Every year, CEMA Summit brings together marketing and event leaders for an inspiring, fun-filled few days to share best practices, network, and learn.

The corporate events industry isn’t the only one suffering from in-person, large gathering bans. The themed entertainment industry, which relies primarily on in-person entertainment, is also experiencing major setbacks.

Whether it's a live or digital event, it's a common misstep for event planners to create an experience for attendees who make up the majority. How can you design a more inclusive event that considers all diverse needs and backgrounds?

The fight for racial equality is a shared responsibility by all communities and cultures. The past few weeks have served as an awakening and an integral catalyst for reflection on how we as a company can do better.

Disruption, Transformation and especially Innovation: words that should elicit goosebumps reduced to nickel notions. As marketers and communicators, we spent the last few decades tossing these terms like confetti in order to glorify minimal, incremental upgrades and to flog feel-good platitudes.

Bringing new products to market has long involved a virtual component – in engineering, design, R&D and more. With so many “markets” in shutdown right now, those products aren’t finding their way to shelves, showrooms and shopping centers. Not that it matters: customers aren’t getting there either.

With the “new normal” in place for over a month now, our event strategy and production capabilities have been at the forefront, working with clients to transform their original face-to-face plans into digital alternatives.

Given that 90 percent of workers favor hands-on, experiential learning, it’s no surprise education is one of the top reasons people attend face-to-face corporate events.

We continue to navigate the “new normal” that is life in the wake of COVID-19. Companies are currently facing the decision to cancel an upcoming live event or pivot to a virtual/digital/broadcast/live-stream/on-demand experience.

The world of events is rapidly becoming more sophisticated and more results-driven – made even more complicated through the lens of the COVID-19 impact.

I’m a human being. I have a job. I’m part of a community. My job is to produce events where thousands of people come together to build community, sometimes as a part of their jobs.

Brands sponsor face-to-face events because they want to connect with key audiences. They want to increase brand awareness and improve brand perception.

How quickly things have changed. If your experience resembles mine, and I suspect in many ways it does, videoconferencing has been a big part of your day both professionally and personally.

"Virtual events boast their own unique benefits, such as better learning for attendees," says Doug Binder, Senior Creative Director at InVision Communications during an interview with The Enterprisers Project.

There’s no question we are experiencing an unprecedented situation—the question is, how are we responding to it?

When software giant Pegasystems made the decision to pivot PegaWorld iNspire from live to virtual, a lot had to change in the course of less than a week.

Clearly, the COVID-19 (aka Coronavirus) outbreak has significantly upset the event industry—both B2B and B2C. Events such as Google I/O, the Geneva Auto Show, and SXSW have been canceled.

As coronavirus continues its rapid global spread — and continues to drive the cancellation of face-to-face events — InVision Communications has developed and launched a new “Pivot Playbook.”

With recent daily headlines about canceled events around the world due to the Coronavirus – such as Mobile World Congress and LPGA events – and even debate regarding the viability of the 2020 Olympics, what are companies and corporate event planners to do?

Corporate event attendees today are a far less captive audience than in decades past. When attendees have the entirety of the internet one swipe away on the phones in their pockets, event teams have to work all the harder to ensure the experience provided is worthy of every individuals’ attention.