DEFENCE New events platform delivers for post-Covid new normal New Zealand Defence Industry Association conducts successful trial of a revolutionary new virtual event platform capable of delivering a full conference and exhibition experience online.
The Covid-19 crisis and subsequent lockdown restrictions resulted in many of the NZDIA’s planned events in 2020 being deferred or cancelled. As a consequence, the Association has been busy investigating options to restart industry engagement events. Even at Alert Level 1 there are major challenges. With members and stakeholders located across global supply chains, the NZDIA has been faced with the challenge of finding a way of maintaining engagement and ensuring that Defence continues to meet as many industry players as possible as we are slowly released from the shackles of Covid. Platform for the new normal Experienced in the specific engagement needs of the sector, it was Event
Mergers Limited (EML), organiser of the 2018 NZDIA Forum, that took up the challenge. Through its sister company PAXABLE, the event organiser secured access to a live online events platform offering the potential to bring the full event experience to virtual attendees anywhere. PAXABLE is the only New Zealand Certified Reseller of Hopin, a virtual venue with multiple interactive areas that are optimised for connecting and engaging for events of any size. Via Hopin, virtual attendees can move in and out of rooms just like an inperson event and enjoy the content and connections they’d experience if they were there physically. “While people have become accustomed to using Teams, Zoom, hang-outs etc over lockdown,” stated
NZDIA CEO Jennie Vickers, “our live online event platform provides a next level experience, which is hard to describe and hard for people to visualise.” “Think of Hopin as your online venue. The place where you can provide an interactive, face-to-face experience for your attendees for a few hours or over multiple days,” stated Hopin’s Dave Schools. “In fact, Hopin can host up to 100,000 attendees in such a way that no one feels lost in the crowd but rather connected in the way they want to connect, whether that’s watching a keynote, socialising around a virtual roundtable, or meeting oneon-one.” Hopin CEO Johnny Boufarhat noted in a couple of interviews recently that they deliberately created a virtual
Jennie Vickers and Chris Helder during international keynote
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Line of Defence
