Corbin Ball Assesses the Virtual Horizon

Meetings industry consultant and speaker Corbin Ball, founder and principal of Corbin Ball & Co., for decades has explored and analyzed the development of all manner of meeting and event technology. Shortly after returning from the IMEX America 2022 conference and trade show in Las Vegas last month, Ball spoke with BTN’s Chris Davis about his assessment of the state of virtual and hybrid events. Edited excerpts follow.

Where are we right now? Are you seeing meetings return to external facilities? 

Corbin Ball: I think so. The overarching trend that’s happened is that the pandemic has seen an unprecedented explosion of innovation, especially in virtual meeting technology. And society in general has been pushed forward in terms of digitization. Everybody from grade school kids to grandparents has had extensive Zoom training now. As we reemerge, we are much more digitized, much more capable of virtual technology and people are working from home much more so than in the past. That leads to some interesting combinations for corporate meetings, and where people are going to get together is going to be at meetings. That’s going to be the time where you bring your teams together in to meet each other as well as meeting everybody else. 

Are companies still incorporating hybrid or virtual tech into live events?

I think it’s dawned on people that you don’t need to fly across the country for a four-hour business meeting. Zoom calls have really become a natural way to do it and I think it’ll remain that way. For meetings in general, virtual meetings will have a significantly larger portion of the event pie as it is, but the other thing that the pandemic highlighted is the real need for face-to-face at times.

Virtual meetings are great for information exchange, but it’s been terrible for commerce and networking and schmoozing and getting to know people. The virtual trade show has just not worked out almost ever. That’s where you see things like IMEX come through and you bring people together. Nobody’s wearing a mask, and it was like it was all back to normal. I think there’s been some pent-up demand for that. 

Did they have any sort of a virtual element or a hybrid element?

There was no broadcast and there were no cameras in the room in their keynote. It’s dawned on many that you have to plan for two entirely different audiences, and the remote audience has high expectations in terms of production quality. They have the expectations of what they see on TV. A hybrid event can be twice as expensive and twice as complex as running a face-to-face event. There are some cases where it makes sense that you want a much broader audience and you can track, but in a lot of cases, that’s not going to be the method that they’re going to use.

Does this change The skill sets planners need or that companies might look for?

I think so, in a couple of ways. The event technologist position has arrived. Someone that is an on-site expert from the event planner side, is becoming a much more common position right now. You need a tech-savvy person. Also, the data analytics person: that is an area that virtual meetings have brought up. One benefit of virtual meetings is unprecedented data. The challenge is in the analytics part of it: to have a data person there that knows that, is familiar with that, who can make sense of that data.

What comes next, in terms of new forms of tech?

There’s been a lot of talk about the Metaverse. I think that in some cases, that’s going to take some shape, parts of the Metaverse, components of the blockchain and smart contracts, and advances in augmented reality. There’s a real place for this kind of immersive reality, especially if you layer it on to existing reality. The real challenge is going to be, which I don’t see being met for probably even a decade, is the business meeting. To have to strap on a headset means that you’re going to have to be an avatar. And until that avatar looks as good as I’m sitting here talking to you, I don’t want to do business with a cartoon. I want to do business with a person. It’s going to be a while before we get to that point, if ever.