Unconventional Connection

This may sound a little like productivity blasphemy but yesterday, I had a great time on Facebook.  While I’m not an all-day-long-hardcore user of the site, I appreciate that I can quickly catch up on the lives of my friends and acquaintances.  I’ve lived on both coasts, the south and across the midwest.  I have precious friendships that have grown from business dealings with people many states apart from where I live.  As I cooed over pictures of my friend Ashley’s newest baby in New Orleans, learned that my friends Tom and Gigi are moving into a gorgeous new house in Tennessee, and rejoiced that still another found a new job after a long difficult job search in New York.  A deceptively simple thought hit me…..”I feel so much closer and so much more connected to these people because of this technology.”

This got me thinking about a criticism I hear sometimes about integrating technology to events, generally from those whose financial survival depends entirely on in-person events.  The claim is that, while virtual events might be great on the wallet, they’re not so great at building or fostering human connection.  They argue that perhaps virtual technologies can transfer information, but to reach people emotionally, requires -- even demands face-to-face.  In fact, when I looked at the data from my first few virtual event experiences, I saw results that reinforced that notion.  But there was something nagging at the back of my mind about the argument.  I continually run into science and even just stories from everyday life that directly contradicts this:

• We’re regularly moved from events we experience only with our eyes and ears through our TV.  My husband and daughter have made a game of taking odds on whether a show or even just a commercial will make me cry.  Both fictional programming and reality-based programs have elicited strong emotional reactions for decades.  I’ve bawled at Schindler’s List, sobbed like a baby at the end of Toy Story 3, felt a deep connection to a “Biggest Loser” contestant.  More importantly, I saw footage of Katrina-stricken New Orleans and hurricane-ravaged Haiti that compelled me to give both time and money to strangers I never expect to meet face to face.  The entire entertainment and advertising industries are built on the fact that we can be both moved and motivated by what we see on an electronic screen in front of us.  It just doesn’t make sense that this billion-dollar-logic stops at the doorsteps of our events.

• Gamers (who are present in two-thirds of U.S. households) often form deep emotional connections to other participants that they have never met in person.  In one famous example from the multi-million-participant World of Warcraft game, a team (called a guild) scheduled and publicized a funeral in the game environment to grieve for the real-world sudden death of a beloved guild member that most had never met in person.  When a rival guild ambushed the funeral and “killed” the avatars of..., the action sparked a worldwide controversy and significant moral outrage.  Even though the attacking players were strictly following the rules of the virtual world (it’s not called “World of Peaceful Observances”), many people condemned this act as insensitive and hostile to the real-world feelings of the mourners who were attending virtually.   Virtual world, but the most profound of real human emotions.

• Along these lines, the internet is full of anecdotes about people who have met online and formed deep relationships.  In fact, a 2010 study indicates the courtship period for digital romantics was a mere 18.5 months compared to those ‘traditionalists’ who courted offline taking 42 months to tie the knot.  This would indicate to me that meeting first online can fast-track the bonding process, not the opposite.  Chat rooms, message boards, gaming environments and other social media have brought people romance, job connections, emotional support, and lifelong friends.  A financial investing message board my husband frequents offers no interaction outside of text postings.  In spite of this, the connections run so deep that when one frequent poster was fearful and upset about her son’s deployment to Afghanistan, she received enough unsolicited donations to pay for her son’s body armor.  These donations came from people she only knew by their screen names.  In this case, the content didn’t even have to use rich media or high-tech avatars to bring us closer together.

There are quite a few other stories that come to mind, but I think the point is made:  every day, our emotions are stirred through virtual technologies.  Paul Zak, neuroscientist from Claremont Graduate University,  has conducted laboratory research about online social media that brings this point home as well.  "Your brain interprets [sic] tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for," Zak says. "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."

As a final note, it’s important to keep in mind that technology continues to improve.  As it improves, we humans continue to adapt to it.  There are ideas coming to the marketplace constantly, and many of these new offerings make it even easier to transfer emotion and belief.  For example, just a few years ago, no teleconferencing technology existed that made it easy to read the nonverbal communication of the audience.  Today, there are offerings like Cisco’s TelePresence that do this effortlessly and cost-effectively.  Today’s barriers and limitations may be overcome tomorrow.  As such, there’s no place for simplistic thinking such as “face-to-face is good, virtual is bad.”  Instead, it’s essential to develop a more sophisticated view.  Technology – including virtual technology – offers a variety of solutions to the challenges that all of us face. 

By staying on top of the latest developments and understanding the needs of your event stakeholders, every event owner can make informed, optimal decisions about increasing the impact of their events.  It’s definitely changing the way we create all of our event experiences.  In fact, add it to your standard list of considerations for every single event you run.  Decide how and what technology integrates into each event to help your budget, your messaging comprehension, AND the emotional impact of your event.