The end of meetings as we know it? Navigating Face to Face – Virtual – Hybrid Meetings

ASN Events Director Mike Pickford shares some insight into navigating the ever-evolving space of face-to-face, virtual, and hybrid meetings.

For years, ASN Events has been hearing of the demise of face to face meetings – not because of pandemic risk but with fast cheap internet speeds, everyone will just want to jump online and meet virtually. It hasn’t been happening at any level which would suggest the demise of face-to-face meetings and until COVID-19 emerged, it’s been as busy as ever with real conferences at real venues.

Even if you were not at the start of this year, I suspect everyone is more familiar with virtual meetings now. In my view this has only emphasised why face to face meetings will never disappear. Virtual elements may creep in but given the chance, and in a safe environment, people are going to want to get face to face again. Virtual meetings by design and nature, never going to allow delegates to strike up new relationships and initiate new research collaborations and directions as effectively as face to face. Certainly there will be much more acceptance of the odd speaker wanting to present by Zoom or similar, and there may be delegates asking to join the meeting virtually – both of these can be win win situations for the meeting from a financial perspective at least. There is evidence pre COVID-19, that virtual participants do upgrade to being physical delegates in future years.

Now while meetings are not allowed, a webinar to stay connected with your audience in the absence of your normal conference may make a lot of strategic sense.

ASN has prepared guideline briefing and planning documents for both hybrid meetings and webinars. Contact any of our team to get access to these documents if interested.