Why should you invest in face to face events when you can save time and money with virtual events and on-line seminars.? Here’s why!
1. Learning occurs through a variety of options: lectures, panel presentations, hands-on workshops, inspirational keynotes, and other unique opportunities, such as tweet-ups. You can pick a session in whatever style suits your learning needs. And don’t forget about the informal learning that happens in the in-between moments of an in-person event, during meals or waiting for a presentation to begin.
2. There are fewer distractions at face to face events. Have you ever attended an online event only to be interrupted by people stopping in your office, phone calls, emails or meetings? Even though almost everything is on demand these days, carving out time at your office to watch an hour presentation is difficult. When you book yourself a ticket out of town and turn on your “out of office” reply, you attend the event and focus on learning and networking.
3. You share in the energy and excitement of other fellow attendees. Nothing replaces a face-to-face conversation, not even Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Having the time to talk to your peers, both in your industry and in other industries, gives you insight into what other people are doing and lets you benchmark best practices. You find that you aren’t the only one facing a particular challenge, and you just might find a way to apply what someone else is doing to your own situation.
4. You get to connect with the presenters. At in-person events, you get access to speakers and experts. You often have opportunities to sit down with industry experts at lunch, round table discussions, or one-on-one consulting sessions. The input received from asking specific questions in person gives you an edge you can’t get from a virtual event or online seminar
Though online technologies and social networks are critical to the way we work and have opened up countless new opportunities, we’re still human. Whether we’re working out problems with a colleague, closing a sale, or networking, better rapport is established in person.
At Plan Ahead Events, we not only plan meetings; we are advocates for them and show our support for the meetings industry. And we know that as much as virtual meetings can solve some challenges for people who cannot physically attend the actual meeting for one reason or another, the virtual world can never replace the real world of face to face experiences.
And this was the message carried by Jacques Attali to delegates at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives' Global Education Conference in Paris. "I understand that a lot of things can be done on videoconferencing,” said Attali, but “quality events, where people will learn something” are extremely valuable to an organization.
Attali, who was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, said the music industry has demonstrated the importance of attending events.“I very often think that music is the best way to forecast the future,” he said. “Look at what happened to the music industry. Try to sell a CD – nobody wants to buy it. Try to sell a concert ticket – you will find a lot of people ready to buy it. Why? Because it is an experience. An event. Where people share life experiences.”
According to Attali, a French economist and former advisor to President Francois Mitterrand, the most important place in an office is the coffee machine. When employees meet at the coffee machine, their interaction is “outside hierarchy” allowing them to freely discuss ideas – a vital source of innovation for a company.
People meeting people and talking face to face: irreplaceable!