Business Life After COVID19 – Using VR for Conferences

As the COVID-19 pandemic is slowly dying down in Europe, East Asia, and North America (while possibly only now taking off in other parts of the world), there remains a question of – now what?

The immediate threat of a serious illness and overloading the healthcare system has dissipated, but we still need to take all the necessary precautions to keep the curve as flat as possible. This means that, all across the globe, major events and gatherings of any kind are still canceled and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.

No music festivals, no concerts, closed theme parks, even the reopening of movie theaters is questionable. On the business side of things, conferences and various summits and congresses have all been postponed indefinitely. The situation is uncertain as of yet, and no one can be sure when and if everything will be back to normal.

So what happens now? Do we completely forget about these important events for the time being? Or is there a way to still make them happen and for the experts and businesses in really any field to enjoy meeting and discussing their brand new ideas?

Well, as they say, when one door closes, another opens. This time, that second door comes in the form of VR.

We’ve already witnessed the immersive powers of VR in education, healthcare, military fields, tourism, sports, and gaming. We’ve talked about how this technology helped businesses hold their regular meetings and gatherings even during the COVID-19 lockdown.

So it should come as little surprise that VR is especially neat when we’re talking about organizing conferences and similar large-scale events. Take a look at the Educators in VR International Summit, the first of which took place in February in AltspaceVR.

In times like these, when it is imperative that we leave our homes as little as possible, VR spaces able to support a large number of people with plenty of tools and equipment available are invaluable.

Created by Microsoft, AltspaceVR is the leading virtual place for holding live events of any kind, including shows, meetups, and lectures. It is colorful and vibrant and is sure to infuse a dose of humor into your business conference. All you need to do is design an avatar that will best represent you.

The Educators in VR Summit featured 170 speakers in 150 events spread out over six days. Thanks to AltspaceVR, it went by without a hitch and all of it was for free. Not something other options on this list could easily beat.

This is a platform primarily used for education and training, but it can absolutely hold its own when it comes to a conference of several thousand attendees. HTC held its annual Vive Ecosystem Conference (VEC) using the Engage platform. The organizers of the event, the speakers, and the guests were all impressed with the platform’s capabilities.

Engage went out of its way to accommodate the massive conference, going so far as to add multilingual support and upgrade their servers to allow for up to five thousand live users. If you’re asking HTC China, there is no better platform to organize this type of event on.

VirBELA technology takes the meaning of collaboration on a whole new level. They’re offering the option of visiting an open VR campus with your team (for free!) and finding a space for your business there, as well as a private suite, and an enterprise campus specially customized to fit your company’s needs.

The founders of VirBELA are saying how their platform can support a VR conference of any size, no matter what it requires. They’re already getting calls from numerous groups and organizations that are looking to avoid travel and banding people together in the real world.

Will VR events become the new standard? We would like to think so. The fact is that VR conferences and business meets reduce costs for travel and accommodation, offer a lot more flexibility to the attendees and speakers and, in the end, make all of us safer and more protected from health hazards that are still lurking out there.