Virtual Fairs

Ever since the CoVid-19 pandemic started and began to engulf the entire world in its huge embrace, humanity has changed, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. Some of these changes seem to be permanent, while some look temporary, at least till now. However, in wake of the fact that this pandemic is beginning to look like a never ending saga, more of the temporary changes are turning permanent. How permanent they will eventually be can only be judged when the pandemic has been over for at least a few years. 

One of the changes has been the increasing acceptance and use of interpersonal relations through an online or virtual interface. It is really not as if this is a new concept that was introduced as a response to the highly infectious nature of the corona virus. The idea has been around for quite a few years, but this was a seed that was taking forever to properly germinate and turn into a plant of any note. The pandemic just gave it the right environment for a proper germination, and turned it into a pretty powerful and strong tree, that one can just not ignore any more!

Suddenly we can see the very widespread use of apps like Zoom, Teamviewer and other such for online video conferences, regular team meetings, and even for education. Again both these apps and other similar ones, have been around for some time, but they had very little acceptance, and were used majorly for long distance meetings where travel was not possible for some reason, by the comparatively bigger corporations. Now we see even micro offices using these apps to stay in touch with their regular employees who are now working from home, and are located hardly any distance from the office. Even schools are teaching the young ones on a laptop through these apps, just so that attendance in schools of a large of these students can be avoided. 

Another major fallout of these strange times has been the introduction and large scale acceptance of virtual fairs. Again the idea is pretty old, but the spread has been tremendous only in the last few months. In fact, interestingly, it had been suggested a decade back, that virtual fairs would be the order of the day in the next few years. But that was a reality that found very few takers, and the onset of this system was hardly noticeable. But with the pandemic going strong even after so many months, and still showing hardly any signs of abating, travel restrictions and social distancing norms, have only become more pronounced, leading to an almost impossible situation where large scale exhibitions, events and conferences are concerned. Whether this is only a temporary change that will go away once the virus has been controlled, or is it going to be permanent and will lead to real exhibitions in the physical world becoming the exception rather than the rule, only time will tell. My gut feeling is that the virtual fairs can never really replace the one-on-one human interaction of the real world. But then again, with the improvements in the technologies involved, it might not be that different to the real thing. What do you think?

Some of resources that I went through in my search for answers are: https://www.insightssuccess.in, https://www.researchgate.net and https://www.futuremarketinsights.com