Curious about what a meetings industry mover-and-shaker thinks about the future of conferences? Skift has you covered.
In a thorough interview, Skift reporter Dennis Schaal sits down with Cvent founder and CEO Reggie Aggarwal to talk about travel, trends, and technology. Here’s a taste of the interview.
Skift: What about the debate about virtual meetings versus live events?
Aggarwal: I went on the road show when we were doing an IPO last year. The first thing a lot of Wall Street people did was attack live meetings. They said, “Hey listen, virtual meetings, WebEx, Go-to-Meetings. WebEx, for example, we started using that in 2000, right? It’s 12, 13, 14 years. But the point is, it’s not like the future is here. With webcams, just everything was moving towards virtual.
What we saw happen is the opposite of what you might have thought. The more technology there was like that, the more people wanted to meet face to face. That’s what we call the event effect or the experience economy. People want experience. Nothing beats coming to this conference and meeting face to face, breaking bread and shaking hands.
Please visit Skift to read the rest of the interview.
(Image: Cvent’s Facebook page)
