Real-world and Virtual events

Context

Since the beginning of the pandemic, companies have been increasingly looking for event solutions and ways to continue their business and activities. It is understandably challenging to make business projections in such an uncertain context, to invest in the costs for real-world events in the medium and long term. Closed or highly restricted real-world venues must find alternatives in order to offer safe spaces for communication and to provide a certain level of brand exposure.

Many companies can no longer offer office spaces for employees to meet and work and many teams are tired of online meetings via videoconference tools (ZOOM, Skype…) that require considerable concentration. They’ve lost the personal connections created by informal moments of interaction; simply put, the feeling of being truly “together”.

It’s likely that you’ve witnessed these problems firsthand, right?

Yes, everything is either at a standstill or greatly slowed down and yet your company needs to be able to communicate with its internal and external audiences to pursue its development goals. Covid-19 will not disappear overnight! It has fundamentally changed the way we see and experience things. Now’s the time for us to find new solutions to meet the current and future needs of our society.

But where should we start? What Virtual Events, Virtual Spaces and Virtual Production solutions are available? How do they work and what price range are we talking about?

The good news is that by preventing physical gatherings, Covid-19 responses have greatly accelerated the development and democratization of immersive technologies. The stage is set for powerful virtual and hybrid events to begin taking place. Virtual spaces have become viable long-term solutions and provide opportunities to create links, generate sales leads and build places where people can think and work together differently, improving the experience.

Let’s take a closer look together!

Make your virtual events compelling, accessible and effective

We can help you entirely digitize your events or create a hybrid event (half virtual / half physical) thanks to our creative-technical expertise and proven methods.

Organizing a virtual event brings a number of significant, and sometimes daunting, challenges that require a variety of skills, all of which we have mastered here at SoWhen?. This is why we accompany you right from the beginning concept stage of the project to make sure you reach your objectives while keeping within your budget. We’re here to work with you to build your success! We’ll provide you with the support and advice you need to fully understand and master the tools and solutions we offer at every stage of your project. We also offer customized tutorials that can help your teams easily master the interface and available features of our systems. 

Our mastery of Web XR and new image technologies, with which we’ve been experimenting for 10 years, opens a whole new realm of possibilities and allows us to offer you solutions that truly meet your needs.

Virtual Events: User Experience at the heart of the process

Reproducing a real-world event into a virtual one, directly as it is, is both pointless and inefficient.

Your objectives might be the same but the means used to achieve them will be different. Going from a real-world event to a virtual one requires approaching the task in a different state of mind.

Your audience during a real-world event is fully engaged; the content you offer them will have their full attention and interest, which is not the case when they participate in a virtual event. Capturing and then holding their attention means thinking about the user journey and experience, bearing in mind that they can leave at any time, with a simple click.

This means adapting the format of your content (shorter), facilitating the process through a user-friendly interface, and making the experience fun and meaningful. Our devices and systems take into account both your objectives as an organizer but also the added value you want to bring to your audience.

What types of events can you digitize?

==> You can create virtual events such as: trade shows (or e-trade shows), festivals, conferences (e-conferences), topex, workshops, plenary sessions, training courses, team building, showrooms, virtual concerts, broadcasts… in fact, almost any type of event.

The features of your virtual content are designed according to your needs. We strongly recommend not having a plethora of features as this would be more confusing than reassuring for your users (let’s not forget that 23% of adults internationally are not digitally literate (Source page 5). Here are some examples of possible features: live streaming and screen sharing documents, images, videos, etc… chats, games, meeting rooms, private communication spaces, VIP areas, the ability to walk around and discover the world of a brand…

These events can be entirely virtualized with various degrees of immersivenenss.

 

==> Hybrid Events are preferred for:

  • Speeches
  • Live broadcasts (concerts, talks, broadcasts, meetings…)

These hybrid events allow for meaningful interaction between the person being filmed in a real location and their remote audience. However, the event’s writing and management require twice the effort since you need to connect and involve two audiences: physical (on set) and virtual (remote).

Let's open together a whole new realm of possibilities!

FOR VIRTUAL EVENTS, THREE SOLUTIONS ARE POSSIBLE

OUR FULL-WEB PACKAGE “VR EVENT”:

  • Our full-web package, VR EVENT, requires no local installation or specific hardware. We provide you access to our virtual room/s which we customize to your image (dedicated advertising locations). In this space, you can deliver your talk via a screen for a live or time-shifted broadcast (for your speeches, plenary sessions…), present your products and broadcast your content making them available for download. Being very quick to set up and easy to access, this customizable virtual space is ideal for talks, speeches and presenting content intuitively. Don’t hesitate to ask us for a demonstration! We can, of course, create a completely custom-made virtual space from the ground up to perfectly fit your image.

USING AN EXISTING PLATFORM

We can help you in using existing platforms such as shared virtual worlds. This solution is quicker to set up than a custom-made one and allows us to implement various elements of your brand image. We privatize the premises for the duration of your event and assist you during its use. SoWhen? takes care of the whole service:

  • Technical configurations: making market solutions more accessible, ensuring reliable connectivity and decent connection speeds, providing compatible hardware (power, Information System restrictions), confidentiality management, etc.
  • Adapting user assistance to your audience – namely in French (native solutions are provided in English)
  • Hardware provision and configuration if audiences need to be equipped.

CREATING A CUSTOM-MADE VIRTUAL WORLD

  • We can create your very own custom virtual world. Your metaverse is built to meet all your needs and desires, and designed in your image. The fact that it can be modified and updated at anytime makes this a perfectly viable long-term solution.

FOR HYBRID EVENTS:

By “Hybrid Events” we mean events that take place in Mixed Reality: in both a physical and virtual world. Here are 3 possible examples of such events:

A SIMULTANEOUS REAL-WORLD AND VIRTUAL EVENT:

Want to hold a real-world event and a virtual event simultaneously in order to reach the biggest possible audience? This would be another example of a Mixed Reality event (hybrid). Part of your audience can be with you in person (VIPs for example) and others, from all over the world, can join and follow you in a virtual world. Everyone can experience exactly the same moment since you would be represented by your avatar in real time. For those who would rather see you in a more “traditional” way, the live broadcast of the real and virtual worlds can be viewed on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook or your website… Check out our FLAME article.

REAL-WORLD ON-SET SHOOT WITH VIRTUAL WORLD BROADCASTING

Are you an artist who wants to perform on stage or in your studio and share it with your audience? We offer 360° film production providing realistic immersiveness for your audience, which we can broadcast live or on demand. We can also film you using Virtual Production so that your words and movements can be conveyed by your avatar in a virtual world where your audience will be able to find you, dance, and communicate with you via their own avatars. This solution also allows the finished product to be shared on networks such as Youtube, Facebook and your website.

FILMING WITH A 3D ENVIRONMENT OVERLAY

Sometimes a simple Zoom videoconference isn’t enough, you want to be able to bring an innovative image to your company and allow direct interaction with your audience while respecting the constraints of social distancing.

Thanks to Virtual Production, we film the speaker in a real-world studio and later embed a custom-made environment around them (3D background, videos, photos, presentations, etc.). We can either broadcast the speaker’s speech live, which allows for audience interaction, or prioritize time-shifted broadcasting. The speech can be broadcast in a virtual world (like VRChat, Virbela or any other virtual world platform) or simply on the internet (Youtube, Facebook…).

Why should you choose Virtual Events?

Boost your company’s visibility

Virtual events are spaces for your brand and company to express themselves. Depending on your chosen solution, your brand image can be present in dedicated advertising locations or completely integrated within an entirely custom-made environment.

Not only is your brand’s visibility guaranteed, but you get to be in control of your audience’s immersiveness in your brand’s universe.

Bring your audience together

Give your audience the opportunity of enjoying a shared innovative experience. With this type of approach, the more tech-savvy in your audience, who are usually equipped with the latest tech, will naturally assist those who need a helping hand. This field of possibility marks the beginning of an innovative approach to communication which truly brings together communities from all over the world.

Easily handle important and strategic business

Provide fun and interactive solutions such as workshops and games. Your employees will be able to approach their work differently by enjoying the creativity and interaction on offer. For external audiences, these solutions allow you to develop strong brand awareness and establish meaningful connections via the engaging content you provide, which in turn generates sales leads.

Data: collect, measure and optimize in accordance with the GDPR

During virtual events, you can collect data to better understand the behaviors and expectations of your audience thus refining your business development. The metrics you wish to work on must be defined and set up in advance. Depending on the solution you choose, this may include: the number of times a document is opened and viewed (depending on the type of document), the number of messages sent with corresponding contact information, the amount of appointments made, the number of participants in a particular game, the answers to quizzes, user or attendee retention rate, leads generated (via appointments made), which workshops were successful and which topics were the most popular…

Return on Investment:

Virtual events cost less than their real-world counterparts for a variety of reasons: shorter set-up time, cheaper to create or to film in a virtual world vs. renting physical sets and locations, you can bring together people from all over the world to work on a project without the logistical costs and time-consuming travel. Let’s not forget the advantages of greater comfort and ease of participation when staying at home vs. traveling to the other side of the city or the world. Last but not least, virtual events have a much lower environmental impact than a traditional real-world event.

A long-term and cost-effective tool  

When you decide to set up a long-lasting virtual event experience, the initial investment may seem considerable, but the growth it generates is far greater than if you had to deal with the constraints of physical spaces, logistics and traditional organization. It is also a solution for keeping your brand relevant to your audience and ensuring long-lasting engagement.

OUR EXPERTS ARE HERE TO PROVIDE YOU WITH EFFICIENCY AND PEACE OF MIND

As we’ve seen, there are many possibilities and solutions to choose from depending on your desired user experience, objectives and constraints (budgets, time, etc.).

Having SoWhen? accompany you makes it easier to overcome several technical barriers of understanding,  such as making market solutions more accessible, ensuring reliable connectivity and decent connection speeds, providing compatible hardware (power, Information System restrictions), confidentiality management, etc. We can also help you adapt user assistance to your audience – namely in French (native solutions are provided in English).

These solutions are long-lasting and can either be used as a substitute for your existing options in these challenging times of Covid restrictions or as a complementary solution to your traditional real-world events when restrictions are lifted.

Our team is at your service to help you make the right choices. You can contact us by clicking on the button below to arrange a meeting and exchange ideas.

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