Hello 2021! We are so excited for the new year. I know that January 1 is an arbitrary point in time, but this year it truly felt like a fresh beginning. We spent 2020 ensuring our survival at MGME. We took a lot of steps, some of them very painful, to create an environment guaranteeing the life of our company. January 1, 2021 – the mission changed. We are rebuilding MGME in a way that guarantees our success over the next decade. The future of meetings and events has become so much clearer after the last year and our team is equipped to support it in all of its forms.
We dove headfirst into Virtual Meetings last March. At the time, it was a band-aid to replace our clients’ live events. I remember the disappointment people felt when informed that a live event was going virtual – not anymore! Clients and attendees are embracing virtual events more than ever. Today, we look at the goals of our clients’ events and discuss all of the tools at their disposal to provide solutions for live, virtual and hybrid events.
A live event is still the best way to bring a team together – to create cohesion, teamwork and build relationships. Problems are best solved when people sit at a table together, share a coffee or a meal and look each other in the eyes. For many types of events though, virtual is an even better solution. Training events work extremely well virtually, but only when executed properly. We recently created a large training module for a Life Sciences client in order to roll out a new drug. Traditionally, they would have brought together large groups of trainers in a slow, expensive process. Instead, over a 24-hour period, we trained thousands of people in exceptionally dynamic and engaging ways. Our team used gamification, heart-wrenching videos and team engagement to deliver both education and a common purpose.
20 Small, Live Events In a Single Virtual Environment
Large-scale companies traditionally bring huge groups of people together for meetings. Part of the challenge they face is in making sure that clients feel the size and scope of the company, virtually. A retail client of ours is planning to bring 800 guests together for their 2021 National Directors Meeting. The guests will attend from 20 different offices across the country. We discussed creating an entirely virtual environment for them, but it did not seem like enough. Instead, we decided to create 20 small live events, all connected into a single virtual environment. This provides the best of both worlds and the most effective way to achieve our clients’ strategic goals.
Virtual Training Center
Another Life Sciences client came to us with a unique challenge. They spent many millions of dollars creating a training center for their new employees. The training center became integral to their culture and to the new hire experience. Our solution is to create an exact replica of their training center virtually. This enables new trainees to gain a similar experience to what the live experience was. When the training center reopens, the virtual environment will still be used for employees who cannot attend. Because of our solution, our client can now offer employees the same experience for training, whether live or virtual.
I am extremely proud of the dozens of people who make all of this happen for clients of MGME every day. As live events come back, we are also expanding our in-house creative agency to support our clients in any environment – more to come on that! Our job is to create human connections – whether it is face to face or with thousands of miles in between them.
Jeff Guberman
Chief Executive Officer
McVeigh Global Meetings and Events
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