What is THE #1 'Take Away' from Event Camp '10 ?

I constantly preach that you must gather, engage, and interact with your audience in order to have a successful event. When virtual events started gaining popularity, many in the event community turned a blind eye or became scared that they would replace live events. Yet I have always said that virtual events are a great compliment to live events because they offer yet another opportunity to connect with your audience, especially in today's economy or time-strained society when not all of your audience can travel to your live event.

Virtual events in collaboration with live events also extend your reach to an audience that you have not met yet. We live in a globally connected community due to the internet, so our audience and our reach are larger than ever. Once we find this larger audience, we are obligated to engage and interact with them. And if they are not standing right in front of us, we now have the opportunity to connect with them virtually.

So live and virtual events do not compete with each other because both are necessary to build relationships. When they are used to compliment each other, your audience is far greater than when just using one or the other. Just think of how successful your event could be when you connect with both of these audiences!

So what did I take away from @EventCampNYC? I took away PROOF that virtual and live events are friends and not enemies. Just look at the fact that almost every person who was following along virtually commented that they wished they could be at EventCamp 2010 and that they could not wait until they could be at EventCamp 2011! Follow the #EC10 tweet stream and you see constant interaction between the virtual audience and the live audience. Think of the sense of satisfaction that the virtual audience had when they saw that the EventCamp staff and speakers listened to them and responded to their needs, questions,and suggestions. And notice that after EventCamp 2010 ended, we are all interacting with each other as ONE UNITED AUDIENCE. Not only that we are gaining a NEW audience from people who heard about EventCamp after the fact and are going back through the archives and everything that the original audience is continuing to post about it.

The audience will continue to grow virtually, so that the next live EventCamp will be even bigger and better than the first!

Emilie Barta on 02/08 at 09:29PM