Live Events are changing and we’d better keep up

Watching The iHeart Living Room Concert for America presented by FOX on Sunday evening, I was struck with the overwhelming sense that this is the “new normal.” This is what a live event looks like now, at least in the immediate future.

Clients have been calling me all week, assessing how to put traditionally in-person events like galas and graduations online. As an events professional, my job is to bring the expertise, technology, and teams to execute my client’s vision, whether that’s projection mapping an abandoned cement factory, holding a benefit concert in a downtown intersection, or figuring out how to hold a graduation or a gala fully online. Events bring people together over shared goals and shared connections, teach and share knowledge, reinforce social bonds, and build communities. The challenge now is how to convey to an online audience the messages and emotional impacts we experience live and in-person. This is the problem I hear over and over again among my peers, friends, and even competitors as our whole industry grapples with connecting services to our communities during COVID-19. How do we continue to educate, inspire, and bring joy to our audiences in this time of social distancing?