Let’s try to figure out what’s most annoying about the online format.
Low Involvement
There is a difference between watching football at home or in the stadium. It’s the same with conferences. At an offline event, the participant is focused, fully immersed in the process. When learning from home and the office, routine worries, phone calls, or burnt cutlets are distracting. Of course, you can then corral all the participants in an online conference in a group or chat, but, as practice shows, personal acquaintance is much more memorable.
Technical failures
Any Internet broadcast is highly dependent on technology and connection quality. And problems can arise from both the listener and the organizer. Low speed, bad sound, unexpected disconnections – there are many reasons, but the result is the same. Handheld microphones in conjunction with a huge hall gives such a disgusting sound background on the recording that you three times curse the organizers for saving on loop machines and direct recording of sound from them.
Lack of networking
Rarely does anyone leave a conference without a pile of business cards and friends on Facebook. At such events a lot of useful acquaintances are made, often the organizers themselves practice facilitated networking – in other words, they manage communication. There is no such thing online. In an online format, it is difficult to organize such effective networking that an offline conference can boast. When you come to a face-to-face event, there is a sense of celebration. Working online, it’s hard to achieve the same effect.
Little use – a lot of advertising
The image of online conferences has been severely damaged by pseudo-beneficial events and infobusiness. A participant comes for knowledge and practice, but receives advertising. Undoubtedly, you can’t do without it at conferences. But if the participant remembers only it – it was a bad online conference.
