Engage and connect with your audience with a virtual meeting or event

How can we effectively gather for our company conference, Annual General Meeting (AGM), the celebration of top performers or Presidents Club, the launch of our latest product or gather for education and networking when we can’t be in the same room together? It seems to beg the question in the words of Grammy award winner, MC Hammer. What do we do when “U Can’t Touch This?”

Humans have five basic senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. That’s where we have run into a problem. We all love to go to events, but let’s face it, they are not happening any time soon. What we will miss is the emotion, the lead-up, anticipation, and excitement of getting together. Often it’s with people we haven’t seen in a while. With the limitations we’re facing, it’s even more personal now. 

Research shows there is no substitute for the electric energy of an in-person show or event. But with the right strategy and technology, you can still create a lasting impact with a virtual gathering.

So now everyone is pushing virtual this and virtual that? Some are even free. What about quality, security, and your brand reputation? You get what you pay for.

Some people can provide a website, some a platform, others can do production. Some people are “pivoting” (a much-overused word these days) and making it up as they go. You likely don’t want to be the training ground while they figure it out.

Others have been honing their skills for over a decade—incorporating virtual elements into meetings and shows—creating leading-edge end-to-end solutions to:

• Virtualize your content when faced with travel restrictions.
• Connect with your audience even when they’re not in the same room.
• Inspire your audience wherever they may be around the world.

There are lots of online tools available, but how many of them start with the end in mind?

What are your objectives? What behaviours are you trying to reinforce or change? How will you measure success?

To create an engaging virtual experience, you need to do more than simply put your content into an app or website. That’s where we come in. What are the metrics that are important to you? We do the research to create the insights and add some “magic” as we build a plan for flawless execution.

We’ve taken our industry-leading event production experience and created a peerless, seamless virtual platform that allows you to drive strategic objectives – strengthen your teams and inspire your audiences.

With our virtual event platform, SHOWBOX, your attendees will experience a fully-produced event.

You’ll be able to:

• Bring in live guest speakers and executives from all over the world
• Immerse presenters in mixed reality to provide exceptional content that’s visually stunning and delivers your message with style
• Use virtual immersion, which allows your audience to engage with leaders and each other using Skype and webcams
• Create interactive moments throughout the presentations to keep your audience engaged
• Use online gaming tools to promote message retention, engagement, and friendly competition
• Weave recognition into the event with shout-outs and fun competitions
• Deliver production elements that WOW like dynamic motion graphics and virtual scenery
• Leverage an onscreen virtual host to keep the action moving

Now that you have engaged the team, it’s important to ensure that you also maximize impact with continuous learning. Today, it’s not practical to bring everyone together for in-person instructor-led training. This is the right time to incorporate distance learning. Is it important?

We know from research that learning and engagement drive performance. According to Dr. Brad Shuck, Associate Professor and Program Director of the Human Resource and Organizational Development program University of Louisville:

• Employee engagement accounts for 40 percent of individual performance indicators
• Engagement accounts for 70 percent of variability in a person’s intensity to commit and intensity to perform
• Learning and development drives engagement

Enhanced learning equals enhanced performance.

All learning aspires to disseminate knowledge, even basic and boring PowerPoint presentations. Good learning also attempts to train people on how to do something new. However, great learning also affects people’s attitudes and emotions as well as presents the “Know” and trains how to “Do.” In fact, great learning starts with attitudes and emotions. It starts with the “Feel”.

So how are we going to accomplish this in with today’s limitations on travel and physical distancing?

Chameleon Cloud provides ease of access to information on the move, digital training without limitations – on any device, in any language, and in any variation. Many of us have our teams spread out working from home. Give your sales team and channel partners access to the information they need anytime, anywhere with a flexible learning solution. Whether they work on iPads, smartphones or tablets, your team has access to critical information.

Here are a few common themes we hear when it comes to distance learning:

1. We have multiple devices. How are we going to cover everyone?

Most organizations aren’t supplying their teams with mobile technology. Chameleon Cloud—from one-course version—works for any device: PC, Mac, Linux, iPad, Android tablets, Windows SurfacePro, iPhones, Android smartphones, and Windows smartphone – even the Xbox One. The User Experience (UX) automatically optimizes for small or large screens. It’s flexibility without the fuss.

2. Our learning needs to be global. How are we going to be relevant to everyone?

Chameleon eLearning is cloud-based, so it’s efficient and accessible no matter where your learners are located around the globe. Need 20 languages or site-specific branding? They all deliver in a single course version. Chameleon enables fanatical control over your global branding. It even can dynamically re-brand your course on-the-fly based on learner geography or affiliate.                                        

3. Our learning needs to be exciting to engage everyone

Distance learning only works if it engages your audience – and Chameleon is the gold standard in engagement. Chameleon features games, simulations, advanced animations, and testing with enough interactivity and layout options (60 and counting!) to captivate everyone – even the usual skeptics. We release new games, layouts, and interactivity every 30 days to banish boredom. That means your newest course will be as unexpected, intriguing, and fresh as your first course.

4. We need to capture learning data

The score is just the beginning. Chameleon tracks all the learner’s in-course actions – not just a Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) score. We’re SCORM-compliant and Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC) and Experience Application Programming Interface (xAPI) Tin Can. We also have deep roots in compliance industries like life sciences and financial services – and we drew on that expertise when we designed Chameleon.

We track everything:

• Time spent on a page
• Each hotspot touched
• Every question answered
• How long each video was watched
• How far down the parallax page the learner scrolled

Then we store the data in our Learning Record Stores (LRS) and make it available to you – along with detailed Google Analytics. Is there such a thing as TOO MUCH information?

5. Our people are already overwhelmed

As part of Chameleon’s flexible architecture, you can offer everything from comprehensive training modules to “learning snacks” that deliver small bits of micro Learning. “Learning snacks” are available at the point of need. Chameleon courses also personalize content dynamically for any group, role or region. The result: An approachable, engaging, memorable, and “organically” individualized learning experience.

6. Our learners need offline access

Chameleon is ultra-high-tech, but it can also go off the grid. When you develop in Chameleon, you can choose to deliver through our native apps. This allows learners to play the course either streaming or download the module and take it offline. When the learner reconnects online, the scores are still synced with the Chameleon LRS and passed to your Learning Management System (LMS).

How we can help?

We create it.

You may have courseware, PowerPoints or PDFs that are chock full of content, but it’s boring and looks like it was developed in the 90s. It probably doesn’t play well on mobile devices either. (No shame. We’ve seen it. We’ve fixed it.) We can help convert or create courseware into leading-edge Distance Learning using Chameleon. It even comes with a free Chameleon subscription so you can make future updates.

You create it.

Have an internal eLearning function but still want the benefit of our Chameleon technology? No problem. The Chameleon authoring tool is available on a subscription basis. Tell us how many people you want creating content and we’ll set you up.

We create it together.

You’re mostly on top of your eLearning needs, but there’s a stumbling block: Maybe you just need help filling a role or function in your distance learning process. Perhaps you’re stuck on instructional design or script-writing or production or translation or – (you get the idea). We can handle those specific needs while your team does the rest of the work.

How long will virtual low touch and distant interaction be required? Who knows? That’s not really the point anyway.  

We have been doing this for many, many years because it works. We developed SHOWBOX over 12 years ago in response to limitations posed by the Great Recession of 2008 and have continued to enhance it ever since. Many of our clients needed to keep executing on their strategy in a virtual way. In fact, removing some of the limitations of physical contact allows you to spread your message even further and eliminate some of the associated costs and time commitment.   

We are in the inspiration business! We get people to change their beliefs and behaviours to produce results for our clients. And virtual is a great way to make a lasting impact and drive results. It’s not going away. It will remain one in a suite of tools that can be very impactful given the right circumstances. Over the last 12 years, we have seen it thrive.

Case in point, there was a time when the mobile phone was an effective tool reserved for senior executives and “important people”. Its effectiveness and ongoing adaptation over time have enabled them to become an integral part of our daily lives.

Actually, we all have to adapt all the time. Many times they are small changes or situational shifts; sometimes they are foundational. There is no doubt there is a permanent shift at play. Is has become routine to turn on the webcam. Our new reality is an opportunity to refresh your approach and engage your audience in a meaningful way.

The pace of change has heightened and we are not in control of everything around us. We can, however, control how we react to it. And with our ability to physically interact being highly restricted to those things deemed essential, there is a heightened need for us to connect socially through technology.

Research proves that there is no substitute for live meetings; however, there has been an interesting shift in our sense of community and we still need to connect. Virtual solutions allow you to effectively gather for your company conference or AGM, celebrate successes, launch your latest product or gather for education and networking in a meaningful way and inspire your team.