Virtual is killing business travel? ‘Awesome,’ say execs.

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:04:07 +0000

Much like George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air, business travel is a bit of a paradox. Sure, busy road warriors complain about living out of a suitcase, but there’s also a kind of perverse pride and even romance to the frequent flyer lifestyle of perpetually jetting from city to city.

So as more and more work goes digital and business people need to make fewer and fewer physical trips to get things done, how will well-traveled execs react to being increasingly grounded? The answer, a new survey reveals, is happy news for airport regulars, but lousy tidings for visitors’ bureaus.

When webcasting and virtual events firm ON24 asked 3,756 registrants to this year’s VUE2011 conference (hosted somewhat incongruously by San Francisco Giants Pitcher Brian “Fear the Beard” Wilson) how they feel about seeing less of the interior of hotels and airports as work grows more wired, many said they’d be happy to go virtual rather than travel to several major American cities.

Virtual events vendors will be thrilled with the exact findings. Texas tourism officials, not so much. The numbers reveal that hefty percentages of respondents would rather go virtual than visit:

Houston – 49.3 percent
Los Angeles – 41.7 percent
Orlando – 37.5 percent
Miami – 33.3 percent
Chicago – 27.8 percent

While the figures can’t be flattering for these cities, they primarily reflect the sorry state of business travel, with 92 percent of executives telling ON24 business travel is failing to improve, and almost half saying it is getting worse. The execs’ reasons for dreading flying will be familiar to anyone who has been on a plane recently: 53 percent fear the middle seat, while 50.6 percent and 40.9 percent respectively said delays and security lines were the worst aspect of flying.

“In today’s digital age, professionals increasingly prefer virtual events and webcasts to traveling to in-person events,” commented Denise Persson, ON24’s chief marketing officer. “With virtual communication, there are no logistical barriers interfering with getting the information you need.”

Would you prefer to a digital event to a quick trip to Houston?

Image courtesy of Flickr user {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}.

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My First Virtual Conference

Pamela Poole — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:00:33 +0000

I don’t know about you, but every time I go to a conference or trade show, after about an hour I’m getting a headache from overstimulation: Too much shiny stuff and bad lighting. Crowds. My face hurts from smiling at the poor booth people while they do their pitches. My feet hurt. And why is there never enough air? So when I had the chance to “attend” my first virtual conference a couple of weeks ago, I jumped at it.

One of the things I do is translation and, like all of the translators I know, I have a profile on ProZ.com. This year is the site’s 10th anniversary and, to celebrate, it held its first virtual conference on International Translation Day. It was free, and I signed up, even though I knew I wouldn’t get any free pens out of it.

The exhibitors were major translation agencies and computer assisted translation (CAT) tool companies, so it was worth my time to check them all out. There were several ways to get to the “booths.” Each had an interactive information area with links to text and video you could view on the spot, or you could save documents to your “briefcase” to take with you. There were reps available in every booth for live chat, and you could also chat with other visitors to the booth.

An exhibitor booth

There was a “conference hall” with live webcasts that could also be viewed later, on useful topics like how to negotiate rates. There were scheduled networking events, essentially a chat room, for specific groups (translators of certain languages, for example). It was possible to exchange “business cards” with other attendees (the app used the data you registered with).

The platform Proz used, provided by Unisfair, was pretty user friendly, and my overall experience was a positive one, although the interface was kind of cheesy. This particular platform may be too pricey for individuals, but there are probably ways to duplicate the overall effect using other apps if you want to get creative and hold a gathering of your own.

It seems like the virtual event concept is still pretty new and that there’s room for improvement. I’d like to see an app that does all the same things but in a much less literal way: Simplified, lean and mean, with less Flash.

Proz has decided to leave the conference up until next September if you’re interested in checking it out.

If you’ve attended a virtual conference, I’d like to hear your take on it.

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Virtual is killing business travel? ‘Awesome,’ say execs.

My First Virtual Conference