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CISCO broke ground last year when it opted to hold a virtual conference for its employees. Image courtesy of Cisco.
Last year, when CISCO opted to hold a virtual conference for the first time for its 20,000 sales employees, the global meetings industry drew a collective gasp.
Was this a harbinger of things to come? Would more corporations, battered by budget cuts and the need to be politically correct in a year of job losses, turn to virtual technology to cut costs?
Worse, would they like it so much that they would change the way they organised their meetings forever?
True, CISCO – which owns TelePresence, the video conferencing solution which is said to have redefined the quality of such meetings – had a vested interest in doing so, and was probably a natural candidate to hold such a large-scale virtual meeting, but the fact that it was held was not to be lightly dismissed by an industry that was already on the edge.
The around-the-clock, four-day event brought together 20,000 employees from across 104 countries, in 24 different time zones. It incorporated breakout sessions via WebEx and keynote speeches via Cisco iPTV, as well as 124 chat sessions between executives and attendees.
An article on ZDNet said, “Sure, it wasn’t the same sort of networking opportunity that sales folks have become accustomed to in the real world and certainly there were those who would say that the conference wasn’t as effective because it was lacking the face-to-face interactions.”
But CISCO called the event a success. This can be seen in the fact that the virtual event cost less than 10 per cent of the cost of the physical event, from about $4,500 per person to less than $400 per person.
“As a first of its kind event of that magnitude, it also offered some valuable insight, using real-time analytics, on what it takes to keep people engaged and interactive and what sort of information was most valuable. Through the data, event managers knew when participants clicked away during a slow part of a keynote, when a breakout session seemed to gain some energy among participants, and which the topics of interest in executive chat sessions were,” the article continued.
Mr Martin Sirk, President, International Congress & Convention Association.
On a positive note for face to face meetings however, the article also said, “Cisco also understands that there will still be the need for physical events and sees the virtual event as more of a complement, instead of a replacement. Perhaps the sales teams could meet on a smaller scale regionally but virtually on a global scale. Or maybe the annual event is trimmed down to fewer participants on-site but be beefed up for more participants to join in remotely - a true hybrid approach.”
This hybrid approach will underpin the future of the global meetings industry, believes Mr Robin Lokerman, President of MCI Asia Pacific, with organisers looking to blend the communication capabilities enabled by new technology and the need to still meet face to face.
In a report released last October, Forrester Research said virtual meetings can be “an effective marketing tool for reaching global audiences” and that they take away the “physical geographical borders in terms of distance, as well as other constraints such as visas, passports, flight delays, security issues and safety concerns. ”
Speaking at a MICE industry conference in the Philippines, Mr Lokerman said for the industry to defend its turf, the physical conference format would have to change – no more long plenary sessions, but formats in which technology facilitates the communication and interaction, where “you don’t see the technology, it’s just there.”
He calls it an integration of technology into the meetings format so that “it’s not in your face, but...everywhere.”
“The physical format of meetings will change completely. Venues need to be hyper-connected. Layouts need to change – there will be a need for more small breakout rooms and networking space.
“You will have presentations that will be no longer than 12 minutes by speakers, who will plant some ideas and thoughts, and then people will digest the information, discuss this and come back with new insights.”
At the Philippine conference, organisers deployed WITCast, the Twitter-based social networking tool for events developed by WIT-Web In Travel, which introduced the solution last year at its conference in Singapore. Delegates were able to tweet their comments and ask questions real-time during sessions.
Ms Elizabeth Rich, CEO, Business Events Council of Australia.
There are some however, who caution against the “thoughtless” use of technology such as Mr Martin Sirk, President of the International Congress & Convention Association ( ICCA), who said this would lead to distractions and disruptions in the physical meetings format.
Ms Elizabeth Rich, CEO of the Business Events Council of Australia, said small meetings might lose out with the advent of new technology. However, physical meetings are still important as “when you’ve got issues that require heart, you need that direct person-to-person contact still.”
Mr Greg Duffell, CEO of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), in his keynote speech said that the biggest barrier to technology adoption by the MICE industry was “mindset”. “We need to change our mindset and recognize that change is here and we have to change with it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Sirk said international association meetings remained buoyant in 2009 and he noted that despite 2009's grim economic climate, there were very few cancellations for association meetings last year.
Calling the sector the most resilient in the whole meetings industry, Mr Sirk attributed the positive showing to companies' recognition of the power of a knowledge economy, that is, such events were necessary for transferring knowledge and for growth.
However, planning events has become more challenging as companies made fundamental changes to the way they did business. Shorter lead times and new demands for Professional Congress Organisers (PCOs) and Destination Management Companies (DMCs) to share risks were making it tougher for such suppliers, said Mr Anthony Wong, Group Managing Director of Asian Overland Services, Malaysia.
One key challenge, he said, was meeting client requirements without sacrificing service and quality. Human resource training has also become more vital this year.
At the heart of the challenges facing the MICE industry however are two words – accountability and return on investment.
Ms Rich said industry suppliers needed to get better at demonstrating real returns while Mr Lokerman said the best thing that could happen to the industry in 2010 was an emphasis on accountability “so that the word ‘junket’ would be erased from the vocabulary forever.”
