Are Virtual Events Here to Stay?
Recently the Clover Events team caught up with our friend Sean Denny of Luxe Productions, one of our favorite AV and lighting partners. We wanted to learn more about the future of virtual and livestream events and knew that they would be the perfect experts to chat with about this topic. Sean and his partners have used this time of shelter-in-place and postponed events to fully implement virtual and livestream options for both weddings and corporate events, something Sean says was on their radar pre-pandemic, but was very quickly moved up to a priority.
As we all know, in-person events have all but stopped for the time being, no matter where you live. At the beginning of all this, there was a certain novelty to seeing your co-workers or friends in their “natural habitats” more than likely in some form of sweats. At this point, some of that novelty is starting to wear off and people are looking for the next way to connect, certainly in a professional setting and for important milestone celebrations like weddings.
Sean and his team at Luxe Productions see in the future a sort of hybrid event, where some of the participants or guests are virtual and some are together in small groups. Now this is not your typical Zoom or Google meeting, but rather a produced event that still allows for a wedding party, events hosts or a panel of speakers. The biggest difference is that the audience is not there in person to experience the event. There are still many ways to keep the event engaging with chat feeds, livestreamed entertainment and Q&A. For a wedding, imagine how fun it would be to have chat booths where your in-person guests could jump in and chat with a virtual guest or two?! We’re loving this concept!
It’s pretty safe to say that virtual events will not be going away anytime soon and may stick around long past the shelter-in-place orders end. This is showing event hosts what a great option this could be for guests who are unable to attend the event. The other benefit to this trend emerging right now is that the production value for these events will certainly improve as the demand increases.
Check out the full video below! We hope you find the discussion as interesting and enlightening as we did!
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