New technology is making it easier and easier to do business and exchange ideas without meeting face-to-face. New technology is also making it easier and easier to do business and exchange ideas while meeting face-to-face. Is this a coincidence or is one spurring the other to innovation?
According to my son Layton, age 30, utilizing the newest technology on the meetings scene is a no-brainer: “Why should I spend thousands of dollars on travel and hotels and conference registration fees—not to mention the time away from the office—when I can attend a meeting at my desk with the click of a mouse?”
Well, you shouldn’t…at least not for everything. There will never be a replacement for a good firm handshake, so face-to-face will never be totally irrelevant. However, many events large and small are being replaced by virtual meetings. When technology has made exchanging information so easy, suddenly “F2F” may be the least efficient way of meeting.
Webinars and virtual meetings can be the perfect replacement for training meetings. Contrary to a sales or users meeting where your goal is to schmooze potential and current clients, training meetings are strictly to pass information from trainer to trainee. While the likes of Skype, Go-To-Meeting, WebEx and social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube are nothing the average meeting professional hasn’t heard of (and probably embraced), they can compete successfully for the live audience.
Virtual meetings take many cues from live meetings, often by creating realistic looking conference halls (complete with stage, podium and audience), networking lounges and even an exhibition floor with virtual booths to enter. So should planners run away with their tails between their legs? Of course not! Virtual meetings are meetings and still need planning.
The smart meeting planner will adapt. Online meetings still need someone to coordinate strategy and logistics. Meeting space is still a necessity. However, it is not a hotel, conference or convention center, but servers and software. Food and beverage? Well, I still need a real cup of coffee, but I’ll brew it myself.
Here’s my take on virtual meetings (I’m 57 years old): “Online meetings lose my interest after a few minutes. But since I’m here anyway, I’ll check some e-mail and update my Facebook page. Humans are social animals after all, and we need to press the flesh. It’s what meetings are about.”
Truly, the savvy meeting professional knows when a meeting is best conducted online, F2F or as a hybrid. It comes with the territory these days, but most focus on getting people together for personal contact. I’ve never seen a study to suggest that the best way we learn is looking at slides on a WebEx screen. But working some of the new technologies into face-to-face meetings can truly make them better.
Excellent work is being done with online event communities. Attendees, faculty and staff interact in numerous ways, including e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and proprietary social networks—before, during and after the live event. Conferees can be linked by interests and relationships forged or strengthened in advance. Presentations are improved by attendee input, and precious on-site time is used more efficiently through invitations set up between buyers and sellers.
Mobile event guides have finally come around, so now not everyone has to be on the same device type, and bandwidth is more readily available to make these tools the hottest technology on-site. Wayfinding, personal agendas, or code reading, evaluations, surveys and polling, are as close as your Android, Blackberry or iPhone.
Technology and face-to-face meetings are not at odds. Odd bedfellows at times, but still powerful tools in the meeting professional’s kit.
The father/daughter/son team of Jeff Rasco, CMP, Christina Rasco and Layton Rasco are partners in Attendee Management Inc., a registration services company based in Wimberley, Texas, near Austin. Always looking for ways to gain efficiencies and effectiveness, they stay on the lookout for new technologies and ways of intelligent application to the global meeting and event community. They can be reached at talkingtech@attendeenet.com