Virtual reality is the future of conferences...

I recently experienced two very different conference appearances by Gary Vaynerchuk which got me thinking about how people will attend and consume content from conferences in the (not too distant) future.

For me, the resounding answer is..... people will soon attend conferences from around the world via Virtual Reality headsets from the comfort of their own home.

NATIONAL ACHIEVERS CONGRESS | MELBOURNE 2017

My first Gary V conference experience was at the 2017 National Achievers Congress in Melbourne. NAC2017 featured Daymond John from Shark Tank, Lisa Messenger from Collective HUB and the one and only Gary V.

Within an hour of hearing Gary V was coming to Australia I had my conference tickets, flights, hotel and annual leave booked and was counting down the days. UNFORTUNATELY, a few weeks later, the conference organizers announced that Gary V would actually not be attending the conference but would be appearing via "live" 3D humagram.

I felt ripped off but decided to go anyway to see what the 3D humagram was all about and whether Gary's energy could actually be transferred in hologram form. I must say the 3D hologram technology is amazing and if they could actually have the speaker transmit this live, take Q&A and have real crowd interaction the experience would go to another level.

But this got me thinking, if I am just sitting here watching a 3D projection of Gary V, couldn't I have saved my money, and more importantly, my time to just watch this through a set of VR goggles from the comfort of my own home?

REAL TALK SUMMIT KEYNOTE | VANCOUVER 2017

I also recently watched Gary's Real Talk Summit keynote on Youtube, which is an amazing piece of free content that is 1hr 23mins of pure fire!

Gary talks about fake causes, helping carrots, selling to losers and of course hustling. It's a great session and I have to admit that i was more pumped up after watching this talk on YouTube than I was after attending NAC2017 in person. Watching Gary go deep with individuals allows you to relate those same macro themes back to your own circumstance and truly adds value.

The contradiction of him distributing such a huge amount of valuable content for free via every channel you can imagine and the organizers of these conferences who keep the content hidden is stunning

THE OPPORTUNITY AND THE FUTURE

I truly believe that conference operators like Success Resources, who organised NAC2017 are missing a huge opportunity. They organise conferences all over Australia and all over the world which create extremely valuable and entertaining content but when I search on YouTube, there is nothing to be found.

There is a huge opportunity for conferences from all over the world to leverage the global popularity of people like Gary, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferris and others and make conference content available either through a live stream or on demand playback for a fee.

For someone like me who lives in Perth, or Adelaide, or Tasmania where this conference was not held, a live stream or on demand subscription would be super effective. Additionally, Australia is so far away, we tend not to get the top level speakers on a frequent basis and I imagine the same goes for countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, New Zealand and many more.

This type of product would open up the conference for thousands more attendees. I estimate that there were 350 people at the Melbourne event, maximum. On line or on demand tickets would open this event up to thousands or potentially millions more people. I know I would tune into a Seattle or Singapore or Berlin event if the line up was sufficiently interesting.

I'm not even expecting event managers to put coverage of these events on line for free (as Gary does). Tickets to NAC2017 were $97 for general admission and given I spent well over $1,000 to get to Melbourne to attend the conference, even an online admission at the same price would deliver huge value.

THE EXPERIENCE

Some people might say, you cant beat the energy of the real experience and great networking opportunities at these events or, you can't get your question answered if you are not there.

To that I say, in a crowd of many thousands of enthusiastic attendees, the chance of getting your question answered is slim to none and many speakers like Gary are now great at answering questions via Twitter or other social platforms (#ASKGARYV) so you are more likely to get an answer there.

Also, for an introvert like me, big conferences are not an effective method for networking. I tend to meet and connect with a small select group at these events rather than "working the room" and connecting with a large number of people. Its just not my style and therefore there is very little networking value from these events for me. But that's me.

My view is that conferences from all over the world will soon be available to us through on demand subscriptions and even better, fully immersive Virtual Reality.

I really believe there is a market for someone to create a platform that dominates the global virtual conference market. In the future, rather than supplementing live conferences with on line subscriptions and virtual reality, there may even be 100% virtual events in the future where the speakers are all in different countries and the whole audience is plugged in via VR goggles.

Let me know what you think, nor far away or fantasy?

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