By Editor Morten B. Reitoft 

Let's dig straight into it. Since the pandemic became official back in March 2020, an ever-increasing number of online events has seen the light - and I write "online" deliberately. The term "virtual" seems to have a negative sound today, and "online" is now transforming into "platforms" or "hybrids" - but essentially the same. It's substituting or adding to the physical events, but it also extends the number of annoying things you have to consider in your busy life. Before the pandemic, the industry had many - some would even say too many - physical events. These events were typically based on geography or topic, and you only paid attention to these if the subject and geography matched your needs. With Zoom, Teams, and a whole range of other online solutions, the offerings have exploded. These events are not limited to geography, and these are pushed through newsletters, online advertising, and more. You can attend an event almost every day if you should like to - and here is one of the problems.

First of all, nobody has time to view all the events. It's impossible to judge the quality and the value of each webinar, and have you attended a few that didn't deliver on the promise, you will, of course, be more reluctant to signup for the next—information overload. Second, all the webinars dry out resources from the companies supporting these events, and the ROI becomes lower and lower. Third, some companies create programs with objectively low quality, and, fourth, some webinars are delivered on platforms that are hard- read almost impossible - to use. All of the above doesn't bring any good to the virtual formats!

The "virtual.drupa" is a terrible example of the latter. When you look at the format and the program, the dominating value is 'quantity' over 'quality.' I am NOT talking about the quality of the individual sessions, but the quality of the program - and, more importantly, the execution.

When you visit a physical tradeshow and walk the isles, you often see new and unexpected products, but that is NOT the case with online events. On the positive side, you often register for what you exactly need and nothing else. So the quantity approach is entirely wrong and doesn't bring any value in itself.

We started a poll on LinkedIn Saturday, April 24th, with a simple question:
"How many virtual.drupa sessions did you attend?"

66% answered 'None'
22% '1-3'
10% '3-10'
and finally 3% said they attended 'More than 10.'

The LinkedIn post was shown to more than 5,000 people, of which 172 answered the poll, equal to a conversion rate of approx. 3.4%. You can, of course, argue that this is a low conversion rate - but according to the '2020 Conversion Rate Benchmarks', the conversions for all B2B companies across the board is only 2.23% - so quite a bit higher than the average.

This, of course, doesn't say anything about whether the data are representative. 

I have about 6,000 followers, and I am pretty picky about who I connect with. I think that my LinkedIn profile has about 98-99% from the printing industry, so maybe not representative, but at least with an audience, you would expect a certain percentage being interested in drupa - virtual and physical. 

I also believe that I have a good mix of vendors and PSPs.

I attended 'More than 10' sessions - and some were REALLY good, some were REALLY not good. Some presenters tried using Teleprompters very unsuccessfully, some mixed live and pre-recorded, which worked really well. Some re-purposed content from previous webinars, and some even took the PowerPoint approach - so you got everything good and bad in one place!

So with that in mind, let me share some interesting insights.

In the group 'More than 10,' ALL the responses are from people working as vendors, influencers, media, PR/Marketing, or as a contractor/supplier to vendors.

In the group '3-10,' more than 75% of the responses are from people with the same profile as above.

In the group '1-3,' which represents the second-largest group (22%), 88% of the responses were from people with the same profile - which to me is quite a surprise.

Or, to put it short - the virtual.drupa didn't reach many PSPs based on our poll. 

Of course, the people who chose not to answer are also interesting to look into, but we must assume that the split in voting is similar for this group, had they voted.

LinkedIn doesn't allow me to see who didn't respond, but only the top companies from where they work - and of the 66% remaining, the majority of views came from vendors, media, and marketing people.

From our 'Learn With Us' event, we have stats that support this development. The virtual or online events are not very interesting to PSPs. When we look into our numbers, about 50% are vendors attending, and the rest is mainly PSPs. Another stats we can share is that surprisingly few attend more sessions during a webinar week, which means that the "browsing" experience seen at the real shows doesn't exist in the virtual space.Why isn't the virtual format appealing to PSPs?

When I look at many of the webinars, they have really valuable programs that should be interesting for the targeted audience to attend - and of course, some people choose to register and participate in many of these sessions. However, before trying to answer the above question, let's look into the types of webinars. There are essentially three types of webinars. There are vendors' webinars - almost all vendors have invested in video and webinar technology to facilitate quite impressive webinars and product demos - both in one-to-one sessions and for a larger audience. Then we have the community-driven webinars like The Crown Pub, The IPIA Big Breakfast, and most likely a lot of others like the two mentioned. The community-driven webinars are popular and, as far as I can see, attract a smaller audience, more dedicated, and more PSPs since they often address topics closer to the people attending. The community-driven webinars are recurring and short in their formats, and they are also less committing - you can come and go, and you join when you have time. The recurring format is appealing since the attendees become virtual friends.

Finally, we have professional organizers like Future Print, INKISH, the tradeshows, and a new breed of companies like printing-expo.online, ConneXion, Project Peacock, and many many more. The latter group often curates intensive programs over several days or even weeks.

We didn't charge the participating vendors anything to participate.So what do you think? Will virtual events have a chance in the future? Will the business models need to change? How should the event become more relevant to the PSPs? There are so many questions, and I believe the last 14 months have changed the scenario forever.Will drupa return as a real physical event - well - I am not 100% certain about it. Will they return as a virtual event. I am almost 100% certain they won't.

The world is changing - rapidly!