‘Technology, Content & Virtual Event Managers - the 3 pillars of virtual events’

We are living in a world where social distancing has become a norm. However, this has thrown up various challenges for the events and experiential industry. One thing that the pandemic has taught us is to find an opportunity in adversity and the events industry has been quick enough to take the innovation route. And as with everything else what has come to the rescue is technology.

To gather more insights on the same, exchange4media organised an engaging panel discussion on the topic ‘Fundamentals of event technology: Where we are and what is the future’.

The panellists for the session were Deepak Pawar, Managing Director, MidasNext; Vidya Alva, EVP & Business Head, Percept ICE, and Nikhil Joshi, Co-Founder, Digital Jalebi. The discussion was moderated by Namah Chawla of BW Businessworld.

In her opening comments, Alva said, “At Percept ICE, we started with learning technology first. In June we launched our digital division called digitICE which focuses on digital events and activations.”

Speaking about event technology, Joshi said that software development is very new terrain for agencies to understand and hence standardisation is required for the same. “Whenever you learn something new there is a learning curve attached to it. The knowledge we have built in the physical events is huge and in figuring out the potential of virtual event it might take another year,” he added.

The industry has been quick enough to adapt to the virtual space and at the same time it is working diligently towards enhancing the experience of virtual events.
Pawar maintained that for a virtual event to be effective it was important that one is able to keep the audience glued. “One thing that I have pushed across my team is not to do recorded stuff. I tell my team and clients to do real-time events,” he added.

The panellists agreed that audience stickiness is a challenge that needs to be addressed while organising virtual events. The content needs to be extremely relevant as virtual events are different from social or community events where engaging with the audience is easier.

Speaking about his experience with the virtual event, Joshi said, “The good part about virtual events is that they are backed by analytics which helps both the agencies and the clients.” He further remarked that Digital Jalebi is attempting to design more meaningful hybrid events and not just a physical event that has a website tagged along with it.

Pawar informed that the government has come with tenders on digital events and the future is of Phygital events. “Any of the events that are done right now are standing on the three pillars of technology, content and virtual event managers,” he concluded.