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Skift CEO Rafat Ali published a piece last week on how the event industry is facing its Napster moment. Is the industry really doomed in favor of virtual events? Not really, but change is required.
I was watching a documentary on the phenomenon of the hikikomori. If you are not familiar, it is about kids that leave school and any connection with society to spend the whole day and night in their rooms, mostly playing video games.
In the worst cases, it goes on for years. These kids’ parents obviously face an incredibly difficult task in bringing them back to normal life. Interestingly, those that succeeded had actually let their children experience gaming as much as possible and connecting with the virtual communities around them.
As a result, they would create solid friendships and connections in the virtual world. These connections were so strong that the urge to meet in person was unbearable. Hence the cure from their condition. By connecting with people online, they get out of their reclusiveness, pushed by the motivation to meet their new peers.
Our Global Hikikomori Moment
When Rafat says that “Zoom is the Napster of the event industry,” I think we need to distinguish between the chronic lack of digitally transformative events and an absence of a need to meet in person. All virtual event technology providers we’ve spoken with acknowledge that virtual events will become virtual components of otherwise live events rather than replacements for them.
The pandemic has created a shared experience of testing virtual events, meetings, and work-from-home realities that would probably have taken 10 years to achieve. It forced us to rely on technology to connect with our work and personal peers.
It reset the ways we interacted with others. What this process has personally left me with is a strange feeling I never experienced before.
While most you reading had to alter your way of life, I’ve worked remotely for the past 10 years. My closest friends and extended family live in another country. The only limitations the pandemic brought along for me was with respect to travel (which I minimized over the last year anyway), grocery shopping (I wanted to order online anyway), and restaurants.
Yet something different is happening. Like many of you, I have started to use virtual means to connect more with people I love and I work with. I started having conversations that I never had before.
As it has for all of us, this hikikomori moment reminded me of how much I value face-to-face interaction. While I’ve lived thousands of miles away from my family, the idea that I could not fly to meet them drove me crazy.
Being at home all the time is reminding me how much I need to be with people. Even the most tech-savvy entrepreneurs of the silicon valley are capitulating.
In my work circle, I miss going to industry events. I have never sat in a single session at an IMEX or PCMA event. I actually prefer to walk around the show floor and say hi to people I’ve known for years.
Virtual events will never give us that. The feeling of shaking hands, hugging (because I hug all my industry friends when I meet them), getting a drink together. The idea that we attend events for the content is just the heritage of the 90s.
Events that fully rely on content were destined to fail anyway. This is why experiences were all the rage until January 2020. Events with top CEOs and great names could be afforded only by sectors such as tech and business. This idea that having a great name on stage was going to sell tickets was an old one.
Events leading up to 2020 were something different. Younger generations could not care less about your stellar line-up. They want to meet with the peers they spend the whole day with online. They want to get out of their hikikomori status.
An example of that tendency is movie theaters. Where Netflix has clearly disrupted the industry and Disney is announcing Mulan on Disney+, bypassing theaters altogether, Cineworld’s CEO talks about an incredible interest in going back to the movies. Going to the movies is more than watching a film. It’s about the popcorn, the large screen, the anticipation. Netflix itself launched the Irishman at movie theaters before sending it to the platform.
Of course, you would not watch a so-so movie at the movie theater. You would wait for it to appear on Netflix or television. The same applies to events, and the rise of virtual has sped up this process.
We already pronounced events dead 10 years ago
Did video kill the radio star? Not really.
My gray beard allows me to recall the exact same conversation 10 years ago. There was no pandemic and the enemies were social media.
When social media was all the rage, many said that Twitter and Facebook were going to replace events. To the stage that some events banned hashtags for the fear of being cannibalized. As we all know the result was quite the opposite.
FOMO was born and we could not stand the fact we had to stay home while these people were having the time of their life.
I bet you thousands that hybrid events will do just that. Increase the FOMO of those watching online. Of course, if your event sucks, there will be no FOMO at all. Which brings me to the next point.
