Embracing Your Virtual World
I became aware today of a new conference taking place in September of this year. The topic is about Embracing Your Virtual World but the conference is on site in California with no mention of any virtual participation. I went and checked out their website with the hope of filling out a form or making contact - no contact information on the site at all - unless you register. What is this? A website (virtual presence), a conference about the virtual world, but no way of contacting these people virtually (or even by phone or fax) and no mention of any virtual participation. I emailed them care of their newsletter address so hopefully someone will get it!
I was recently made aware of your forthcoming convention but there is no contact information on your site promoting this and no way of making contact, unless you register.
I was interested in finding out why this isn’t being held virtually since it is about embracing the virtual world? And I am serious. I am a Virtual Assistant and belong to a fast growing worldwide community of virtual business operators. We’ve been holding annual conferences for two years now, over a 3 day period in May - all entirely virtual with speakers from 7 different countries or timezones.
I’m sure the topic of your convention would be of interest to people globally but because of airfares, accommodation and global unrest, many would not want to travel all the way to California.
What do you think? Shouldn’t a conference about something of this nature have a virtual component for virtual attendees? For those of you who aren’t aware, the Online International Virtual Assistants Convention was held online with attendees from many countries with a total of 23 speakers from different countries and timezones and was a fantastic event. Whilst the OIVAC focused on the Virtual Assistant industry anyone was welcome to attend as the variety of topics presented applied to anyone in business. KMT
Virtual events are quite different from local events. They require different types of equipment and presentation methods. You cannot just “open up” a local event to online participation, you must organize an entirely separate parallel event. They don’t easily translate across either. Many things which you can do easily for an offline event, will require a great deal more preparation to duplicate them online.
I’ll be teaching a course in Web Development this fall for the University of Wyoming. The curriculum is completely unique, no one else could help me create it. It took me just three weeks to assemble the individual class outlines (topic by topic for 1 hour lessons - 12 lessons), assemble and create handouts and reference materials for each class, and to create assignments and visual aids for each lesson. I am now in the process of expanding that into an online course - the work is much more difficult, both creatively and in scope.
I have to detail everything so that someone can learn it without my presence. I have to anticipate questions and provide answers. I have to show things with more visual aids, screenshots, video clips.
In a virtual conference, you can get feedback and questions from the attendees, but it still is not the same as being there in person. Some of the energy is missing, the visible audience feedback is lacking, and you cannot interact in the same way. The more interaction and the closer you get to reality, the higher the expense of creating the connection.
Most low-cost or simple solutions are audio only. For my class, and for many others, audio is not sufficient. Video, images, and other types of interaction are essential. Implementing a higher degree of interactivity is much more costly, especially when you move beyond one-on-one, and into broadcasting and interacting with larger groups. To reach that kind of goal, it has to be planned in advance, as that kind of presentation, not as a live, offline presentation.
It is a beguiling idea, but only when one does not fully comprehend the technical and structural requirements behind such an endeavor. It is a worthy goal, but one that really has to be worked toward, one step at a time, not one that can be produced on demand when it has not been considered ahead of time.
The OIVAC conference I mentioned Laura had a lot of energy and was very interactive. We were able to view the Powerpoint slides and ask questions whilst the speaker was speaking - they could see the text questions being asked or if someone wanted to use the microphone then that is visibly obvious too. So they get both audio and visual and it works very well. And because we had speakers from several countries and attendees from even more countries the way it was set up was perfect for our needs. I’ve heard of other conferences being held this way. There was a podcasting one on a few weeks before ours using exactly the same conferencing services.
I still feel if a conference is going about ‘embracing the virtual world’ it should include a virtual aspect so that others can participate on a virtual level - but that’s just my opinion
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