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: Stephanie Lippi
Company Name: Church Facilities Conference & Expo presented by EH Media, LLC
Job Title: Conference Manager
Years of Experience: 2
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 things we learned over the past two years have helped us understand that flexibility is the best trait we can have. If we can remain willing to adapt to what people need and still serve them when change needs to happen, we'll be able to have grace for whatever comes.
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?
In 2020, we used a virtual platform to host our conference. Since then, we've made the switch back to in-person events. While we've considered streaming and on demand options for those who can't physically attend, we feel it's not the right timing for us as the majority of our audience would prefer to meet in person. We're blessed to have a great community of attendees who love meeting together.
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?
In our company, the majority of us are located in different states, so in-person and hybrid meetings are more challenging for us. Also, our clients are based all over the world, so for us, virtual meetings are best.
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
Networking. There's no question that our attendees are looking forward to networking with each other, with our speakers, and with our vendors, so this is definitely the biggest value for them.
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?
My hope is that companies are able to respond more quickly to RFPs that have been sent out so that decisions can be made in the right amount of time. We've also noticed that labor costs have gone up, and that's a big challenge for us since we're still a fairly new event.
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.