All Change? How the rush to digital left its mark on in-person meetings

At the start of 2020, no one could have imagined that the meetings industry would be so radically changed. A year later and many people in the industry are asking themselves: ‘will meetings ever be the same again?’

The organisation I run, INCON, represents some of the leading conference organisers in the world. We pulled together everything we learned from the pivot to digital to see which innovations would still apply as we begin to organise in-person meetings again.

Here’s what’s going to stick:

Authentic meetings & insights The meeting of the future will be authentic, human and driven by what people want. The shape of each meeting and meeting goals will need to be well-defined, validated and quantifiable results will be an expectation, not just a nice-to-have. As clients consider whether to go ahead with meetings, data insights will be more important than ever to make sure they are responding to needs and achieving their objectives.

Our partner company, CPO Hanser Service, recently created its own virtual event platform and is learning a lot from the abundance of information that is available. Managing director Inge Hanser believes that, ‘granular data like preferred content and format, attendance figures, booth traffic and speaker evaluations will become standard practice with organisers, sponsors and exhibitors demanding this level of detail in the future’.