Since March of 2020, COVID has consistently thrown a spanner in the worlds of almost every industry in the world. With the exception of eCommerce, professionals everywhere are feeling the effects of the endless restrictions and repetitive waves. One industry, in particular, has been the most significantly affected.
The Events Industry. At one stage, In-person events seemed to be something of the past, but as we come out of yet another wave of COVID infections, normality seems to be just within our grasp.
With the world in seemingly constant upheaval and almost zero potential for planning more than a month in advance, we have to ask ourselves; Are Conferences Dead?
We sat down and spoke to Robb Barr from Recharge, Jordan Bouchier from Loyalty Lion and Pedro Miranda from ClearCo to hear what they thought about In-person Conferences in the future.
Rob Barr - Recharge
Pedro Miranda - ClearCo
Jordan Bouchier - LoyaltyLion
Our CEO, Adam Pearce, wrote an insightful LinkedIn article on his thoughts on the importance of Conferences. Here are a few of our favourite points from his Article
Peer to Peer support
The opportunity to meet your peers in person and have real and valuable conversations about challenges we all face in our respective industries is hugely invaluable. Growing Business owners can talk about similar struggles, be able to recommend ways around them and in some cases hold each other to account.
Developing partnerships
The Shopify community is built around a strong partnership with tech partners, agencies and merchants, and conferences are a great way to facilitate this. New partners will inevitably lead to new business and generate leads.
Spending the time on really getting to know partners on a human level really sets the right foundations for a long and fruitful partnership. In the past 2 years when most of our conversations have been through a laptop, who gets remembered more – than great chat over cocktails looking over the city, or the zoom call on a wet Wednesday afternoon?
Not only are conferences great for finding new partnerships, but also for strengthening existing ones. Strategised with a tech partner how we can deliver in-person workshops together for Shopify merchants.
Better understand the competition of one of our partners which will help our team sell the solution better to our clients. Been provided with leads from one of our partners due to a long conversation about app integrations.
Develop new ideas
Being surrounded by some incredible people in the tech space was also a great way to be inspired by being ‘outside the vacuum’. Many business owners often get caught up in their own heads and business, and conferences are a great way to get out of that. Conferences are a great way to reinspire, motivate and get us all out of that slump that we inevitably fall prey to after a crazy year.
So are Conferences Dead?
For us, It’s a firm NO.
Conferences are a valuable commodity for any business owner, and while they may not look the same as they always have, we cannot imagine a world without them. Keep an eye on our socials for our own conferences and events happening in 2022.
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