The first time I saw a zero-depth swimming pool, all I could think was, “Why did it take us so long to come up with this?” Seriously, we’ve all seen the ocean. It’s the same way I feel today about captured content and hybrid events. Think about it. You spend a year working on the education at your event. From surveys of current year attendees, you conceptualize next year’s sessions and put out a call for papers. You meet with education committees and spend months crafting content and recruiting speakers. You work with those speakers, honing their presentations and editing their PowerPoints. On the day of the event, a group of people spend an hour in the session, and then you’re done. Have we ever analyzed the ROI on all that?

Technology is turning it around. At one level, captured content means livestreaming your sessions to an audience at home. (And don’t even talk to me about it cannibalizing your live event. Never gonna happen.) Why not extend the reach of your event to people who can’t come? You’ll always have them. Most shows only draw about 20 percent of their potential audience anyway. Why are we leaving money on the table? Attendees at the live event have paid to come. So should the ones at home. And you’ve worked so hard to develop this killer program. Why not get more out of it? Now take it to the next level, and make it a real hybrid event. Have some speakers and audience members at home and allow the interaction to flow both ways.

Allow sponsorship of the streamed content. And what about a handful of virtual booths? Once you get back home, take all that content and make it available on a pay-perview basis all year. What a great service for your industry — and a great positioning of your event as a year-round information provider. I talked with one event organizer who has a digital library of session content. Anyone who was at the show gets free access to any concurrent sessions they might have missed. All others pay to view. This organization is having such success with the program — both financially and from an industry stature perspective — that they now promote the digital library within their show attendance promotion. Yep. It says, “Can’t make it to the show? Register now to view all education programs online.” Like I said, why didn’t we think of this before…