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The Virtual EventThe Virtual EventResource Book Resource Book 
a collection of resourcesfor planning, producing, and marketingsuccessful virtual events and meetings
 
Welcome to theWelcome to the
Right now the worlds of marketing and meetings are changing, likelyforever. Due to the global economic turmoil, companies are cuttingtravel across the board or in all but customer facing situations that areidentified as critical to close business. The pendulum has swungtotally away from travel causing chaos in the physical event andmeeting market. Out of this chaos of cancelled trade shows,conferences and meetings of all types, has come the need for marketers and meeting planners to rethink their plans and look for innovative new ways to achieve the goals of these events without thetravel. Though virtual events and virtual meetings have been aroundfor some time, the current situation has created extremely highdemand for all virtual marketing and meeting solutions.If you are reading this now, you probably are well aware of what ishappening in the virtual events space and are one of the manymarketers and event producers that are trying to create a strategythat involves deploying virtual events in place of or in addition to, your physical events. What is important to understand is that this is aseismic shift that cannot be undone. Although the pendulum will swingback, it will not swing back to where things were. This is not like post9-11 or the SARS epidemic where travel came back even stronger than ever. These difficult economic times will be with us for a long,long time and businesses will continue to look at ways to keep costsdown wherever they can.The good news is that virtual events and meetings are working.Companies are realizing significant ROI and even physical eventproducers are seeing profitability increase with virtual events versus
 
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physical events. Why? Attendance is going up because more peoplecan attend since they don’t need to travel. The vast majority of moneyspent to participate in an event never went to the event producer…theregistration fee, if there was one, was a fraction of what the attendeeand the event producer had to spend in travel, lodging, food andbeverage, AV, rental fees, etc. IBM was recently featured in a TVinterview talking about how they have saved $350,000 in just onemeeting by going virtual. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of meetings companies were doing and you can get a sense of thevastness of the potential ROI.We don’t believe that physical event will ever go away but things havechanged and there will be fewer physical meetings and more virtual;there will be fewer people attending physical events and more attendingthe same event virtually. The technology needed to conduct virtualmeetings is improving rapidly while becoming more affordable andavailable every day. Though we can’t replace the “handshake” in avirtual environment, technology is available to create a photorealisticimage/avatar of yourself that walks, talks, sees and hears …and yesthey are working on the handshake.This book is a collection of useful resources we found at the time of production. We will constantly update it and add more useful featuresand functionality. If you have feedback or want to contribute, pleaseemail us at info@virtualedge.org. Thanks and good luck with your events!.Michael DoyleVirtual Edge
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