Our Odd “Uncle Online”

WOW. Virtually in the space of five months, everything in our industry seems to have gone virtual. Sure, some small live events and training have managed to happen face to face, but as of August it seems like the whole conference industry is moving online.

As a conference MC/Speaker, I, like so many others, have been on a very steep learning curve, exploring, learning and refining my virtual skills. It’s been (and remains) a wild, scary and exciting ride.

I know that some speakers and MCs (as well as some platform providers, studios, PCOs, AV companies and tech types) have been embracing online for years, but it always seemed to me that those people were a little like that that odd uncle.

You know the one I am referring to? That eccentric relative who was often at family functions, babbling on about something we needed to pay attention to, that we never paid much attention to. But today I liken this uncle to the “onliners” – the often marginalised, but super-wise people in our industry who, it turns out, were years ahead of us.

They’ve been trying to entice us to embrace online events for ages, but most of us didn’t pay them the attention they deserved. We paid them lip-service, a conference app here, a webinar there, a small livestream into our live event here, a Zoom call meeting there. Back in 2019, we may have live-streamed our Convention Centre conference to 27 people over in WA and NZ, but the event was really aimed at the 500 people live in the room. The onliners were never the main game. Until now.

In fact, until March, the onliners were the outliers, detached from the main face to face conference. They were the odd uncle. And now they are our favourite family member, the fun, cool and wise uncle who we never gave enough attention to. Here they now stand, centre stage and we can’t live or work without them. We certainly can’t hold a conference without them. We are all now learning about them - and learning from them.

So thanks for your wisdom Odd Uncle Online. Sorry we ignored you. Looks like you are now the life and soul of the party, for…..well who knows how long? But in one form or another, you have a permanent invite to every party.