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: Cheryl Oswald
Company Name: Kohl's
Job Title: Project Manager, Store Operations & Experience & Events
Years of Experience: 13
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?
After not having in-person events in over a year it allowed us to take a step back and look at the overall event landscape and how we can change it. It's allowed us the time to look at our events and evolve them and apply new trends, new ideas, and what we want our attendees to experience and take back from the event.
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?
We have always held some aspect of a virtual meeting before we all made the shift to virtual meetings, but we are looking at how we can evolve our virtual meetings. How can we change something we have always done and make it more engaging for those on the other end of the screen?
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 don't think anything will ever replace the traditional in-person meeting. There's something powerful when you can meet face to face. However, I think hybrid meetings are a great alternative and can allow attendees to experience the event.
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
The connections. For our group, we are spread out all over the country and it's one of the few times we are able to bring them together and they can connect and collaborate together.
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 know this will change as things start to level out, but right now the booking windows and availability have been challenging given all the re-bookings that have been happening. It's made it more difficult to source events and the booking windows are even tighter.
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.