The transformation of international congresses: 1 year after corona
22/03/2022 - 3 min readCOVR, the company responsible for the IT technical support of international medical congresses, saw its entire business turn around in one week. Events for thousands of people could not physically take place. Fortunately, the IT company did not hold back. It set up a completely virtual alternative and one year later COVR is working on a 2.0 version.
From physical to virtual in one week
March 2020: three teams are ready to fly to Barcelona, Gothenburg and Abu Dhabi to support international conferences. Conferences that already included months of preparation … Corona, however, put a stop to it. The lockdown had been announced and the flights were cancelled. It soon became clear that this situation would continue for some time to come. COVR then had two options: wait or react. And since “waiting” isn’t a part of their DNA, the team immediately came together to explore all possibilities. They decided to develop a fully virtual platform, taking into account the two main components of a conference: giving presentations and offering networking functionalities.
From action to interaction
Between March and August, the IT company spent no less than 3 000 hours on development. Thanks to years of experience and with an eye on the future, they invested in something futureproof: a new package cmVirtual, which is fully integrated with their other congress software.
The challenge in 2021? That is mainly creating interaction. Whereas at a live conference people are “in the moment” visiting booths and interacting immediately, this feeling is hard to create virtually. Nevertheless, last winter COVR worked on cmVirtual 2.0: an improved version of the conference platform with additional focus on interaction, communication and advertising systems.
The future is hybrid
Whereas congresses have transformed from physical to digital in a week, at COVR they will have to expect another change after corona. The future will be hybrid: a mix of online and physical presence. The impact of this is difficult to predict, but one expects a substantial increase in the total number of participants in the end. Physically, there will be fewer participants, but the overall reach will be much greater. “So the merging of physical and online into hybrid events will again bring a lot to the table,” says Tim Sleebus, managing director at COVR. “But before we start with that, we continue to build on cmVirtual 2.0. We are convinced that everything can always be improved. After all, we are in a sector that is evolving at lightning speed.”
A positive note …
But corona did not only bring disadvantages and time pressure. “The sudden transformation of the conferences forced us to get out of our comfort zone so we grew not only as a company, but also as a person. We all did an enormous amount in a short time, which is only possible with a close and professional team,” says Tim Sleebus.
But corona did not only bring disadvantages and time pressure. “The sudden transformation of the conferences forced us to get out of our comfort zone so we grew not only as a company, but also as a person. We all did an enormous amount in a short time, which is only possible with a close and professional team,” says Tim Sleebus.