Circumstances & Disclosure

Before I start examining the 'whys' and 'wherefores' of existing virtual event platforms, services and business models I need to disclose that I work for a virtual events platform vendor, although this is not the primary thrust of the business, the platform was developed as a means to an end. When I joined Decisive Media (www.decisivemedia.co.uk), known to many in ICT and Telecoms as TelecomTV (www.telecomtv.com), the company was looking at launching a series of physical events. However, the whole TelecomTV community had been built online from the company's formation in 2001 and it seemed to me, as the subscribers were used to consuming content and interacting online, virtual events could offer a logical and cost effective solution.
Over a few weeks in late 2008 we took a look at a good number of platforms available in the market and concluded, with the in-house talent at our disposal, we could create our own. Primarily, the reasons behind this decision were:
1. We felt we could produce a platform on which we could run our own events that would have a return on the investment in development, within a reasonable time-frame, as opposed to paying a platform vendor a considerable rental fee.
2. We also believed there was an opportunity in the market to produce a simple platform that brought together the best of web tools and the functionality of events in general, and make it 100% browser based (especially important for corporate clients who have IT protocols that don't allow for large downloads and 'exotic' plug-ins) with an emphasis on allowing the visitor to have a 'relevant' experience and find the content, exhibitor or contact, as easily (within a minimum number of clicks) as possible.
3. Create a new revenue stream with a flexible approach to the commercial model - ownership, licensing, and partnership (shared revenue from stand, sponsorship and delegate sales to share the risk).
If you are interested, please take a look at some examples of our work:
http://ictworld.telecomtv.com/ and http://www.symantecvirtualexpo.com/
and let me know what you think.........