513: Online Meetings a Virtual Events During COVID-19

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about online meetings a virtual events during COVID-19. One thing that has been on the rise during the COVID 19 crisis has been online conferences, and there are a number of factors that are causing this. One of those is that people ar3e working from home and have more time to attend these conferences. In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how the number of invitations to online events conferences has revved up rapidly, Hiten’s experience with online events, how people have more time for online events right now and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:40 Why this topic was chosen. 01:28 How the number of invitations to online events and conferences has revved up rapidly. 02:02 Hiten’s experience with online events. 03:39 How things might gradually shift. 04:23 Why this explosion of online events fascinates Hiten. 04:54 How people have more time for online events right now. 06:00 How people are starving for new connections. 06:40 How online events are much easier to attend. 07:22 One thing that’s always going to be true about online events. 3 Key Points: The amount of invitations to online events and conferences has revved up rapidly.There’s been a lot of exuberance for online events, more than I’ve ever seen in my life.This explosion is fascinating to me. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody this is [Steli Efti]. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: This is [Hiten Shah]. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: Today on The Startup Chat we want to talk about online meetings, webinars, conferences during COVID-19, is it a good idea, is it a bad idea, is it going to, yeah what is happening in the world around the trying to bring physical events online, what are we experiencing, observing? We both felt like it's an interesting thing that's going on around the world, Zoom fatigue and other things pop to mind. We just wanted to chit chat and see what we're observing, what we think will happen next, how to think about these things. Let me ask you first, I have just, the amount of invitations to online events and conferences for me has just ramped up drastically. Obviously because this is conference summer time I guess and a lot of conference organizers decided to try to do their events completely online but also just the amount of webinars that companies give, the amount of meetings that you, I mean we always because we were remote, always had a lot of Zoom meetings. It's gotten even more because now I do Zoom meetings with friends, I do Zoom meetings, calls with family members. I just do a lot more of these virtual video conferencing calls. Yeah, I'm curious, are you also, I've done a few conferences, I've done a bunch of webinars and everything in between so far. I'm starting to try to figure out how I feel about all of this and if I want to do more or less and what's going to happen in the market. What about you? What's kind of been your experience of the last couple of weeks? [0:01:45] Hiten Shah: I think there's been a lot of exuberance for online events like more than I've ever seen in my life. I'll start that way because I still don't know what to think because of what I just said, there's been more than ever. For the moment, it feels like people are into it. Into it meaning there's enough people that are still into it where if you throw some online something or other and have some way to promote it people will show up because it's not that they don't have anything better to do, it's that they're seeking connection. They're seeking this. I led a few over the last two or three weeks. I wouldn't say an insane amount but definitely more than I would've normally and I probably have a few more to lead in terms of like topics like product management or remote work or whatever in partnership with different folks.

2356 232