The Covid-19 pandemic changed how we live, specifically how we communicate, both in-person and online. Throughout 2020 and the height of the pandemic, employees had to work from home with the enhanced use of virtual platforms, which helped coordinate meetings and accomplish tasks. These virtual environments were also crucial for conferences and helped bring virtual events into the mainstream. While the pandemic has subsided, virtual events have continued to evolve into the norm for work events and meetings due to their capacity for universal reach by breaking down geographic barriers and easily accessible features, including surveys, live chats, and Q&A sessions.   

With virtual events evolving over time, they continue to pose a myriad of challenges and opportunities, specifically for organizers. Such challenges include technology leverage, engagement, and time zones, to name a few. Despite this, virtual events continue to provide many opportunities, including reaching new audiences, sponsorship opportunities, and improved content, to name a few.   

As virtual events continue to evolve, so will the ability of AI to contribute to them, with AI providing a myriad of ways to captivate attendees in virtual events, including attendee matchmaking, personalizing attendee experiences, removing language barriers, and gathering post-event feedback. Other features also include AI-powered event scheduling, AI custom event agendas, and using AI to create event names and logos, to name a few.   

Virtual events can be used to enhance engagement through AI personalization algorithms to customize virtual event experiences. This includes streamlining event management, improving event analytics and content delivery, and analyzing attendee behavior and interests to customize their experience.    

Using AI in your virtual event provides a means to facilitate both interaction and networking among your virtual event attendees. This can be done through AI-powered matchmaking, which uses algorithms to connect attendees based on their interests and preferences.   

Successful virtual events have many features for attendees, including virtual booths, chatbots, and Q&A sessions. Still, now, with the power of AI, these same features can be AI-driven, and matchmaking technologies can be used to make these features even better.  

Much like in-person events, feedback is vital for hosting a successful virtual event, including during and after the event. This can be accomplished through AI-driven data analytics, which is used to track attendee behavior throughout the event and make improvements during the current and future virtual events.   

Through AI-driven analytics, virtual event organizers can extract valuable insights from attendee behavior and feedback to improve during and after the virtual event to achieve the best engagement levels possible.   

One aspect that AI can do to improve virtual event experiences is optimizing content delivery, which can lead to content personalization, automation applications, and enhancing efficiency, to name a few.   

Through this, the virtual event experience will only improve by ensuring that attendees receive the correct information at the right time, which will only lead to greater engagement, interaction, and networking between the attendees and organizers, both during and after the virtual event.  

AI is providing, and will continue to provide, means of improving virtual events. However, given AI and its usage in a plethora of fields is still being understood and, in some cases, has legal ramifications, it still poses many potential challenges and ethical concerns regarding virtual events. These include concerns about privacy and security, including the potential for exposing personal data. Additionally, they can lead to technical and operational problems using dynamic systems that could crash. Finally, AI models and algorithms can be biased or discriminatory, leading to skewed results of virtual events.  

The capabilities of AI improving virtual events cannot be understated, including tracking attendee behavior, constructing data analytics, and providing matchmaking technologies to enable attendee customization. While the use of AI comes with challenges, appropriate steps can be taken to ensure that risks are mitigated and every AI-driven virtual event can achieve its maximum potential for attendees and organizers.   

While AI does pose several challenges, specifically regarding privacy and security, like with all new things, virtual event attendees and organizers should be encouraged to embrace AI as a positive tool that can be used to enhance the virtual event experience, which will only continue to evolve and improve in the coming years and decades.  

Sources: Medium, Expert Events, GlueUp, Timely, GetGenie, LinkedIn, b2match