Miguel:
Hi Dennis some fast thoughts for you :)
Future trends as I see them:
1. Growth in Europe and emergent markets
After some virtual events vendors, marketers and event organisers have shown in 2010 with successful case studies what are the benefits of virtual events we will see much more events and movements in Europe and South America specially. I expect a 250-300 % growth of the total market size in those regions.
2. Merge & Adquisitions
While the american vendors are gaining traction in the US and they are growing in size and financial resources, they will tend to do some approach to fast growth in other markets, to gain presence, customers and market knowledge. I expect some operations on that size with partnerships or merge/adquisitions in Europe, Latin America or Asia in 2011
3. More real time interaction
All platforms will devote time and resources to develop more integrated one-to-one, one-to many video, audio and written chat tools. It is not going to be about installing new applications or software, but about a seamless integration of different tools that will be transparent for the attendees.
4. Better performance, more visual effects and real time 3D rendering
With better CPU performances and better broadband connections we will see more engaging video, 3D and postproduction integrations to make the events even more appealing to exhibitors and attendees
5. Vendors specialisation
With more vendors in the space and more clients asking for more tailored solutions we will probably see a leader in the corporate events environment, a leader in the generic tradeshow market, other for hybrid events, for virtual career fairs, etc
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Cece's thoughts
I think there are two things to consider for 2011:
1) Market will consolidate: While there are several known players in the market - 6Connex, Inxpo, On24 and Unisfair - there has been a proliferation of new players and those who have gained mindshare in the industry, such as Expos2, Imaste, Stream57 and others. While this is great for the customer - more choice and usually a decrease in price - I believe this will lead to some players being bought by larger organizations, merging to bring together complimentary strengths or even some disappearing from the industry all together. No matter how, we will begin to see some consolidation within the industry.
2) Better ecosystem: In line with the above, I believe the players that will remain on the landscape will begin building out an ecosystem of services to plug-and-play on the platforms. While each provider has an "open API" the question is at what point will the providers a) begin developing apps to harvest the potential of the data and platforms. This includes connecting to Salesforce or as Steve Gogolak pointed out, truly automating the marketing aspect of virtual. And b) promote a developer community to build third-party apps for its customers. I envision the latter being more of an end of 2011/early 2012 development.
Left intentionally blank - leave your thoughts below ;-)