By this time, we are all likely familiar with virtual events of one kind or another. Granted, we’re a bit weary of staring at screens by this point, and while we continue to eagerly await in-real-life (IRL) events to resume, The Year of Zoom has demonstrated that virtual events do have some advantages over in-person events, such as being able to check out sessions more or less on one’s own schedule and, perhaps most importantly, allowing employees in an organization who may never have been able to attend an event due to travel costs, etc., to get the benefit of educational sessions and/or show floor demonstrations.

For many years, one of our favorite IRL events has been the International Sign Association’s annual Sign Expo, which traditionally serves as a launch site for new products in wide-format and display graphics and signage. Last year’s was a bit of a movable feast, and by the fall the goal was to stage a live Sign Expo in spring 2021. As we all know, events conspired to prevent that from happening, so ISA opted to go the virtual route, and last week (April 7 to 9), hosted Sign Expo 2021 Virtual. ISA really went out of its way to make the Sign Expo Virtual as much like an IRL event as possible, focusing on offering opportunities for live interaction and networking with other attendees, exhibitors, and ISA representatives. They used the Hopinplatform and the interface was very well organized and easy to navigate. The Stage was the equivalent of a Grand Ballroom, where the Game Changer, Titan Talks, and other general interest sessions were held; in Sessions you could find breakout educational programs by topic or see what sessions were live at any given moment; in Expo you could wander the virtual show floor and see exhibitor presentations and videos, again arranged by topic. There was also a Networking zone where attendees could engage others individually, and perhaps arrange to meet up for one-to-one chats.

Running down the right side of the screen was a live comment feed where attendees could comment on what keynote speakers were saying, add further information, or just chat with others and start a longer networking process. Sure, some comments could be a little snarky, but I actually found a lot of it fairly enlightening, interesting, or amusing. This kind of chatter would obviously be a no-no during a live keynote (one would think), but in the virtual context it provided a nice gloss on the official presentations.