Top 10 Virtual Event Examples You Have to See

Most of the world today is familiar with Virtual Events.

They are all around us, in the form of webinars, summits, virtual conferences, video meetings, virtual exhibitions, virtual product launches, virtual trade fairs, & more.

Up until the first half of 2020, most virtual events held in that time period followed a common pattern; a uniquely designed lobby followed by multi-stages & auditoriums and breakout rooms, coupled with a few features to allow attendees to network with each other & give feedback to the event organizers.

However, in the latter part of 2020, many event organizers took the challenge of virtual events head on & really came up with some innovative, creative ideas for virtual events.

The event industry witnessed a sort of revolution, with virtual events wowing audiences one after another.

And once in a while, a virtual event came along that simply swept the entire event industry off its feet with how flawlessly & marvelously it was planned & executed.

Such Virtual Events not only helped the entire event industry survive in what was possibly the most difficult time for it, but also inspired other event planners to gear up their own virtual event strategies.

In this article, we bring to you the top 10 Virtual Event examples to watch & learn from. Keep reading to find out more!

1. Salesforce World Tour Sydney Reimagined

Salesforce, one of the largest top-billed CRM leaders, is pretty much the trailblazer of virtual events, with its World Tour Sydney Reimagined event in March 2020.

The event was fully virtual, a decision the organizing team arrived at only two weeks prior to the actual event!

So you can imagine how rare of a feat it is, delivering a large event consisting of highly innovative & unique features & lots of technical know-how, in just 2 weeks.

Salesforce World Tour Sydney Reimagined brought in over 80,000 live stream viewers, & more than a million views across all of their social channels combined.

Talk about huge numbers!

Another thing the Salesforce event got right was audience engagement, with an impressive & unique contest idea.

The contest involved attendees each getting about 3 minutes for a virtual app pitch, wherein they had to do their best to make the other attendees like their app.

The winner of this exercise was announced the next day on Twitter, thus keeping the audience engaged well beyond the actual event day.

Salesforce also made the event live stream available on demand to viewers across the world, which made their live stream viewer share go up dramatically.

2. AWS:reInvent 2020

For long, AWS re:invent, hosted by Amazon Web Services, has been a much-anticipated conference in the global cloud community.

Amazon being the undisputed leader of the global cloud space, the conference is often the source for most of the learning in the landscape & techies look forward to it to understand the world of cloud more efficiently.

AWS re:Invent 2020 was completely virtual & was conducted over the course of three weeks.

Its highlights included keynote announcements, product launches, leadership & training sessions, a chat & networking tool to engage attendees, along with DJ sets, a mystery video game, & a host of fun activities to excite the audience.

Accessibility & higher audience counts was the first thing on the conference organizers’ minds, as was evident by the fact that the 2020 edition of AWS re:Invent was absolutely free!

Compared to $1799 in 2019, this was a huge step in the right direction.

Attendees got to enjoy captioning, translations, decks, transcripts, & screen reader compatibility for most of the virtual conference.

The conference consisted of 500+ sessions, all organized into distinguished tracks.

Amazon pulled out all the stops to help their participants plan their learning itinerary.

The conference was also tailored to different time zones, with attendees belonging to different parts of the world participating in it according to their time.

All of the conference content was available on-demand to audiences all over the world who weren’t able to join in.

Salesforce also took advantage of the conference’s content & pushed it out through social channels as well after the event as well.

3. SheetsCon 2020 by Google

If you’re also one of the avid users of Google Sheets, then SheetsCon 2020 was just the online conference for you!

Dedicated to upskilling the world’s google sheet users, the SheetsCon 2020 came with expert, in-depth tutorials, & detailed sessions.

Google, as always, stayed on top of their engagement strategies with SheetsCon as well, by organizing well-thought out giveaways.

These giveaways required the conference attendees to post about SheetsCon on their social media pages, & visit at least 5 of the conference’s sponsors’ social media profiles.

This initiative not only gave the attendees something to be excited about in the conference, but also worked wonders for SheetsCon’s sponsors.

Another way Google simply aced the virtual conference game was by integrating short conference introduction & walkthrough videos at the instance of attendees’ registration.

These videos helped the attendees understand the various features & parts of the virtual conference, & also made it easy for them to navigate through it.

4. Adobe Digital Experience Conference

Adobe Digital experience conference had been around for 10 years before going fully virtual in 2020.

And lo & behold, it turned out to be a massive success, with 100,000 registrations and 450,000 views from all over the world.

The summit was a pre-recorded event rather than a live conference, which undoubtedly made live, real-time audience interaction & engagement practically impossible.

However, the format allowed Adobe to smoothly stream around 100+ sessions in 6 tracks with enhanced video post production & far less errors than would’ve been amassed in a live virtual event.

It also helped the organizers to overcome time zone related restrictions & triumph over ever-present connectivity issues.

Other mention-worthy features of the Adobe Digital Experience Conference included a clean design & an accessible, convenient interface for user ease.

Before this, event organizers had not given much thought to the UX design in an event, a perception which the Adobe Digital Experience Conference helped change in the coming time.

However, the company did admit later on in a blog that had they been given some more time, they would’ve come up with a live version of the summit that would’ve provided live, real-time interaction & engagement opportunities to its attendees.

5. SBC Digital Summit

SBC, a news, media, & events services company in the betting and gaming industry, hosted the SBC Digital Summit 2020. The intent of the virtual summit remained what it was in the company’s previous physical summits; networking & knowledge sharing.

The only difference was that this time, the networking & information sharing took place in a digital space that was designed to represent a physical conference space.

The summit’s various virtual spaces included:

-a lobby that enabled the attendees to access various parts of the event, enter the auditorium, join any live conference sessions, or watch on-demand videos recorded in previously held sessions.

-Product showcases, where the attendees could view any new products & learn more about them, as well as interact with the exhibitors.

-Networking Lounge, where attendees could gather for the purpose of networking & interacting with each other via a chat window tool.

The thing that worked in SBC’s favour with the virtual conference was the fact that they were able to successfully provide a comfortable, easily accessible, & familiar environment to the attendees.

This ‘awareness’ of their environment helped the digital summit’s attendees to solely focus on the topics of discussion & the products being displayed, rather than worry about the conference’s format.

6. MarTechFest Dial Up

Marketing Technology giant MarTech Alliance made online events its primary activity. Among the many events that the company hosted was the annual MarTechFest Dial Up.

It was essentially conceived as a virtual version of the MarTechFest Global conference held in London.

The event was spread over 30 days & consisted of 30 speakers. Other noteworthy features of the event included fireside chats, Q&A sessions, masterclasses, & lots more.

The event sessions were available not just live, but also on-demand to audiences who wished to view those.

MarTechFest also helped bring up audience engagement with the help of reward points.

Attendees could use these reward points to access future events, win swag, & avail some other benefits.

The virtual event also provided the attendees with the options to attend virtual workout & meditation sessions to keep the audience engaged between the sessions.

This also provided a great initiative for people holed up in their homes to exercise.

7. NBA Restart

NBA, & effectively all of sports were temporarily suspended in 2020 in view of the COVID induced lockdown restrictions.

However, NBA made good use of the physical lockdown by coming up with a win-win idea for their 2020 edition, the NBA Restart.

With NBA Restart, NBA not only successfully provided NBA fans with the thrill & adrenaline rush of watching a live game, but also provided the attendees with a lot more features beyond the limitations of a physical game.

Although no fans were allowed to attend the games being held in Orlando in person due to the restrictions, they were able to watch the game in a virtual conference sort of setting.

And we all are familiar with the live cam that’s a part of almost all major games. The NBA Restart recreated that experience with the webcam feeds of select attendees being showcased on the court livecam, also shown on the livestream.

NBA took this a step further by placing various cameras around the periphery of the court to give their audience a 360 degree view of the entire arena to recreate a physical environment.

High quality microphones embedded in the cameras provided an immersive sound experience to the audience with each shot.

NBA also provided an app to their audience via which they could cheer for their favorite players & teams using certain hashtags. These tweets of encouragement & fandom were then displayed all around the court to boost the confidence levels of players.

All in all, the NBA Restart was truly an immersive, engaging virtual experience that provided NBA fans an outlet to not only watch their favorite games, but also be a part of it in rea

8. The Virtual Estate Experience

Most vineyards follow the model of organizing tours & tastings. However, the year 2020 came with a different set of health & safety guidelines. To keep up with these health regulations, the Quintessa Estate in Napa Valley turned to a virtual experience.

The Quintessa Virtual Estate Tasting Duo event unfolded with the tasting kit containing two bottles being delivered at the participants’ door steps.

The participants could then connect with other participants over a shared virtual conferencing platform where they could sip the wines together & discuss the flavours, taste profiles, & other feedback regarding the tasting with each other.

Just like in a physical tasting experience, the participants had the option to share their feedback directly with the vineyard owners & tasting organizers, which helped them understand their wines & their customers’ reactions to it better.

In a time when most other estate owners & establishments postponed or indefinitely suspended their tasting experiences, the Quintessa Estate came up with an innovative, out-of-the-box solution for the problem at hand.

Needless to say most virtual events rely on such kind of inquisitive, inventive thinking to give the attendees an unforgettable experience.

9. Tomorrowland Around The World

If it was hard to imagine a music festival going online, the Belgian music festival Tomorrowland Around The World made that possible!

With headlining artists like Steve Aoki & David Guetta, the two-day music festival consisted of 8 virtual stages, 60 artists, workshops, games, cool fireworks & laser shows, & more.

The festival attendees also had the option to connect & interact with each other, & enjoy truly immersive watching & gaming experience in the entire virtual event.

With an admission fee of just 20 Euros, the 2020 edition of the Tomorrowland Music Festival was by far the most affordable of the festival when compared to the recent years.

10. Dreamforce to You 2020

What better way to end this list than with another Salesforce event? Dreamforce To You 2020 is a major tech conference that takes place every year for 4 days in San Francisco. However in 2020, the organizers took the conference virtual with a spectacular show prepared for them.

Salesforce roped in famous entertainers like James Corden & Metallica to keep their audience entertained in between sessions.

The virtual conference also became a stage for announcing Salesforce’s recent acquisition of the messaging & collaboration tool Slack.

This created a sense of belonging & entitlement for the attendees that works as a powerful magnet for them to attend future events of yours.

All of these virtual event examples should serve as an inspiration for you to create & plan your own virtual event.

With Mixhubb, an innovative, new-age virtual event platform, gives you the freedom to create & design your virtual event, your own way!

With our innovative & interactive virtual event features, you can incorporate into your virtual events:

• Customized dynamic lobbies & booth designs,
• Event scheduler & briefcase to allow attendees to bookmark their favorite sessions & set notifications for them
• Live chat, polling, Q&As, & emoticon integration that allows the attendees to showcase their feelings about any sessions using emojis
• Virtual networking features like AI matchmaking, 2-way video conferencing, & Networking Tables to allow the attendees to find & connect with each other
• Complete data privacy & security with ISO 27001 certification & GDPR compliance

Got a virtual event idea? Consult with Mixhubb today to bring it to life!