FOUR TIPS TO MAKE THE MOST OF VIRTUAL CONFERENCES

 

Virtual conferences are the new normal – checking in, watching keynote speakers, interacting with attendees, and bumping into friends. They are easy but require an entirely new playbook – for how you interact with people, access meaningful content, and maximize what you get out of the experience.

Virtual events require more preparation and action from attendees. For more than 7 months due to this COVID-19 pandemic, Employees from the various field need to focus on how to communicate with their colleagues. For this type of thing, virtual meetings emerge as a new way to communicate, share ideas, and conduct a lot of conferences, webinars, etc. A few tips for the above-said process are:

Use the tools to your advantage

Virtual conference organizers have brainstormed to create tech tools for networking and interactivity, so use them. During keynote speeches, chat boxes allow participants to share insights or provide queries for Q & A sessions. ‘Breakout’ areas offer chatrooms for specific interests or places for one-on-one dialogues. Some are also experimenting with virtual reality so that attendees can feel like they are present in person.

Prepare beforehand

In-person interactions tend to be a lot looser: Running into someone you know, having a drink at a restaurant, making last-minute dinner arrangements. Online, you have to be more deliberate and strategic about who you want to meet.

That means sourcing over attendee lists, researching which exhibitors or sponsors to contact, and connecting with speakers and presenters. By doing your homework and publicizing the takeaways on social media channels, you are setting the table for relationships that could endure beyond the event itself.

Minimize your distractions

Conferencing from your own house has many positives: No travel, no health risks, lower costs. When you are at a conference in-person, it allows you to get away from everything and really focus. At home, it’s more challenging to put away all the distractions. So turn off your mobile and don’t try to multitask all the time.

Interruptions are inevitable – pets, kids, work e-mails – but if you get pulled away, an online event allows you to go back and access that content later.

Focus on the benefits

Almost 70 percent of such meetings cost less than before, often significantly. Think of it as an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before, which produces TV-quality virtual events. These events used to take place behind closed doors, with high prices, in faraway places. Now, dozens of fascinating people around the world are available to talk about these issues. You can tour the world and listen to interesting people all day long.

Source: TOI