Creating meaningful, lasting engagement at virtual events is a new challenge brought on by Covid 19.  Before the pandemic, most large events were already hybrid events.  Meaning that, live events were often produced with virtual event components.  Like adding the livestream component to cut down on travel costs.  Now, virtual events are all we have.  A virtual event usually looks like this:  a virtual conference platform with clear navigation/branding, VOD (video on demand) for breakout sessions and keynotes, live streaming  for live question and answers, and hopefully a solid social networking and collaboration element. So, how do we make virtual only events engaging in the absence of physical networking (not to be confused with tinder), eating and partying together.

The pandemic is forcing large companies to see the upside of virtual only events.  My prediction is that, once they see how scalable and engaging virtual events can be, they’ll want the virtual element to be the priority of the show.  Just like Apple events.  Apple puts it most trusted stakeholders, fans, and journalists in the audience when they’re doing a product launch.  And because of this, the energy is fire.  Fire baby.  The energy of the thousand people in the auditorium is hanging off every word, stoked about every new product feature…  Laughing at every inside clever joke.  Music makes us cry, and laughter makes us laugh.  This energy requires curating a fan crowd, and capturing their audio and video, to enhance the experience of the people viewing everything at home.  It’s peer pressure.   Just like, when Monica says something funny and cute, the live audience enhances the effect.  Virtual, people, is the future of events.  Bands used to go on tour to promote an album.  Now that album sales are dead, bands release a new album to create interest in their next tour.  So yeah, Ross is the future of live events.

Repertoire Productions was producing Virtual and Hybrids events, since before it was a thing.  Also, we like, saw Post Malone in a small bar before he had face tattoos. For real, Repertoire invented how to produce a TEDx event. We’ve been listening, innovating and collaborating with the world’s top brands for the last 10 years.  And if you think about it, there are similarities between Friends, the Late Show, and a TED talk…  Relatively small live audience, check.  Curated audience consisting of enthusiastic “tribe”, check.  Audience reaction drives digital reactions, check.  The difference between TED talks Apple events and the majority of “other” events is, TED and Apple figured out that, 1) The real audience is virtual, and 2) the live audience is there to boost the effect for the virtual audience.  Just like Jimmy Fallon and Friends.

Here’s our call to action part.  If you want to up your virtual or hybrid event production game, we’d love to hear all about your ideas and help you shine.

Also, thanks to our friends at Production Line Studios.