The shift from live-streaming to the “full digital”
When it comes to large-scale format conferences, taking the “full digital” step appears fairly challenging. But utilizing online tools was already an every-day practice in the events and conferences’ universe. Whether it was to live-stream an event or to engage with larger audiences through the live tweat practice, event organiser’s were used to harness the potential offered by digital tools. By doing so, they were amplifying and enlarging their event’s coverage to non-present audiences.
What’s different with today’s situation is the need for the sector to fully switch to the digital. This means hosting the entire event through an online platform, connecting broad audiences and interacting in a virtual environment.
But this is possible! And Altitude is happy to put its digital expertise at your disposal to help you organise your virtual event entirely online. But what platform should we use?
Here is our top 3 of online meeting-platforms selected by Altitude
1-Intrado Virtual Events Flexible, agile and tailor-made solution
It’s our little favorite. Intrado is a cloud-based technology offering advanced tailor-made solutions. It offers the possibility to personalise the digital environment with your own branding to reflect your initial venue. Impressive!
With Intrado, you’ll be able to welcome your participants in a virtual lobby, to hold a plenary session in the auditorium while having parallel sessions simultaneously, and even to showcase a poster exhibition in a separate area. Intrado offers two event experiences to chose from: the essentials and expert plans. The latter offers the most flexible and personalised option for your event. This will allow you to hold large-scale event’s, with environments scalable up to 100,000 + visitors!
2 – Heysummit Simple and functional
Heysummit is a little more basic than the previous solution but it can facilitate the online transitioning. Its functionalities are simpler and probably more accessible.
Its rather “classical” services include possibilities, for example, of building optimised landing pages, creating online subscriptions for participants, … We could say it’s a more advanced version of the classical webinar as we know it.
Speakers have their own space and dashboard where they can download their biography and add presentations and details throughout the event.
Heysummit is a very good option for your conferences as well, but make sure you complement the primary offer with live stream options. You can find it in their « integration » section.
3 – Vfairs Ideal for online fairs
With Vfair, participants get notified with an invitation e-mail, and they subscribe online to access to the virtual fair. They can then visit the booth of their choice, view presentations and chat with exhibitors. Vfair provides an immersive graphical environment.
Pivoting to virtual events has many benefits.
Virtual events are so much more flexible than the traditional « in-person » formats, as they can be tailored to your business-goals.
They’re also much more affordable and cost-effective when you think of all the organisational, rental and transportation costs.
Finally, they are carbon-neutral. With no transportation, reduction of waste and absence of material production, the significant reduction of carbon footprint plays as a big “pros” and is a solid argument to shift towards digital for quite some time already.
Stay strategic, chose the right time and don’t forget to test your platform!
Finally, don’t forget to think of all the side aspects of your event. Just as for any other communication projects, revise your objectives; identify your target audiences and draft your messages in advance to identify the most suitable online format and tool. Keep an eye on your statistics to get familiar with your audience online habits, and don’t forget to take the different time zones into account when deciding on the time for your event.
Make sure you record your conference to save an online version for your website, just as if you would have done it for your “ in-person” event. It’s also the right time to tab into your social media functionalities, create an event on your Facebook page and use your Instagram countdown option. And finally, don’t forget to test and rehearse with your speakers on the platform well in advance.
In any case, Altitude’s team will be pleased to accompany you throughout this digital journey. So, see you online!