What’s to love – and hate -- with virtual CAD conferences
I’m wrapping up coverage of a trade show that I physically attended. Not pretended to attend, as is the case with the virtual conferences, which are most of the events that find their way onto my calendar. A live, physical event—one that you have to travel to—is a rarity during the pandemic.
The trade show was the Augmented World Expo, or AWE, which returned to the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif., after a COVID-induced hiatus. AWE is the main event for cutting-edge technology in general and for the XR (AR + VR + MR) industry specifically. AWE 2020 went virtual—as did every other event scheduled after February 2020 when every show venue shut its doors thanks to COVID-19.
Going live was a risky move for San Francisco’s AWE XR, a company behind the trade show. As the COVID-19 virus is still ongoing, there was no telling how many would brave it and actually attend.
Both attendees and show producers are out of practice. No one knows what to do. Masks or no masks? How to greet? There were a few handshakes, but more fist and elbow bumps. Attendees got in one line to register then got in another to receive a wristband as proof of vaccination. Then, it was where to sit—and how far apart?
Everything has changed. It’s a lot harder to hold a physical event during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Good Old Days
The trade shows and conference industry suffered in the early 2000s as companies learned that it was far cheaper to provide information online. Still, many industry events survived. Our 2018 event calendar shows that we attended 31 conferences and trade shows. We were more often on the road than in the office. The demands of business travel can make it no fun, but they can be softened by elite status and all its privileges provided by airlines and hotels.
We shouldn’t complain, but sometimes we still did, as Joe Walsh famously sang during the good old days.
Life on the road ended abruptly in 2020 as the pandemic spread. 3DEXPERIENCE World, for 20-plus years known as SOLIDWORKS World, held in Nashville in February 2020 was the swan song for all the live events in our industry. More than a year later, Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG), the 3D printing organization, managed to hold its event in Orlando, falling between waves of the pandemic. Since then, crickets chirped, only interrupted by Dassault Systèmes announcing that it would hold its 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021 event in Atlanta in February 2022 as a hybrid event.
The Physical vs the Virtual Event
Getting ready for AWE, I found myself rusty. I booked a hotel, arranged for travel, answered requests for meetings at the event. I cleared my calendar of other appointments for the extent of the show—a full 4 days—plus added travel time before and after the event.
All are standard arrangements for attending an event in the flesh for any editor. But for the hundred-plus virtual shows that I signed up to attend virtually during the pandemic—there was none of that.
In theory, “attending” a virtual show is vastly more efficient. There’s no travel. You can attend meetings just as well, if not better, with Zoom. In fact, you can attend more meetings and more events. You can be at more than one event at one time—as we have been asked to do on more than one occasion.
“Companies used to space their events apart,” said Jon Peddie, or JPR, who covers all manner of computer hardware. “No more.”
Indeed, AWE 2021 took place as Nvidia started its annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC), shifting away from its usual spring time. Recently, two AEC-related events—the Vectorworks Design Summit and Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure—coincided with each other. Autodesk University, the biggest event of the year in design software, happened during exclusive events with Shapr3D and Graphisoft.
Attending a virtual show is too easy to do. Covering the keynotes is easier. Picking and seeing multiple presentations in separate tracks is possible. More events can be attended, consumed, processed and reported on.
It did not take long for show producers, once in mourning for a business killed by COVID, to recover, then turn euphoric as events rose from their graves and into the clouds. Then came the flood of events—week after week—sometimes overlapping. Companies that were priced out of event venues or abandoned physical events as relics of a past civilization, caught the virtual event fever.
Virtual events were immediately declared successes—albeit by the companies that created virtual event platforms. Marketers who planned virtual shows were quick to spout increased attendee figures. Since a virtual show can give any online user a front-row seat for free, without them having to fly in and be housed, and requiring only a signup, audience numbers did indeed soar.
While Autodesk did not conflate the number of virtual attendees for its flagship event, Autodesk University (AU), in 2021 (virtual attendance has remained at a hundred thousand for a few years) the company made the mistake of reporting that a total of 51,000[i] hours of the 2021 event were watched. Pouncing was industry watcher Ralph Grabowski, who calculates that to be a mere 10 minutes a day per attendee in his report Online Conference Burnout.
AU 2021 fell at the same time as the unveiling of a new CAD product. Shapr3D invited engineering.com to Budapest. I kept AU on my calendar. Virtual events let you multi-attend, right? AU events were scheduled for the convenience of an American but would be late in the evening for Europeans. Hungary is in the Central European Time (CET) zone. No matter. Even if I couldn’t attend the live events, I would catch up with the recording.
At Least We Don’t Have to Go to Las Vegas—Or Orlando
Many had signed up for Autodesk University virtually with every intention of attending. It was perfect. You could avoid the crowds, airports and, perhaps most importantly, avoid Las Vegas. A lifetime of attending events in Las Vegas has certainly soured the author. I have come to regard the Strip, the unfortunate venue of every event, as fake—a gaudy veil thrown over a seedy city. You have to see it, though. If only because you won’t believe that a city devoted to vice still exists, but, please, only once.
Orlando was another event magnet. The combination of Las Vegas and Orlando, the repetition, was enough to ruin travel. Millions enjoy both cities (or at least they did before COVID)—party goers in one, families in the other, business travelers in neither.
But to complain of free trips to such popular destinations would fall on deaf ears. Most software users and industry insiders don’t get the opportunity. For most of those denied, the typical annual vacation is a road trip. They see the executives taking off for business trips and non-deserving reporters from the media. Only one in a hundred CAD users flies to an event.
A Welcome Perk
But for a budding reporter, traveling to an event can be a perk delivered many times a year. It may be the only perk—the bright spot in an otherwise dreary year of churning out articles. Even for a veteran (at least one not jaded like the author) but independent reporter, paid trips are a welcome perk.
“Free travel is, for me as a free-lance writer, the only benefit I get with the job,” says Ralph Grabowski in his upFront.eZine.
Released from your shackles and offered what appears to be a paid vacation, would you not jump at the chance? It will take years for a young reporter to realize that there is no such thing as a free vacation. A day at the conference means a night of answering emails and meeting deadlines, none of which were delayed so they could attend the event. Should you be tempted to enjoy what your “vacation” has to offer, you will pay the price upon your return, with long days at the office to take care of the paper piles on your desk or an overflowing inbox.
Next: Is This Thing On? Companies are holding a lot of virtual events. Is anyone listening?
