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We’re all still trying to work out virtual events, as well as looking forward to next year when the COVID vaccine might ultimately herald a return of in-person engagement, perhaps in tandem with virtual content. Everyone has an opinion, not least Ben Hindman, CEO at event marketing platform Splash.
Earlier this month, he raised some hackles on LinkedIn by predicting that COVID would break the addiction to massive events, and that the shift to “bite size” is underway. Splash followed up Hindman’s opinion piece with some supporting data in their report “Online, Shorter, and Here to Stay: An Outlook on Virtual and Hybrid Events in 2021.”
Here’s the data. Based on a survey of 270 U.S. events professionals, and over 3,000 attendees from various industries, Splash reported, among other things, that:
43% of companies moved all events to virtual and are hosting more virtual events than originally planned; 79% of companies now expect to host events that include an online component even once in-person events resume; and Fewer than 7% of event attendees believe virtual events should be longer than an hour.
That last message seemed already to have reached the ears of Salesforce, with the drastic restructuring of this year’s Dreamforce as a long series of short sessions.
We caught up with Splash’s Chief Revenue Officer Eric Holmen to dive deeper into the findings. “The future seems to be changing day by day,” he said. “We have a very active user group globally, and what
Read more here: https://marketingland.com/one-view-of-the-future-of-events-niche-and-hybrid-283626