CURRENT SITUATION FOR THE EVENTS INDUSTRY

The events industry has found itself on the sharp end of Covid-19's effect, with hundreds of events being canceled or postponed. With these cancellations, organizers are looking towards technology to continue to deliver value to their attendees. At Grip, we had been preparing for this since early February and would like to share more detail on Grip Virtual.

VIRTUAL MEETING ROOMS ON GRIP

Early March, Grip released the industry's first virtual meeting feature on a matchmaking platform, which is allowing event organizers to provide their attendees with a seamless way to network from the comfort of their home or office.How do Virtual Meeting Rooms work?

1. Five minutes before a meeting starts on the Grip platform, a Virtual Meeting Room is made available.
2. Clicking the button opens a Virtual Meeting Room embedded in Grip that supports Video Calls, Live Chat, and Screensharing.
3. As soon as the first person joins the Virtual Meeting Room, the other participant receives a notification that the person they are meeting with has joined the meeting.
4. In addition to being able to join from the Grip web platform and mobile app, the second person can enter straight from the email they have received or the notification.
5. No additional downloads are needed to have the video call in Grip.

What makes virtual events different?Physical events are one of the most tried and tested forms of conducting business, and have been around for decades. But, they are quite different from a virtual event, at Grip, we believe we have to take advantage of the unique capabilities of technology in the creation of virtual experiences.Let's compare a virtual and a live event for a moment to see what makes them so different:

Default Communication Style:  55% of communication is non-verbal, in a virtual experience, we'll have to make sure that video is a big part of the solution to replicate that as much as possible.Upfront Time Investment: Attending a physical event can cost thousands of dollars and several months to plan. Virtual events have a much lower upfront time (and resource) investment resulting in different behavior from attendees and sponsors participating in them.Community Feeling: A live event is an experience; we'll have to work double as hard on the technology side to replicate that online. It's one of the reasons we're especially excited about Hybrid events that combine virtual and physical experiences.Random Encounters: For anyone regularly attending a trade show or conference, one of the great things is to bump into people you already know and catch up with them. Online, this will require specific functionality to "engineer serendipity".Fit into an existing workday: Due to the substantial investment of time and travel, it's difficult to participate in a physical event and get any work done. Online experiences can be shorter and be joined instantly from anywhere. They can happen more frequently and don't necessarily have to last the entire day!

THE COMPLETE VIRTUAL EVENT SOLUTION

While we've been planning for this since early February in the last couple of weeks Grip Virtual has seen a rapid expansion in functionality and use cases. You can use a new filter on our Feature Overview to see the latest functionality, but we've highlighted some of the ones we're most excited about below.

To find out more information about Grip Virtual, you can request a demo or get in touch directly on jake@grip.events or sales@grip.events.