If you have been wondering how business is reacting to the end of lockdown in terms of people mixing in person or continuing to work remotely, let me share a perspective from the world of corporate conferences and presential workshops.
My experience since the end of summer has been that many firms have re-started in-person conferences. There has been a clear desire from participants to meet in person and in some instances there have been notable amounts of networking and socialising and a lower attendance of presentations and discussion panels. Physical attendance is still lower overall, when compared to pre-pandemic levels. It seems many people are still wary of mixing with others and firms perhaps do not want to send as many people as before, for a variety of reasons.
The buzzword I’ve heard repeated often is “hybrid”: companies need to cater to both the need to meet in person and to meet virtually. This means smaller in-person events with livestreamed and even pre-recorded content, in case of non-attendance, sometimes due to Covid-19. The same goes for the workshops of various different types in the corporate sector: they are beginning to happen live, but attended by fewer people and provision is made for simultaneous virtual participation for those who companies do not wish to send in person or who choose not to go themselves.
So we aren’t all going back to work in person, but we aren’t all staying at home either; it’s somewhere in-between, and looks set to stay that for some time, at least while we still deal with Coronavirus and hopefully avoid the cost to the environment of flying people around the globe.
Please check-out Four Rooms here www.fourrooms.co.uk for video production and live-event streaming.
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