Page 15 - BusinessWest October 12, 2020

to move forward in 2020. In Jensen’s case, like most players in his industry right now, that meant a shift to a new type of virtual, or online, event.
“Like any major shift in business, it’s a learning curve; it’s a challenge to make the transition from only live events with some streaming at them to all streaming events,” Jensen explained. “It was definitely a shift not only in our business, but in the mentality of people asking to do them.”
The typical live gathering might include livestreams as a secondary factor, he said, mostly at higher-end events; smaller companies typically
“Like any major shift in business, it’s a learning curve; it’s a challenge to make the transition from only live events with some streaming at them to all streaming events. It was definitely a shift not only in our business, but in the mentality of people asking to do them.”
don’t bring in a secondary audience remotely. “We had to shift our mentality, and that was hard. Did we have redundancies and protocols in place? What if we lose somebody on the other end? How does that effect everyone?”
Michael Zaskey has been dealing with those
questions, too, since the industry crashed to a halt in mid-March.
“We were the first to go, and we’ll be the last to come back in a tradi- tional sense,” the owner of Zasco Productions told BusinessWest. “We knew pretty quickly that online and virtual events were going to be the norm for a while.”
At first, companies
thought they could take a
DIY approach, he added.
“Initially, folks were trying
to do things with Zoom
and GoToMeeting. Those
are awesome tools for
meetings or small-group
sessions, but not for pro-
ducing events. You can
have a board meeting or
discussion over Zoom,
but if you want to engage
and entertain and create
an experience similar to
a live event, that’s not the
right tool. You still need a production company.”
The world is figuring that out. Based on pro- jections from Grand View Research, virtual events will grow nearly tenfold over the next decade from $78 billion to $774 billion. And that puts a squeeze on businesses like Jx2 and Zasco.
“People figure a virtual event costs less than a live event because you’re not renting ballroom
Jx2 Productions has boosted the technology in its control room, and out on the road, to meet the needs of a largely virtual event landscape.
space, but on the production side, it’s just as expensive, or even more,” Zaskey said. “We’ve tried to be flexible with budgets, but we’re work- ing with a very slim margin.”
It’s a challenge that will remain, at least in the short term.
“Obviously, it will be a long time before live events come back full force,” he added. “Virtual events will never replace a live event, which is so
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BusinessWest
TECHNOLOGY
OCTOBER 12, 2020 15
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