffer.
...digital fatigue will drive people to seek live events
The event industry must respond with ways to increase increase reach, increase ROI per attendee, develop new revenue streams, design new ways to leverage captured content and more. Our responsibility and challenge are to rebuild events from the ground up.
Events will become more personalized than ever before. Smaller crowd sizes, distancing, deliberate traffic flows and other measures will force us seek the highest value attendees, thereby raising the stakes on experiences we offer back to them. Events will feature specific experiences for very specific populations and demand specific outcomes. Intimate events for high-value influencers and media will likely rise to the top.
Events will start slowly, have lower attendance and will feature clumsy new safety measures
While digital fatigue will drive people to seek live events, the recent growth and adoption of digital tools to connect will have staying power. The digital component of live events will certainly be bigger than ever before. Not only will virtual connection allow safety-conscious people to attend digitally, it will also allow event organizers to broaden their reach. Connecting digital audiences to IRL events will become commonplace and a critical part of event strategy.
A new wave of creativity will be needed to attract, hold and convert digital audiences to ensure their meaningful contribution to ROI. Event design concepts must bond together in-person and online audiences in creative and compelling ways. Interdependencies between IRL+virtual audiences will help build meaningful connections, uniting and strengthening the event base.
I see grocery stores as the early testing grounds for the events ahead. If you're like me, you've stood in line outside the grocery store thinking about how it can scale for events. Distancing, masking and hand washing will obviously be mainstays of events. Disinfecting spaces and rigorous cleaning of surfaces are in our future too. But how will these things get managed at the scale, speed and frequency needed for our events?
Counting crowds, managing directional flow of people, timing attendees' access to zones, wayfinding and more will ensure distancing rules are honored. At the same time, slowed movement of people entering/leaving spaces must be anticipated and mitigated. Retail traffic technologies, facial recognition and more may find an application to monitor crowd movement and density.
Covid-19 testing, monitoring, reporting and accessing health information will not only slow the movement of event attendees, these things will also push on privacy concerns. Event organizers will need to build relationships and seek endorsements from local, regional, national and global health organizations.
Some believe the handshake may never come back. Is an elbow touch too close? Something simple and so ingrained in business culture must adapt. Events will have to expand on the theme of greeting and connecting to suit their communities. Digital? Paper cards? Dare I say, QR codes? Some element of ceremony, warmth and vulnerability will help build trust, community and positive memories associated with the event.
Our responsibility and challenge are to rebuild events from the ground up.
All literal touchpoints at events will need to be identified, scrutinized and re-thought. Doors which needed to be pulled open can be propped open, or mechanized. Touchscreens can become gesture-based interactions and data inputs can be optically gathered, or triggered with proximity sensors, accelerometers, RFID, NFC, or other touchless technologies.
At-home event registration must immediately play a larger role to reduce both friction and literal touchpoints on-site. Registration might include health screening, signing legal/HIPAA releases, requiring appointments be scheduled to visit each event zone - in addition to the traditional contact information of the past. Issued event credentials will need to be categorized, feature their own scheduled track and be designed to easily identify who goes where, when.
Venues can lead the charge and offer enhanced cleaning of common spaces, restrooms and cafes. Air handling may play a role, as could overnight disinfections, UV light treatments, or HVAC filtration technologies. Venues are in a unique position to provide time-tested knowledge about crowd flow patterns through their spaces. Intelligent modeling of crowd throughput at the venue will help event planners. Venues could offer pricing based on allowable density, rather than square footage. More efficient, more distanced spaces, with higher demonstrated throughput will be more valuable.
Frequency of hand washing, the increase in disposable items and hand sanitizer alone will create a challenge for facility managers to adapt their systems. Leaping ahead to solutions which balance health/safety with sustainability will win favor with event organizers and attendees. Venues with complete strategies and systems scaled to handle a specific crowd size will come out on top.
There are inspiring examples of companies banding together across the event, exhibition and live entertainment worlds.
There are many complex problems to solve and a lot of hard work that needs to get done quickly. Lucky, that's just what #eventprofs do.
There are inspiring examples of businesses banding together across the event, exhibition and live entertainment worlds. Whether offering reduced rates to support hospitals and medical teams, to groups formed to apply lobbying pressure and workgroups assembled to design events of the future - our industry is fighting the virus and fighting to adapt. Live For Life , Go Live Together, Experience Good, Live Events Coalition and Europe's "RIFEL" are a few of the collaborations underway.
Unity and leadership will accelerate our recovery. Some predict our industry will shrink, consolidate and change - and others predict business will come roaring back stronger than ever. I believe it will be our collective efforts to adapt and the basic human need to connect that will get us through this.
I am excited about the industry collaborations underway and I'm giddy at the thought of meeting up with you in the weeks and months to come - whether at a coffeeshop in Portland, Oregon, or at an international event in Berlin... #untilwemeetagain !