Abstract:

Prior to the Covid-19 Pandemic, most business, educational, and other organizational conferences, whether domestic or global, were usually held in-person and only a handful offered some time of virtual participation options. However, when the Pandemic hit and airline travel, hotel accommodations, and more were limited by various national and global restrictions, which resulted in almost all virtual conferences for these events to remain sustainable. However, not all virtual conferences worked out smoothly, so there was a period of readjustment for many organizations to reevaluate how to conduct their formal “in-person events” and change them over to a totally virtual format. While this change in venue and use of new technology, namely Zoom and Teams applications, did help with the change over to the new format, the “hard sell” to former and new audiences did present not only logistic, marketing, and administrative challenges, but due to the lack of possible travel and change of environments for participations, there was another issues dealing with the resilience of participants and willingness to commit to professional development events due to this chaotic period of time. On the other hand, many people become acquainted more with Zoom and Teams applications due to their work and employers, as well as attending other social events ranging from weddings, funerals, and more. For the purposes of this paper, emphasis will be place on the key attributes of the newly created virtual conferences arising from the Pandemic period, as well as examining the needs, as well as the expectations, of the new type of audiences during this unique period. Consequently, the resulting best practices of various types of business and educational conferences will be important milestones for discussion and further analysis. Finally, the aftermath of this period and the reemergence of live conferences, both domestic and international, seem to be slow to appear on the horizon, unless there were corresponding virtual conference offerings given during the same conference period. While some organizations and conference organizers have been slowly, but apparently, limited virtual conferences, the question is whether previous and new conference attendees show a preference for live or virtual conferences during this Post-Pandemic Period.

Keywords:

Virtual conferences, Zoom, Teams, Post-Pandemic Period.