COVID-19 and the Future of Events

The impact of the crisis on events has been stark, sudden and may be long-lasting.

Whether recovery is U shaped or V-shaped, once the health challenge is solved, it is difficult to know whether the world of events will ever be the same again.

Event evangelists (including myself) will always say that ‘nothing will replace face to face’. And to some extent, I agree. That serendipitous moment you meet someone at an event is hard to replicate online, no matter how clever the software. But the fact is that the interest and activity in virtual event platforms have skyrocketed, and even when things settle back to the new normality, it’s clear that we will travel less and attend fewer meetings and events. Virtual is here to stay in some shape or form in part as business travel will be kept to a bare minimum. 

In our survey, approximately 29% think that by October ‘20 business will return to normal. Personally, I think these people are the optimists. I get it, I want things to return to normal too! But I tend to agree with the 70% who think it’s ‘21 at the earliest and any form of confidence will be found when an actual vaccine is available to all. 

For the print sector, events, in particular exhibitions, are the engines of commerce. New releases of tech are unveiled, people get to see, compare, learn, view, network and then buy. They are important, integral.

But events are simply not possible now, and the big exhibitions planned for the autumn look highly unlikely to run in my view.

So what does this mean for the future of events? For someone like me who has worked in events for 20 years, it’s an odd and somewhat disconcerting time. It feels to me like a watershed moment. Is there an opportunity among this threat? Is it time to wait out while the storm passes? Is now the time to innovate?

Has this crisis precipitated a Darwinian decline of events that were slowly but surely on the downward slope of their product life cycle anyway? 

Humans need to congregate. We have a visceral need to. At events, we meet, communicate, learn and this is how we have built communities that have value, coherence and power. This will continue of course, but surely it will be in a different form or a different shape, accompanied more closely by a digital platform. 

But to be honest, this issue feels way too big for any single article. 

So on May 14, we host our COVID-19 and the Future of Events Webinar.

Join us, Stephen Brooks, Silvia Blattner, Piers Bearne, Nicola Macdonald and Graham Kennedy.

To join us register here and talk about events are changing, and what may be in store for us in the future.