Panel discussion (YouTube, May 11, 2020) about priorities for B2B virtual event platforms. Speakers emphasize the importance of audience data and lead-generation tracking, secure content access (paywalls) to capture data, strong engagement tools (polls, breakout rooms) and high-quality video playback for on-demand viewing. They note the current fragmentation of event platforms (no single solution does everything) and express desire for an all-in-one platform that also delivers a standout audience experience across mobile and desktop.
Chapters
From my point of view, audience data information. So tracking on who's viewing and what they're looking at and then also like lead gen tracking, I think, I think using something that's tested so there's a load of new tech springing up left, right and center makes me a little bit nervous that some of it isn't tested. So I think something that's been around for a little bit longer might be a good option and then. Or something to consider at least. And then for us, something that's really important is now looking at something where we can have the content really securely behind a data or paywall. So I really, at the very least, if I'm giving away the content for free, I really want to get a load of data. So that. So yeah, something where you can collect the data is really important for me.
I think because at heart we're a training company. A platform that allows you to engage with the audience and allows the audience to engage in different ways, whether it's through polls or whether it's through breakout rooms or whatever. That's really important for us because ultimately we want people to stay there and not just leave the platform. I think for us also because a lot of all of our stuff is on demand afterwards. The video playback quality, it sounds like a small thing, but it's quite a big thing. Like Zoom, for example, in my opinion has better video playback quality than crowdcast as an example. Although crowdcast is very good for collecting data and research and things like that. So balancing that and that ability. Joe just said it. But to research audience, we've never had that before. Crowdcast, not that I'm advocating for that over something else, but gives you a really great ability to capture. Capture brilliant data and ask brilliant questions. So for us at the moment, that's probably the most important stuff, but that might change over time.
I think there's two things here. One is, and Joe pointed to this, everyone's running at this ball at the moment, right? And there's loads of companies developing loads of tech. Event technology has been around event platforms, digital event platforms have been around for a long time. The interesting thing is that all of a sudden the industry's gone boom. And the challenge I'm seeing is if you combine several of the platforms, you'd have the perfect platform at the moment. I don't think there's one platform that does everything you need in one as an event organizer. And I'd love to see the event platform come out that actually just does everything in one. I want to see like the Salesforce of event platforms, basically. And I don't want to see it developed by Salesforce, but I'd rather an entrepreneur than it. So I think there's that. I also think we need to start taking the audience into account more and more. So it's going to be a given that you have to have great content and you're not going to be able to. That's table stakes. You're not going to be able to play if you don't have great content. No one's going to tune in. I think we're going to reach. I thought we'd already reached peak webinar before COVID to be honest. I think we're going to reach peak webinar very, very soon and people are going to start going back to whatever the hybrids of work and online and offline is. I'd love to see some technology that really starts to understand that within audiences and start to think about, okay, so what's the mobile experience into desktop experience? What is the. And how do we keep that audience? How do we do some. Keep doing things that really give a wow factor for the audience. Like that bit where you walk into an event, you know, I'm thinking, what some of the more creative shows there, whereas an audience member, you just go, cool. I don't think event technology's quite got that yet. But I think given that you have massive concerts being run on Fortnite and all of these sorts of things going on, it's not beyond the realms of possibility to create a wow cool experience. And I think that will be the next phase in event technology, or I hope it is sat.
