Best of Both Worlds
While creating the same (or similar) experience is essential, you will need to also come up with ways to break the boundaries between the two parties by facilitating 2-way communication. Remember, it may be 2021 but it’s not game over for apps. Event apps will be THE thing that helps to connect both your user groups.
Your in-person attendees should be able to read and participate in discussions initiated by online users on the event feed. Also, your attendees should be able to drop their e-business cards and even schedule meetings with each other. While the virtual attendees will have their laptop screens in front of them, your in-person attendees can engage with them via meeting rooms located at the venue that have projectors. Alternatively, you could consider installing small rooms or kiosks to facilitate more private 1:1 meetings.
Virtual Cash Cows
What will be interesting to see in 2021 is how revenues will be driven through the event’s digital component, as it will no longer be a free experience. Some events may keep the prices of both experiences the same. Some might use the virtual platform to offer on-demand content as an add-on to physical attendees (that can be accessed even after the event has ended) – at an extra price. Others might also use it to provide a different kind of experience by complementing it with VR technology.
Hub and spoke
Big events such as large annual conferences will end up following the Hub and Spoke model. This means there will be the main hub where the event will take place and it will be streamed across smaller localised clusters.
This will make room for more personalized conversations to occur and also remove the need for travelling. But that doesn’t mean the clusters will become aloof in themselves. Instead, the anchor, in this case, would again be event technology. As discussed previously, it will be used to connect the attendees located in different regions and different platforms (i.e. online and offline).