Event Success

CHAPTER 18The Event Team of the Future

The transition to virtual and hybrid events will ultimately serve to increase the reach, impact, and measurability of events, but achieving those bigger outcomes will require a bigger team. With the addition of a few key roles and expertise, event teams will be better prepared to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities that will result from a more complex and more competitive event landscape.

Beyond the traditional skills and roles that have historically been required to put on a successful in-person event, event teams will now depend on the expertise and resources of professionals dedicated to producing virtual experiences, as well as others who are able to bridge the two. The heightened dependency on data and technology will also necessitate the addition of technologists who can ensure smooth delivery of virtual experiences.

Dana Pake, for one, believes that production teams can potentially be split but need to be unified by an executive producer overseeing continuity. “I'm a minority voice in thinking virtual and in-person events should be decoupled, but you're still producing two events at once, and so you need two teams, and companies need to understand that and give the budgets to these teams,” she says. “They're two very distinct experiences, and when people are thinking about hybrid they're constantly thinking about how to tie the two together, and maybe that can happen. People are still experimenting, but I think you need ...