Legal and legal tech conferences have shied away from using avatar platforms for fears their constituents won’t accept them. They shouldn’t.
Like most of you, I’ve been to more virtual conferences the past year than I care to count. You know the drill: you sign up thinking you will diligently attend. The conference starts, and your attention wanders. You look to the exhibit hall, and it’s a bunch of videos or chat rooms populated by God knows who. As the conference drags on, it’s harder and harder to keep engaged. As the day closes, there is the proverbial zoom happy hour. This is a usually pretty dreadful affair with a bunch of talking heads interrupting one another. I’d rather drink alone.
Gone are the intersections we used to see, the networking we all loved. The chance encounters, the ability to move around, the ad hoc discussions in the hallways.
But there is a better way than Zoom. I attended an EDRM (Electronic Discovery and Reference Model) conference last year where the participants attended as avatars. We could have our avatars roam around a campus. We could attend the sessions or get up and leave. We could wander around an exhibit hall, bump into people you knew (each avatar is identified by name), and have actual conversations. If you were bored, you could explore the campus, go to a virtual beach, even drive a virtual boat. Happy hours? You were free to walk around, meet up with people, walk up to people in small groups and join the conversation.
ERDM described the conference as an “avatar based immersive virtual venue providing a shared social experience, virtual booths, conversations in the hallway, networking events, and EDRM’s signature bespoke events.”
Here’s a link to the description and instructions