The virtual show must go on

Australia’s $30 billion event industry is in turmoil thanks to the coronavirus crisis. With strict rules in place regarding mass gatherings. 1000s of events have been cancelled across the nation.  A Melbourne based tech company is hoping to give the industry a second lease on life as it brings its innovative solution to the conference sector

Managing Director of Iconic Live, Jordan Walsh, says their technology ‘delegate connect’ is allowing producers to turn face-to-face events into virtual events at a rapid pace. So successful have Walsh and his team been in delivering these virtual events they have seen a spike of 800 per cent in inquiries in the past fortnight. Just last week they delivered a client’s 2000 delegate, 300-presenter traditional conference as a completely virtual event in just three days.

Walsh says his team is looking to not just meet the needs of their existing clients but to salvage the efforts of event organisers around the country.

“The cancellation of so many events and conferences means that there are hundreds of thousands of industry professionals looking for work,” Walsh said.

“At the same time, many organisations will still need to run their events and are looking for a solution that meets the physical distancing requirements. Our solution, Delegate Connect, bridges these two needs.”

Walsh said their solution is of particular interest to professional associations, which are required to deliver educational opportunities to their members as part of their Continuous Professional Development (CPD). If they can’t attend conferences, lawyers, accountants, financial advisors and others, risk falling short of their CPD requirements and ultimately losing their professional registration.

“We need to ensure that our professionals remain up to date with relevant knowledge and skills about their service to support their customers, clients and community during this already uncertain and unstable time.”

Another market that is taking advantage of the capabilities of Delegated Connect is companies who want to continue to run their conferences throughout the year for their staff and stakeholders.

“For large organisations seeking to go beyond the standard webinar, we are now managing their virtual conference from start to finish. We have a lot of corporate companies that used to run face to face conferences for 100-1000 delegates and now we are delivering these conferences virtually for them.”

With live streaming of keynote presentations, panel discussion facilitation, automatic CPD tracking, live Q&A, two-way chat to enable networking and even advertisements from sponsors amongst the features, Iconic Live’s Delegate Connect virtual conferencing solution provides a full conference experience.

“Two years ago, we set out with a goal to develop a toolset that allows conferences to be delivered virtually. Little did we know just how important this toolset would be in 2020. We hope that our technology helps keep the industry moving through this difficult time,” Walsh said.