In my previous post I asked an incomplete question. ‘What if virtual was better?
That’s far from the whole picture.
A lot of cliches are being thrown around, from ‘virtual is here to stay’ to ‘the future is hybrid’ but I feel like there is a certain weakness to these statements. They’re almost made tongue-in-cheek, as though there’s an underlying belief that we can only truly thrive on face to face.
I wonder if there’s a real appetite to seize the opportunity here.
We’ve just spent a year being conditioned to remote work, remote conversations and seeing our poorly lit faces on camera. On a global scale.
This is unprecedented.
As a business owner in the B2B event space, I witnessed first-hand this mass behavioral change – Starting with me.
I was a staunch skeptic. Not only could I not see the business opportunity, I had this deep-rooted aversion to virtual events and just wanted to sit this one out.
At first, virtual surprised me. Or, shall I say, members of my community did. They wanted to meet at all costs. I reluctantly decided to provide a platform, and before you know it I was being swept away by virtual event fever.
Only, it wasn’t just the boom that I was excited about.
I started to see that we may be standing before an untethered future, a chance to right our wrongs and sanitize technological revolution.
Hyperbole, much?
Just look at some of the ways in-person events stand in the way of progress:
Events as an urban magnet
In-person events are part of the fabric and the draw of cosmopolitan cities.
However, concentrating the economy around city hubs results in higher inequality and social divisions. As a particular demographic congregates in urban centers, the world is ideologically and financially knocked off balance.
The elitism of events
Not everyone has the same access to events, due to budget/seniority or status. As a result, events end up being devoid of diversity and, since events are a platform for status growth, the effect is self perpetuating.
The environment and quality of life
The need to meet in-person subjects us to constant travel that’s adding to the destruction of our ecosystem. Diseases spread faster and quality of life suffers under arduous commutes that deprive us of restful sleep.
Society, it seems, stands to benefit greatly from virtual. But what about business?
There really is more to it than cost-cutting: Merit based recruitment in a pool of global talent, reduced favoritism and toxic workplace culture, the democratization and speed of knowledge sharing.. Virtual is like a business efficiency superweapon.
Yet, even with all the obvious advantages, I worry that most of us are all too keen to hit the ‘default’ button and miss an important inflection point in the evolution of our society.
Soon we’ll be back to meeting in person and taking the path of least resistance, following what’s natural for us. Another case of biology evolving slower than technology.
In the midst of all this, I’m feeling a bit anxious.
I feel like the clock is ticking – that we have a fleeting chance to capitalize on the momentum generated by the pandemic and that we’re very close to wasting it.
It would be a bit like watching steam move the lid of a boiling pot and not thinking about harnessing its kinetic energy. Which, apparently, we did. For centuries.
That’s why we need virtual to be better.
Not “OK”. Not “a fix”. Better.
Unless we consistently hear people say ‘I would rather do this virtually’ we go back to square one.
Virtual innovators: now is the time to make that happen!
