The conference and event circuit took a big hit on account of the pandemic. Even as governments discuss their ‘exit strategy’–meaning slowly relaxing quarantine measures over the course of weeks or months–it’s hard to imagine conferences going back to normal in the near future.
It’s in this setting that we’ve seen events emblematic of physical space and mixing, like Burning Man, go completely online. If you’re in tech, you must have been invited to a number of these discussions, likely over Zoom. But it’s not just professional events that got cancelled. It’s everything – standup, music, group meditation and poetry slams. But people want to get together. Even virtually. They are willing to pay, to get admitted into a virtual night club.
Illustration: Gaia Harvey Jackson (Source: Bloomberg)
So I got curious: if virtual conferences and events are going mainstream, is there a virtual event aggregator? What is going on where? As a fund that covers Entertainment and gaming tech, this is something we think about a lot at Remagine Ventures.
Is there already a virtual events aggregator?
The answer is sort of. A few early attempts are out there but there’s by no means a ‘winner’ yet. Here are a few contenders:
- Youtube Live – https://www.youtube.com/live
- Bizzabo virtual events – https://blog.bizzabo.com/virtual-events-2020
- IRL – the calendar app that morphed from in real life to In Remote Life with a virtual events calendar. (this has the potential to be a winner)
- Currently live – live stream events from around the world
- RemoteEvents – https://remoteevents.io (curated events around Entrepreneurship and tech)
- Arc Developers – https://arc.dev/virtual-events (events for developers)
- Tulula Events – https://tulu.la/events (mainly tech events, some live)
- Streamland – https://www.residentadvisor.net/events/streamland
- Stageit – https://www.stageit.com/ (your online concert venue)
- Livestream.com – https://livestream.com/watch (miscellaneous, by Vimeo)
If you add to these the non-live events and online experiences, like the ability to take virtual tours of the world’s top museums or watch one of the many talks, documentaries or comedy shows online, the huge inventory and lack of proper discovery turn out to be a huge missed opportunity.
What’s missing?
The netflix for events? The TV guide for IGTV? E! Entertainment for streamers?
The current solutions leave a lot to be desired, but also create a huge opportunity. The big challenge today is discoverability and fragmentation – there’s a lot going on, but no easy way to find it. Also, the ideal solution needs to be a tool for event organisers – enable them to easily create events on the platform, and help with distribution and promotion.
There are also different user needs, and they required some dedicated features. IRL in my opinion comes closest:
“If you can’t find something public to do, you can make plans with friends using the composer with suggestions like “Let’s video chat,” “Zoom workout,” “gaming sesh” or “Netflix party.”
Why ain’t Zoom or Twitch doing it?
Bigger fish to fry. With usage exploding and the stock ($ZM) trading with a PE ratio of 1658, you’d think Zoom would have jumped on this already. But they have bigger problems to solve first; One security issue after another, challenging PR, and how to handle the massive growth in scale in the last few months (from 10 million users in Dec to over 200 million in March). So an event directory is probably not the CEO’s top priority.
Twitch is growing these days, but it’s the wild west like Youtube. Twitch must be aware of the challenges in discoverability of new emerging streams and has done little to curate the events to date.
What’s next?
It’s hard to predict how soon we’ll go back to traveling or attending large events during these days of social distancing. At least until there’s a vaccine widely available for Covid-19, virtual events are here to stay. Big companies are built in a time of crisis, and I can’t wait to see the many businesses that will be created to capture this potential across professional events, dating, education, entertainment, sports and more.
In a new post tomorrow, I’ll go more in depth into livestreaming of all sorts.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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Interesting topic Eze that I too have been busy about in the last couple of months. I believe that the topic is more complex and some questions (or use cases) need to be addressed, among them are:
– What is considered an ‘event’? (What is the occasion/context and what is the size/number of presenters and of participants)
– Who is the target audience of the event?
– What are the various audiences needs?
– Which of these needs can be satisfied virtually? How?
– Does the event need to be taking place in real time or can it be recorded?
Etc..
Thanks Guy – events can be professional or social, 2 people or 2 million… different use cases have different needs (obviously), some can be asynchronous (i.e. the lady gaga charity concert…)