COVID-19 forces Veg Expo to go virtual
Uncertainty surrounding virus prompts organizations to find new ways to connect online
Organizers of Vancouver’s biggest trade show for the vegan food industry watched hopes for their 2020 event evaporate into COVID-19’s cloud of uncertainty around any gathering of any size.
In early March, Veg Expo first suspended the June 14 show for their Vancouver conference when the novel coronavirus pandemic suddenly loomed largely on the horizon, said organizer Stevan Mirkovic. However, the group decided not to cancel entirely once it became apparent large events in B.C. won’t be in the picture for a long time, opting for some form of virtual gathering Sept. 26-27.
“I think there’s a lot of things, over the course of a year, that deserve being celebrated,” Mirkovic said, and virtual elements still work well for what they’re trying to accomplish.
“The inspirational, educational, advocacy component, you know, can frankly work very well online,” he said. “Anything that sort of storytelling is.”
Video streaming, video conference chat rooms and virtual swag bags to distribute samples all help to create a facsimile of a physical gathering, which remains important to a lot of organizations.
“Nothing replaces that in-person connection, for sure,” said Bridgitte Anderson, the CEO of the Greater Vancouver
Board of Trade. “But there is still a huge need for people to connect online,” especially as it pertains to economic recovery.
Greater Vancouver Board of Trade breakfast and luncheon meetings, frequently staged at hotels around the city, are usually regular features on the business landscape, but Anderson said they felt it was important to make a quick pivot to video presentations and webinars. “People are really hungry for content right now, especially any content that is focused on economic recovery and reopening, economic reinvention,” Anderson said, as B.C. begins Phase 2 of its restart plan.
Phase 2 including the slow reopening of restaurants, salons, gyms and offices — with new requirements for physical distancing and hygiene — under the guidance of WorkSafeBC began May 19.
Large gatherings, including concerts, professional sports or conventions, however, remain in Phase 4, whose start is beholden to the availability of a vaccine for COVID19
or broadly available treatment, which has been estimated at a year to 18 months.
“It’s impacted our industry, I think, more than any other event probably in most of our lifetimes,” said Jenn Abbott, CEO of Vancouver-headquartered International Conference Services.
Abbott’s company plans conferences for international professional associations and saw all the events it had scheduled for 2020 cancelled. And she suspects the meetings on the ICS calendar for early 2021 to suffer the same fate. Associations, however, are scrambling to substitute virtual versions of events, which ICS has experience with having established a division to stage virtual meetings a decade ago.
“We’re an early adopter in that space,” Abbott said, and have been able to pivot with clients that have cancelled in-person events.
“That allows them to kind of continue the engagement with their associations and offer the education that would have been lost not meeting in person,” she said.
Abbott said many of the professional associations her company deals with don’t want to cancel events outright because their conferences serve as educational opportunities for members to maintain professional accreditations.