What We’ve Learned from a Year of Virtual Conferences

Digital Summit, the leading education-based conference for the digital marketing community, got a crash course in holding virtual events after the world shut down last spring. Their team has learned tons about holding a interactive virtual events that speakers and attendees want to log on for—and Kip Edwardson and Jenn Sioteco from the Digital Summit team share what they’ve learned about holding a successful virtual event on this episode.

In person, Digital Summit typically holds conferences in more than 23 cities each year. Their events attract thousands of marketers at 1,200+ sessions, workshops, and seminars annually covering digital marketing best practices & tactics. Their speaker roster has included such luminaries as Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ann Handley, Mark Cuban and Randi Zuckerberg. When the pandemic happened and we all settled into our homes for the year, the staff at Digital Summit thought moving their eents online wouldn’t be a problem. But they soon discovered—as your association has probably also figured out by now—that running an event online is just not the same as organizing it in person.

Now, Digital Summit is thriving with their Digital Summit at Home events. Kip and Jenn share how they refined their approach to online events, what they looked for in a virtual event platform, and how they modified internal operations to level up their virtual conference game and make logging on to another virtual meeting something you WANT to do.

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