2009 has been a difficult year for the industry which has taken a double hit from a deep recession and the public furor over AIG. This has been compounded by political grandstanding and unbalanced reporting. Thus a solid initiative like S. 1023 finds itself stalled in Congress when there is a pressing need to reverse the downward trend of visitors to the US and its negative effect on the meetings business.
Meanwhile, as face to face meetings languish, many potential ‘attendees’ are moving into virtual worlds. Hence IBM’s Sametime launch. According to IBM, users of the software will be able to ‘meet up’ in a choice of prefabricated meeting spaces to exchange ideas or presentations. Sounds ominously like a conventional meeting, doesn’t it? As the piece points out, IBM uses virtual worlds internally to host events, and gained a reputation for being a leader in the space after hosting a number of large conferences on Second Life, which itself is a leader in the field. See my earlier post for a brief introduction to Second Life.
It seems to me that these are the horns of the current dilemma; the perfect storm created by the recession coupled with public antipathy toward the meeting business, on the one hand, and the rise of the virtual meeting with its potential to put a permanent dent in face to face meeting revenues, on the other.
Whatever happens going forward, I believe that some of these changes will be permanent. Those companies that can adapt will flourish. Those that cannot will struggle.
