2011 Virtual Event Predictions

A few weeks ago, Dennis Shiao of It’s All Virtual queried me on my top predictions for virtual events in 2011. And then this same question appeared on Focus, a network for business professionals to respond and answer to critical business questions. Based on my responses to these, here is a summary of my top three predictions for the virtual events industry.

Market Consolidation Ahead

While there are several known players in the market – 6Connex, Inxpo, On24 and Unisfair – there has been a proliferation of new players and those who have gained mindshare in the industry, such as Expos2, Imaste, Stream57, VisualMente, Ubivent, and others. While this is great for the customer – more choice and usually a decrease in price – I believe this will lead to some players being bought by larger organizations, merging to bring together complimentary strengths, or even some disappearing from the industry all together. No matter how, we will begin to see some consolidation within the industry.

Build Me a Better Playground

I believe the industry players remaining on the landscape will begin building out an ecosystem of services to plug-and-play on the platforms. While each provider has an “open API” the question is at what point will the providers a) begin developing apps to harvest the potential of the data and platforms. This includes connecting to Salesforce or truly automating the marketing aspect of virtual. And b) promote a developer community to build third-party apps for its customers. I envision the latter being more of an end of 2011/early 2012 development.

Simplified Web Experiences

 This may seem contradictory to point 2, but I think we’re going to see a move away from the current way we experience virtual events – a login to enter a space with different rooms, like an auditorium, lounge, etc. Rather, I think we will see a return to a “website-like” experience. Everything is on a single page with a window for live streaming video and different widgets for engagement, games and other applications can be added or deleted as needed. And with an OpenID model, I can move freely to and from these “virtual events” without re-entering my login/password. Look for someone like Facebook to move more into this space in 2011.

Do you agree or disagree? What are you top predictions?