In an article last month on the Eventbrite blog, Adriana Gascoigne of Girls in Tech was asked the most compelling element to get attendees to attend their virtual events? “...the speakers: high-caliber speakers and content that’s difficult for attendees to access if it weren’t for [us].”

There was a famous play in 1924 titled What Price Glory by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings (made into a 1952 film). Almost 100 years later, the title of a popular play in the publishing world might be What Price Virtual Events.   Up until now, pricing for these pivoted affairs has varied from free to $25 to $75 to half to full price and tiers. ASAE—after starting with a fee to attend—and The Atlantic both made their major annual events free, but with several sponsors. I saw a big 25% off sale for one publisher’s annual event last week. (It started at around $495.)   Here are some of the variations I’ve seen.    Charge low, hope registrations are high. Christine Weiser, content/brand director, Tech & Learning, a Future plc division, said they charged just $25 for a big virtual event they put on, but more than 1,300 people signed on, a number they were very pleased with. “We had no ...

According to new virtual conference benchmarks from Nuclear Analytics, the average daily view time for a live virtual conference is 2 hours, 10 minutes and 56 seconds. In scheduling their upcoming Virtual Divorce Conference Sept. 9-11, Business Valuation Resources has scheduled days of 2 hours five minutes, two hours 10 minutes and 3 hours 20 minutes.   To add even more value to their event and keep within a reasonable daily view time, BVR has added bonus sessions both before and after the main event. So there’s a 50-minute conference preview on Aug. 27, and then three 100-minute, follow-up programs Sept. 17, 24 and 30.    It's a great idea. There are no ground rules to virtual events. As has often been said, we are all wading in uncharted waters. These sessions allow BVR to showcase even more good speakers and then also does something many experts recommend—keep the engagement and community atmosphere going.    “We f ...