This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
Name: Brooke Wilson
Company Name: 360 Live Media
Job Title: Experience Design Manager
Years of Experience:
How do you think you are positioned, after months of persevering with the pandemic, to take advantage of our new and disrupted meetings/events landscape?
I think the pandemic has really positioned us all to be more comfortable with change. Not only has the business events industry been disrupted, but every aspect of our lives have been disrupted. Although it was uncomfortable at first, persevering through it has shown that we can be creative, try new things and not be afraid to switch it up. I am personally going to use this as an opportunity to put everything on the table and look at what event strategies are working and what needs to be updated or even replaced.
As our community moves forward with planning in person meetings, what new technologies or processes are you implementing that you may have not looked at before?
I think crowdsourcing can play a bigger role in meetings and events moving forward. Everyone is more selective with how they spend their time, and organizers are realizing that jam-packed agendas with 30+ concurrent sessions will be less tolerated. Rather than trying to guess what content makes the cut, I recommend asking your audience what they are interested in hearing. People support what they help to create, and adding a few crowdsourced sessions to your agenda is sure to help with session ratings.
As we see virtual meetings transition back to face to face, hybrid meetings are beginning to be the vehicle to return to normalcy. What are your thoughts on hybrid meetings versus traditional fully in person meetings?
I think it depends on your event and how it was performing prior to, and during the pandemic. If your event was in a downward trajectory prior to 2020, then digital or hybrid might be a great solution to improve performance. On the other hand, perhaps you had an extremely healthy in-person event that was growing until the pandemic. Maybe you don’t need to add a digital component to make it hybrid if you already have a great in-person value proposition. Overall, I don’t believe all events should be hybrid moving forward. You should ask what job does this event do for our stakeholders and what format helps it do that job best – in-person, digital or hybrid?
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
Easily it is being back together again. We’ve all been missing human connection and although digital does a lot of things well, there is just no way to replicate what it is like to be in the presence of others. I for one am most looking forward to seeing all of my friends and colleagues in 2022!
As the pandemic fades away and we return to face-to-face events what do you hope changes, either for planners or hoteliers, in the traditional RFP and proposal process as a result of all of the learnings from the last 20+ months?
I would love to see more open communication and collaboration between organizers and suppliers. The business events industry has many stakeholders and we all have different goals, and different outside factors affecting our pursuit of these goals. The more transparent planners can be with hoteliers and vice versa, the more we are all going to succeed together. It took a united industry to make it through the pandemic, and it’s going to take a united industry to turn it into the community we need.
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
