It was really cold in New York today. I snapped this picture just a stone’s throw away from where US Airways Flight 1549 was finally lifted from the icy waters of the Hudson River and it got me thinking once again about these challenging economic times and the evolving nature of the industry.
My last post talked about the evolution of the corporate meeting from a face to face model to a virtual one and for the need for most of us to begin morphing our skills to accommodate this change. This is not to say that the face to face meeting is dead, there will always be strong demand for the unique experience of interacting with someone in person, but the cost remains prohibitive except for very large scale events, especially while budgets remain constrained. That means the virtual meeting is here to stay.
As the title of this post suggests, there’s a positive aspect to all of this. First, it opens up a new realm of possibilities for everyone. The virtual meeting is a much bigger pie because it’s cost-effective for more companies. What’s more, things have been moving in this direction for some time. As the recent ON24 survey points out, a full 76% of those surveyed said their company has already been using virtual events (53%) or plans to begin using them (23%) to supplement some of their physical events in 2009.
As the economy improves, businesses will once more begin to spend big dollars on face to face meetings, but it is doubtful whether they will ever return to the hey day of the big trade shows like CES or the large pharmaceutical product launches. Rather it will be a more pragmatic and cost-effective mix of the virtual and the real.
As the temperatures begin to warm, those of us who have embraced the sometimes cold wind of change and adapted successfully to the new environment, will be well positioned to take advantage of both .
