Love it or Leave it: Events in a Pandemic Era

By Mary Kroese, Partner

Like many of you, we’d been looking forward to getting back to in-person events. We’d worked for months supporting one client’s RSA Conference event presence, when we got word that the Omicron variant caused the annual meeting of the tech and security minds—originally scheduled to kick-off this Monday—to be postponed until Spring.

While of course we understand the delay, the planning process did make us a bit nostalgic for events in a pre COVID-era. Here are a few things we miss (“love”) and those we would happily “leave” in February 2022.

Love

1.)   Getting a change of scenery. Even in the days where we did leave our dwellings to go to work, take meetings, visit coffee shops—it was always nice to add some variety to the work week. Events and conferences, even if they’re in your local area, gave you a chance to get out the office, find inspiration, or maybe explore a new city or part of town.

2.)   Connecting with colleagues in a more informal environment. What’s it about getting out of the office that makes folks loosen up a bit? The change of venue can bring connections with new colleagues or deepen those with ones you already know. Sometimes it means navigating airports together, catching up over a 7AM pre-event coffee, or trying new restaurants after the programming has ended. It’s these “in between” moments that we miss most about virtual events.

3.)   Learning. Just ask any middle schooler—virtual learning is not. the. same. Professional events and conferences give you the chance to catch the latest insights, innovations, and inspiration from those in your industry. While we’ve seen some stellar virtual keynote addresses, Zoom breakout sessions have overwhelmingly fallen flat. With varying degrees of camera usage, distractions in the background, and spotty participation the knowledge gain we used to get from these small group sessions have certainly fallen by the wayside virtually.

Leave

1.)   Crowded happy hours. We all know the scene. You’re huddled around a high-boy table trying to juggle your drink with a mini plate of crudités when you see an acquaintance walk by. You have no hands left to offer a hug or handshake and it becomes an awkward game of catch up and introductions to your current work crew. No thank you. Let’s all say sayanora in to dry pigs in a blanket and insignificant small talk in 2022.

2.)   Freezing cold conference rooms. While our female audiences may be the first ones to nod along  (it’s science after all), we can all probably agree that event spaces are akin to the North Pole. We understand that crowds of people call for extra airflow and ventilation, but we shouldn’t have to bring a parka to maintain an adequate core body temperature just because we’re at a conference.

3.)   Crowded sessions and an inability to access the ones you want. One asset of virtual events is their accessibility and ability to scale. In the old days of in-person events, if you registered late some of the sessions you were most interested in might be sold out. You’d be left scrambling to fill your schedule with ones that might not be applicable to your interests or profession or, alternatively, squeezed into the back of a “standing room only” breakout session. Without capacity restrictions, virtual events have opened the door for more people to partake in the sessions that matter to them. Greater accessibility is always a good thing in our book.

What’s your take on “love it or leave it”? Is there anything you would add to our lists? Tell us about it on Twitter.