Friday, August 8, 2008

Inside Meetings

Virtual event companies gaining traction with new tech and soaring fuel costs

By Jay Rizoli, Special to Mass High Tech

For anyone put off by the hassle, inconvenience and cost of traveling to corporate events, telecommunications have for years made it increasingly easy to just stay home and do it long-distance. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, teleconferencing and webinars became a more appealing, although not ideal, alternative to meetings and conferences.

But those options are already yesterday. Today there are virtual events — highly interactive conferences, expos, trade shows, job fairs and college fairs accessible via a web browser in a computer-generated exhibit hall with CGI-driven booths and stages. Virtual events enable attendees to watch webcast presentations, see live speakers, view product demos, take part in live Q&A, virtually roam the exhibition floor, and gather information — pretty much anything you can do at an actual event, with the click of a mouse.

While virtual events are in their infancy, presenters and participants are raving.

“Businesses want to reach prospects at lower costs, and the global economy has sort of accelerated the need for such connections,” said Chris Charron, vice president of product development at PlatformQ LLC and a veteran of digital media. Needham-based PlatformQ, founded two years ago, offers three events — CollegeWeekLive, CardioCareLive and Virtual Energy Forum. The company is one of a several local firms, including publishers such as International Data Group and TechTarget Inc., (see related story here) that organize virtual events.

“We looked at a lot of markets and decided to focus on global education, the environment and health care. As a company, sure, we have an economic goal but we also have a social mission to bring people together,” said Charron, whose site also tallies the airplane, hotel and automobile emissions saved by virtual attendees.

Online events come with an ease of participation: Exhibitors tell the presenter which elements they want, and the presenter puts it together — live discussion, interactive Q&A, networking tools and other features. And, it’s fast. World Energy Solutions Inc. in Worcester was late to the party for the Virtual Energy Forum — they signed up 10 days before the June event, said vice president of marketing Shellie Rapson James — but PlatformQ turned around their submission quickly.

“In a brick-and-mortar event, you have to deal with a lot of deadlines and choices, and this eliminates all of that,” said James, a longtime webinar user. “Within a day and a half they had a booth prototype, and they made it really easy for me to say, ‘Let’s do this.’ ”

Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston was among more than 80 colleges, universities and service academies that participated in CollegeWeekLive, and assistant director of admissions Vanessa Foote said she is sold on virtual events. Foote said the school has embraced virtual outreach in the past several years, primarily using chat programs among current and prospective students, and blogs about campus life.

“We were a little hesitant because we had so many other virtual efforts going on, but I was pretty surprised with the numbers,” Foote said. “We had 75 students log in, and they were students whose names we were not already familiar with, that we had never had contact with before.” Foote said that 10 of those 75 applied to Wentworth, and six have been accepted.

“The first year I thought, how is this different from chat? How is it different from what we’re already doing?” Foote said. “The thing about it is it looks just like a booth, like a video game. That’s what attracted me because of how they replicate the environment. Being a technology school, maybe that will fly more. I think it’s got that edge.”

What visitors get is instant access to what they’re looking for — say, solar energy companies — without physically trolling an exhibit floor; what exhibitors take away is tangible information about visitors that they can’t get from actual events.

Charron says PlatformQ is unique in its insistence on being live and interactive. Speakers are encouraged to talk for 15 minutes and leave a 45-minute window for Q&A, enabling access to speakers that is otherwise unattainable. A prospective student from New Mexico, for example, may get a rare chance at CollegeWeekLive to engage the financial aid director at MIT.

While virtual events may change the way people do business, no one is ready to write off in-person events. Foote and James said there’s just no substitute for the face-to-face experience.

“We don’t believe they’re replacing physical shows,” adds Charron. “Maybe over the long haul, maybe 30 years or so. They enable people to reach others that they otherwise couldn’t connect with.”

PlatformQ CEO Robert Rosenbloom sees virtual events as a natural part of the proliferation of digital communication and interaction. “There are different experiences and relationships formed at physical events,” he said. “But I think there’s clearly tremendous growth potential, and we’re clearly in the early stages of it. Once you participate, there’s no going back.”

Jay Rizoli is a freelance writer in Franklin.