I had dinner the other night with a buddy of mine who runs a company that produces major corporate events. You know the kind with a stage, lighting, stadium seating and a day or two of PowerPoint presentations designed to pump up the troops. Interestingly enough, he reported their business was off dramatically in that area. Why?


Three letters - AIG –
No corporate events person in their right mind would want to do a major event right now in the wake of the AIG scandal. They are either cancelling them outright, postponing them til next year or doing them virtually.
I have been looking into virtual events with several vendors: Inexpo, ON24 and Unisfair. I also blogged about my thoughts on virtual events. Bottom line is I think there is great value there for us at BearingPoint and have it my budget again for next year.
Why do I see value in Virtual Events? .... I see the opportunity to invest in this technology and have it pay for itself in one year. I estimate, if you set up your own branded virtual event area and do at least 5 webinars in that area during the cost of a year, you should be able to pay for the service for the first year since the cost of a virtual Webinar is about half that of the cost of a regular webinar with a media partner.
Then you can leverage the platform to hold a virtual event internally. You can have your CEO speak to the whole company live and in person, take questions real time from about 10,000 people. All this at a fraction of the cost of a major corporate event.
One word of advice you need a good front end presentation layer. Hire a good video crew that can work with the virtual platform (email me for a recommendation) and you are good to go.
While it may be out of fashion to do a major corporate event .... communicating with large groups of people in a personable style is not.