The Future of Meetings

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

What’s going to happen to virtual events when the pandemic is over? This question has become more and more urgent for speakers, meeting planners, and speaker bureaus as we’ve struggled through the course of the worldwide scourge of COVID-19. I’ve talked to a wide swathe of our communications world and begun to discern some possible answers. Herewith are my fearless predictions, with many thanks to everyone who shared their ideas and expertise with me. And of course, any blame for getting the future wrong attaches to me, not to everyone who helped.

Here’s what I see happening and not happening, sometime next year, or, if things go badly with the vaccines after all, early in 2022.

First, we won’t go all virtual. Until we evolve into some sort of techno versions of ourselves, we humans do much better and develop much deeper connections with each other face to face than virtually. The urge to convene has been building up and will result in an explosion of face-to-face events once it is safe, comfortable, and easy again. Just as the market for meetings bounced back bigger than ever after 9/11 and 2008–9, it will again post-pandemic.

Second, we won’t go all face-to-face. What’s different this time is that we learned how to use Zoom (and other video conferencing software) and the technology is much better than it was 10 and 20 years ago. So what’s going to…