Conference News: Speak at SXSW; WSJ’s VR Experience; Events Next Week
Event VR in the Field: For the Future of Everything Festival, which was held online this past May, The Wall Street Journal Custom Events team wanted to offer attendees an immersive experience. One of the unique ways they did this was to partner with Active Theory on an immersive and social activation. The result was The Field VR — “an audiovisual VR and web experience that took festival attendees through a series of immersive stories highlighting environmental sustainability and mental health and wellness.” This is one of the many examples of how conferences were able to offer truly unique experiences to their virtual attendees. You can still experience The Field on your desktop here.
Keeping it Above Board: Organized by Corporate Board Member magazine, The Boardroom Summit covers the full gamut of board-level issues, “from risk oversight and shareholder engagement to the board’s hand in culture, cyber security and compensation, and the breadth of corporate governance topics in between.” Held in New York in September, the event typically gathers approximately 250 public company directors and executives working closely with the board. The conference organizers announced that they will again host a West Coast event in 2021. (They held an event on west coast from 2010-2015) This will be a more intimate version of the New York Summit for approximately 100 people on 17 – 18 November in Phoenix.
Speaking Opportunity: The SXSW PanelPicker is a two-step online process that gives attendees the chance to vote for programming at SXSW (11-20 March) and SXSWedu (7-10 March), which both return (in-person!) to Austin in 2022. SXSW’s Chief Programming Officer explains: “This interface enables us to connect with thousands of creative professionals, experienced experts and informed consumers from across the United States and around the world. Moreover, PanelPicker helps us identify the most innovative new ideas from this global community, thereby helping to keep SXSW exciting, timely and relevant.” Interested speakers should not delay, since the deadline to submit a presentation or panel is 22 July. And in August, all proposed topics are posted to the PanelPicker site for public voting (which accounts for about a third of selection weight).
Lunchtime Learning: MWC Barcelona and 4YFN are a wrap for 2021. But for those unable to travel or tune in virtually in June, MWC is making all of its content from the week on demand, free of charge. Anyone interested should register using the following code: FDVCHJKWUD. Once registered, you can check out keynotes by CEOs from Verizon, Qualcomm, AWS, IBM, Accenture, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, and ZTE, or dozens of other sessions on topics like 5G, connectivity, cloud-native, IoT, and connected vehicles. And be sure to mark your calendars for next year: MWC and 4YFN 2022 take place 28 February- 3 March in Barcelona.
Coming Up Next Week: Game Developers Conference – or as it is better known, GDC – will run virtually 19-23 July, championing game developers and the advancement of the gaming industry for everyone from programmers and VR/AR creators to business professionals and recruiters. At Forbes CEO Next (22 July), fifty CxOs and executives who are using innovation, technology, creativity and culture to advance their organizations will meet online. CXOs from Peloton, Citi, and UPS will headline. Digiday CMO Summit kicks off 19 July, hosting a virtual program for head marketers from media, advertising & retail that will examine the biggest shifts across media and marketing and provide an “honest take on post-Covid strategies.” And at ISC West (19-21 July; Las Vegas & online), visitors can attend in-person programming at the Sands Expo or register for one of the virtual attendance options to connect with connect with thousands of security & public safety professionals.