The pandemic has forced many areas of activity to go virtual. The board meeting was no exception. An increasing number of managers are turning to special platforms for holding meetings virtually.
Differences offline from online
Online events cannot be compared to offline events. For organizers, technical contractors, speakers, moderators, this is also an event, since they are thoroughly preparing for it, but from the point of view of ordinary meeting participants, this is just a video call on the device. This is the main difficulty in attracting and retaining an audience in online communications.
The key difference between the discussed formats is the presence of a digital intermediary in communication and communication between people. And the quality of such communication depends on how accurately and fully this intermediary can read and transmit all information from the source to the recipient and vice versa.
There are three main differences between an offline event and an online event.
- The presence of imagination. In an online event, you must imagine how the viewer reacts to your messages, his emotions. Offline you see it, online you have to imagine it.
- Offline, the moderator necessarily coordinates his actions with numerous technical services responsible for the final result. Online, this function is supplemented by the competence of a TV production specialist. The online moderator works with several cameras, monitors, laptops, gadgets and collects all these information streams into a single whole on the air. It is the prompt and clear coordination of interactions between the moderator and all broadcast services that guarantee you a high-quality picture that always appears at the right time and in the right form.
- Online, the moderator also needs the ability to speak to the camera, the ability to communicate directly, so that the viewer has the appropriate feeling that they are talking directly to him alone, and not to the mass, as happens offline.
And the main advantage of the online format is that it is completely unlimited in the number of guests present on it.
The prospect of using online meetings
The prospects for the development of online events are, of course, colossal. The world will never be the same again. The pandemic has changed the world and, in particular, the world of business events dramatically. You need to understand that now a very large segment, in any case, will be taken online.
An online event is not only a solution to some business problems, it is also a very important therapeutic effect, which is designed to show colleagues that despite the separation. And it does have a good positive impact on the business in terms of maintaining a positive atmosphere in a turbulent situation where the board of the company is having a hard time with long-term planning.
So there will certainly be online events in the future. This will not be a wholesale move to online, because all the same, offline events will still have a very large load with horizontal communication, behind-the-scenes communication, and so on. Nevertheless, some solutions that have shown good results online may not come back from it.
The most important thing is to overcome the psychological barrier of people’s rejection of online communications. If at first many felt discomfort from remote work, now everyone is so used to working in a shirt on top and shorts on the bottom that for many this seems to be the only possible solution that significantly saves time on transfers to work and running around through numerous business meetings.