Government Conferences Attacked: Is the Solution Virtual?

As you know, government conferences are under fire. Two officials have now resigned from the VA owing to excessive expenditures, rules are being tightened, and budgets are shrinking.

So what is the future of government conferencing? Are they still necessary for the good of government?

Yes says Theo Mayer. But in a different form. Mayer is the cofounder and CTO of Hybrid.

He told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program that a hybrid conference brings the best qualities of a traditional space to the online community.

“First of all if you tink of a traditional conference as being a process of getting a group of with community interests together in a room and having presentations and panel a hybrid conference isn’t far off. A hybrid conference works because the only people that get together physically are the thought leaders. They push their content out to a remote audience. An oftentimes global audience,” said Mayer.

The challenge right now for government conferences is that travel budgets have been slashed. Sequestration is looming. And a small group of people have created a stir about waste and abuse at government conferences.

The problem is simple conferencing is still essential. The process of getting thought leaders, ideas and people together to talk is the only way government can progress forward. A solution is to leverage technology to reduce cost, eliminate HR waste on travel, but still provide the interaction (chat rooms). We are doing the best we can with the resources we have.

You might not think of it, but conferencing has been around for hundreds of years. “150 years ago someone might have to take a ship together with confederates. That required a significant amount of time and money. Then the Jet-Age came around and flying to Orlando for a conference became the norm. It became an entitlement. But we are entering another age. And now we are lacking resources. So it’s time to enter the digital age.

Hybrid is co-hosting a conference on Thursday February 7th. For more information you can check it out here.

You can also register for GovLoop’s first ever virtual career fair here.