With everyone eager to see in-person conferences return for good, organizers and participants pin their hopes on the much-discussed rule that people have to be either vaccinated, recovered or tested if they want to attend a public event. If you want or need to implement this for your conferences, keep in mind that participants need to prove their status – but you are not allowed to collect vaccination data.

Live content can make a conference more vivid, but it doesn’t take live sessions only to achieve this. Presentations and other parts of the program can be pre-recorded and uploaded prior to the start. In addition, there are many organizers aiming for an interesting schedule with live sessions, but still want to offer participants the opportunity to view all the sessions later at their leisure.

Virtual and non-virtual conferences may differ in some respects but the goals set and pursued by participating sponsors and exhibitors are the same: Getting in touch with their target audience and meeting potential clients. In a virtual environment, this only works once you rethink sponsorships beyond analog trade show booths, which can feel out of place in an online setting.

Virtual conference sessions have become the new normal for many organizers. But of course a virtual conference is not just about the sessions – the social program surrounding them is just as crucial, as it turns the event into a collaborative experience and connects the conference’s individual parts. Finding inspiring ideas, however, often proves to be a difficult task for organizers.

You could get the impression from the current surge of all kinds of online formats that they are interchangeable but webinars and virtual conference aren’t the same thing. Organizers who are not aware of the differences are contributing to a questionable revival of continuous speaker-centered approach – a fatal mistake for any conference.