Twenty years ago, no one would have thought to plan online events, even the past few years have seen very small numbers of these events. However, thanks to the pandemic, we have seen an accelerated transformation of the field. It is suggested that it would be misguided to assume that we will return to an era where the majority of events take place in person. The recently emerging Metaverse trend suggests that the events space will fundamentally change but there is no clear indication as to what the Metaverse would look like, but what is clear is that the online events space will grow, thrive, evolve and essentially become more of a norm.
The recently emerging Metaverse trend suggests that the events space will fundamentally change.
What does this mean for event organisers? Whilst we won’t immediately shift to virtual reality, the technology that supports them will be improving, evolving and becoming more a part of our daily lives and we should see a steady progression to more immersive platforms. So event organisers do not need to immediately abandon all their plans for events but should be prepared to embrace this new technology that will change the way we interact. Others however suggest that the events industry is entering a totally digitised stage and it will become a must to have technology integrated events. This shift can be observed from video games to Snapchat, which all allow users to create avatars of themselves.
