I know we’ve had this discussion last year as Vanguards. Not real sure what more could be done for the virtual side. I’m (as you know) really looking forwad to in-person events. I agree with keeping part of it virtual in a hybrid format for those who really cannot attend - due to distance, work obligations, finances, etc. But, since there will be in-person attendance again, I recommend some ‘fee’ for virtual attendees to make it a bit equitable to the in-person attendees. Maybe just have a little lesser content for virtual attendees? Not sure what that’d look like exactly tbh. 

Also, there was a user who posted on my ‘discussion’ thread in which I shared about sessions being viewable after Day1, who is deaf, and wanted closed-captioning. I did see this capability for live sessions, at least in Chrome; not sure if caption capability is available for the recordings? If not, I do recommend that feature. Also, maybe language-based captioning for those who do not natively speak English? I’m sure that’s always been a request?

Not sure what else to add. I’ll think about it more and comment again if anything else comes to mind. Thanks again for a great event @Rick Vanover !!

Cheers!

Great one @coolsport00 and keep them coming everyone. I won’t respond to all but we will read them all 100%, I’m literally going to take this as a report to the event team next week!

Glad to help out Rick!

Hi there!

the virtual event was great!

for many of us the online attendance is a plus!

one improvement could be portable devices support, like iPad. I tried to connect with my 12.9” iPad Pro without success and for me my iPad is a secondary monitor/computer/tool to work with!

many thanks.

Nice one, @HunterLF  → Quick question, what country were you viewing from? Sometimes CDNs do interesting things for certain countries (and possibly device types).

Hybrid event seems the perfect balance for me. I miss informal exchanges with other experts between coffee break etc. For my case it’s really difficult sometimes to follow  online events because i’m at my desk and people can disturb me.

Ability to follow online event is really cool for people who can’t travel etc.

I’m aggree with @coolsport00 subtitles could be a great idea for not native speakers even in english sometimes is easier to understand specially with some difficult accents.

For online event, i don’t think it’s a great idea to have fee specially for veeam customers. For some people it’s difficult to pay something like this with theirs companies (boring and not very agile buying process)

I would think the event should be hybrid next year as well. As most of the people from other locations may not able to travel. Life is soon gonna normalize after covid but still takes time. 

People in North america are good with the in-person event and you feel more when you are in-person @coolsport00 

For sure @Inder . Certainly by next May, if not already by the Fall, I think most will be more than ready & ok with in-person events. Not everyone, but most. 

Will meet legends like you in-person :) 

Not sure about that, but thank you for your kind words, sir. Would be great to meet you & all the Veeam Legends I haven’t yet met in person!

I think a hybrid event would be best, too.

The recorded sessions are valuable as you cannot get all sessions live. But this would be possible at a in-person even,too.

But there are a lot of difficulties to get away from work for several days to travel to a conference like this. And I don’t even talk about the cost which will be another discussion…

On the other side I agree totally that in-person events are much more intense and the side talks with other attendees are not possible at online events.

I don’t know about the other geographies, but in Europe there are several VeeamOn Tour events for different regions - mostly even in local languages. They have similar sessions presented by local Veeam employees and partners. Perhaps you can strengthen these events. This wouln’t still be the same as the Veeam people cannot travel around to globe to attend each of these events, but it is easier for many people to attend a more local event.

 I will nag my managers all year to be allowed to attend VeeamOn next year But I think you should go for a hybrid event to give all customers the chance to get your great presentations.

I love the in person events. Nothing beats meeting Veeam folks and fellow IT enthusiasts. I find that the exchange of ideas and thoughts seems to flow much more naturally since we are “social” creatures . On the other hand virtual events have opened this up to a lot of people who for different reasons never had a chance to actually go to VeeamON. I personally believe that going forward should be a combo. Perhaps a small fee could be charged for virtual in order to provide live streaming of sessions? There are a lot of great IT people out there whose company’s or who personally can’t afford to travel to Vegas or Barcelona, it would be a shame to lose their input and ideas.

I was viewing from Spain.

Hi @Rick Vanover , also for me is a hybrid event the best solution. Of course is the experience a lot better when it is a real event. Nowadays it’s all online… The advantage of an online event is that everyone can follow it, easy. Asking on my management if I may go the US for the real event is not that obvious (and I think for a lot of people in Asia and Europe). A real event has the big advantage of getting to know each other in person, it’s al real. Nowadays that should be a very big bonus ! But perhaps is the following possible? A real combination of the following : a real event in the US, one in Europe and one in Asia at the same time (or at least a large part if possible). Next to that a live online event for the people that can not be on the real event in their region. But the online event now was (as already mentioned) awsome! Thx to all of Veeam

@Nico Losschaert ...you bring up a pretty neat/interesting concept re: event also being live in EMEA/APJ if possible, for those not able to attend. @Rick Vanover ...not sure if you remember, but VMworld had an idea for this 2 or 3 of their conferences ago - they used a mobile ‘robot camera’  device to peruse around the Hang Space so folks who couldn’t attend, could “meet up” with attendees who were there. This may be a great suggestion to implement as well? Thoughts?

Hybrid is definitely the way forward, it means services not always available live (such as closed captioning) can be added to improve accessibility, or even a transcription. It also helps break the issues of travel costs for some further destinations and makes it more globally inclusive. Coupled with transcription/captioning it could be possible to translate some key sessions into other languages also.

I think Veeam smashed it this year and the integration with the community hub meant that the conversation kept going between sessions which normally doesn’t happen due to the isolated feel of remote viewing.

You should all be proud of what was achieved.

I'm glad that we have the possibility to attend to conferences online for the moment. Thinking about VeeamON but also VMworld, those were conferences where I always wanted to attend but never could. So in the future a ‘hybrid’ would still be great, even if the experience was limited compared to live/in-person.

Some ideas:

• The sessions could be streamed and/or recorded for online attendees
• An online chat, either globally or per session, would be nice to better exchange with other attendees
• Basic pass: access to the recordings and limited content
• Premium pass: full access to live streams, Chat, Q&A,…

Also @Nico Losschaert has made a good suggestion of doing regional events in parallel; the sessions could still be held live in the main conference and get streamed to the other locations. That would be half-hybrid/half-live.

VeeamON 2021 has been great, educational and also fun. I liked being a part of it, so I hope I'll be able to join again next year.

I am sure this will bring good response if APJC will be taken care. I knew India as a country has huge potential. 

Boa Tarde

Acho que o evento on-line foi perfeito dificilmente conseguirmos participar de um evento desta  magnitude sou profissional da área e devido a muitos fatores sei que enquanto houver eventos desta forma eu e mais uma grande quantidades de profissionais poderemos acompanha o evento a distancia, algumas coisas que seria importantes legenda que pode ser habilitada acho que o restante como o evento e concentrado da para manter o restante como foi tudo muito perfeito.

Att 

Hi @Rick Vanover had another idea on this.

When browsing the on demand sessions as they are now, it can be easy to feel a bit of “where should I go next?” And I imagine a similar parallel of “what session should I catch?” During the live VeeamON as well. I think it could be good for next year to assign tags to your sessions for the Veeam Products involved and the platforms being presented.

The idea being that next year when someone registers they can choose “Oh, I’m using Veeam B&R, I wanna know more about Veeam One and Veeam DR Orchestrator”. And I’m interested in anything VMware or AWS.

Using this information an agenda is automatically generated of sessions that would best fit what they want, giving them maximum use of their time. They of course could just enroll to all the sessions or drop out of specific ones. Could even just have generic one click call to actions like “click here for the Azure track” or “click here for the Kubernetes track” etc.

I believe this would help people that plan to use VeeamON as an up-skilling opportunity. There’s so much to take in so by getting an agenda that contains the most relevant sessions to them, it increases engagement.

Good shout @MicoolPaul  -» I would work on that for sure as a guide for the journey.

Yes, VeeamON is some time ago, but I would like to share my thoughts as well. First of all: Thanks for this great event!

My thoughts:

• Agree with the most: hybrid format will be the future. 
  • You get probably more of the event when being there because of the social networking.
  • I really enjoyed the content being available on demand at schedule. This cannot be done at a live event. So maybe a 24-hour offset could work. So you have an addition bonus when being there. What - at least for me - does not work is when sessions available on demand a week after the event.
• Lengths of the sessions fits perfect for me. Half an hour of information is quite right. I would suggest to keep this at live event too. Then a quarter-hour Q&A at the end. 
• The amount of sessions was appropriate. Try to keep the number manageable.
• Bonus session after the event are a great idea to keep the event alive! Keep this.
• The community hub thread was a great way to connect people at the event. This should also be available at a live/hybrid event. At the event location this could be presented notable.