Data management company Informatica planned to host its annual Informatica World user conference May 18-22 at the Venetian Las Vegas, where it was held in 2019 with about 2,800 attendees. But while the company's events team was on a final inspection in late February, Adobe canceled its 2020 Summit because of the Covid-19 pandemic. That event was scheduled for the same location in late March.
"It was a big deal, and suddenly programs began to cancel left and right," said Informatica principal manager of global events Cindy Lindhurst. In March, Informatica first shifted plans for Informatica World, moving to a hybrid event. By the end of the month, it became a completely virtual offering, to be spread over 20 events between May 20 and Aug. 11.
The purpose of the live conference was to have current and potential customers hear from company and outside experts talk not only about Informatica but also the industry, Lindhurst said. Keynotes were planned, as were breakout sessions, roundtables, hands-on training and networking opportunities.
The company's leadership wanted to preserve the expectation for Informatica World and its technical, hands-on learning from experts, which could not be done virtually. So they rebranded the event as CLAIREview—Claire is the name of the company's artificial intelligence tool—and divided it into five segments, each rolling out to four regions: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; Asia/Pacific; and Japan.
The goal is to provide a digital series of live keynote speakers combined with downloadable content, including customer and analyst sessions and technical demos, for about 50 sessions in all. There also are tools for setting up executive meetings and a tool powered by AI to make recommendations for attendee connections. In addition, attendees could earn points for listening to sessions, downloading content and networking, and redeem them at an online store for Informatica swag or donate them to a charity.
This all would be available for free, versus the $2,295 registration fee for the full live conference.
"We didn't have a lot of time to pivot, especially from a technology standpoint," said Informatica principal of global events technology Christina Abou-Chalha, who marshaled top Informatica vendors and added new ones to bring the event together. Vendors include RainFocus as the main technology provider, ON24 as the video streaming provider, Aventri for gamification, Eventbase for the mobile app, TurnoutNow for networking and Jifflenow for the executive meetings.
"We had our existing vendors in an environment that wasn't what they were hired to do," Lindhurst said. "It turned out well, but in the beginning it was so stressful."
The May 20 event—which as of May 21 had about double the attendance expected for the live event—was smooth, Lindhurst said.
A Few Tests
There were challenges. A few keynote speakers had been furloughed and no longer could speak on behalf of their companies. Speaker kits had to be shipped so participants could professionally record their sessions, Lindhurst noted.
"Our Japanese counterpart had to develop their own platform just to get the content consumable in that area," Lindhurst said.
Time zones and translations became new concerns, and the team ensured content and tools would be secure. "Attendees had to accept privacy and legal policies before registering," Abou-Chalha said. "We worked with legal and security to ensure all vendors were compliant."
Even though the team wants to get back to live events, "we now know we can do virtual," Lindhurst said. "The biggest thing we'll see in live events is more pronounced virtual elements than before. That scenario will reach more people."