INKISH.NEWS -

The short answer is no. Regardless of the cancellations or postponements of events like FESPA, DSCOOP, drupa and more, many exhibitors are looking into hosting virtual events. The need comes from the fact that vendors need to present the products and services they were expected to show at the previously mentioned events.

If you are looking for software to handle your virtual show, there is a vast range of solutions in the market. I will link to some of them below.

However, before choosing a solution, I believe it's important to discuss why we like tradeshows and what we expect to achieve from attending.
Here is a list of some of the takeaways:

- Presentation of products/services
- Hands-on experience
- Talking to specialists
- Networking with friends, colleagues, partners, etc.
- The Social aspect
- The "whau" effect
- Learning/keynotes

This list is most likely not conclusive, but at least gives us a starting point for further discussion.

Some of the takeaways can, for sure, be done virtually, but some are a bit more tricky. Since the cancellations of the events, we have wondered why the event-organizers haven't published any virtual events themselves? When we announced our PLAN B by INKISH, we got a lot of support from vendors, but one organizer was upset with us and announced that they would present some ideas on their own - which I haven't seen yet, however? Many companies have announced their own events. I believe the very first was Mimaki, and I know that some of the PR companies have come up with similar ideas to our PLAN B by INKISH.

However, if virtual events are not able to capture some of the takeaways from above, I am not sure about the value. If a majority of the exhibitors ends up doing their own virtual events, you could as well watch some films, visit a website, webinars or other similar things. If you end up asking all users to register on multiple sites to get the "tour" from numerous vendors, I don't think that will be better from a printers perspective? I believe the industry needs to gather around one virtual event, so that event at least can deliver a "whau" effect, and an opportunity to see products and services from various vendors. It is, of course, also possible to provide learning/keynotes via a virtual event platform.

Engaging with the presenters, the specialists, and other participants, we believe should be a minimum requirement for any platform presented. The latter I haven't seen, so that is still to be found.

As already mentioned, some of the takeaways are easy to do virtually, some more difficult, but achievable. We want to cover virtual events and participate in the production of films, text, and more. We believe supporting an approach delivered by the event organizers or at least complimenting these, is of the utmost importance.

The INKISH approach

As we always work on a long-term perspective, we have decided to develop technology that will enable most of the things above. One of the things that we, in particular, is a good takeaway from our approach is the fact we want to let users interact with each other in talk, text, and film. Imagine you join an online event and that the visitors at the event can be real or virtual. Imagine clicking on the real guests and ask them to film a specific angle of a machine, or do a close-up of a print sample, etc. We believe the interaction with specialists, presenters, real, and virtual participants are essential. We also believe that our solution should not be built to substitute an actual event but to focus on complementing it. We also believe that 3D representations like the ones in the links below don't bring any value to the user experience. If navigation isn't easy and appealing, and even IT-resource demanding, many users will not participate.

For now, however, we can only hope that FESPA, DSCOOP, drupa, and others will soon realize that they need to deliver a unified solution to the benefit of the industry.

For now, here is a list of virtual solutions available:

https://www.hexafair.com/

https://www.inxpo.com/virtual-events/

http://www.jackmorton.com/services/virtual-events/

https://www.on24.com/

https://www.vfairs.com/solutions/virtual-trade-shows/

https://www.virtualtradeshowhosting.com/

https://engagez.com/virtual-trade-show-platform-software/

https://www.ivent-uk.com/virtual-events

and hundreds of more solutions -

Mar 30, 2020

Author: Morten B. Reitoft