The Recap

On March 25th we had a great VEG meet-up with Bob Priest-Heck, the CEO of Freeman, and his team. But, when real-time isn’t on your side, there’s always VOD. You can watch the recording. 

How do you ramp back up for live in-person events without losing the gains we’ve made in broadening our audiences, our revenues, and services in the world of virtual events? Bob’s five magic words: Agility, Audience, Content, Experience, and Data.

The Bible of Safe Re-openings 

While the right combination of IRL and URL events is still top of mind, the tip-top of most minds at the moment is how to attend live events safely. Our friends at Splash put together a comprehensive guide. From air filtration systems and socially distanced check-ins to having well-defined hygiene policies that include everything from disinfectants to testing requirements that are well-communicated. Here’s the bible. 

Platform Playbooks

Virtual experience platforms, including those that existed before the pandemic, saw hockey-stick growth during the pandemic. As live events re-emerge, platform makers are reinforcing their alpha, championing a new normal where they play a big part. 

This past week Hubilo hosted Restart 2021. Hubilo, the San Francisco-based events platform, secured $23.5 million in Feb. For the event, they partnered with AAE speakers bureau (now with a virtual speakers’ arm) to bring celebrity speakers from the worlds of marketing, journalism, and events including Guy Kawaski, David Pogue, Will Curran to the table (er, window). 

Same time, on a different channel, Iceland’s home-grown platform Brella launched its Virtual Shake Up 3.0 with a different cast of virtual events cheerleaders including Skift’s Rafit Ali, Amplified Events CEO Laura Laino, Vidcon’s Jim Louderback, and BizBash founder David Adler.

Study the screenshots and the similarities are evident. Both events were intended for marketing professionals and event stakeholders. Both platforms offer full soup to nuts event planning and execution. Both use similar navigation and UIX to interact with other attendees. Brella’s Scandinavian sense of design makes it a slightly cleaner experience. Overall, Brella struck more of a business meeting tone during its event, while West Coast native Hubilo’s meeting was something of an energetic rallying cry. Yes, geography can dictate design and content.

Less extravagant, with just a handful of us in attendance, Robert Bol of BizzYou took a more microscopic look at helping associations get back to business.

Hopin held its rah-rah rally a few weeks ago. The event received mixed reviews at a moment when stakes couldn’t be higher. This week it made headlines through acquisitions of Streamable and Jamm. Streamable is what would happen if Slack and Zoom had a baby, says the video distribution company. Jamm is a video collaboration tool. Following its recent announcement of purchasing Streamyard and Topi, Hopin is on a virtual event shopping spree.

Zoom and VROOOM: Equally tense about the return to events and the opportunity for broadening their collective reach, Zoom and Formula One Racing announced a multi-year deal to ZOOM live from its races.