Daily Inspiration: “Face facts: your business model is faced with a surge of inevitability. Innovate & adapt – don’t give up & surrender!”

“Face facts: your business model is faced with a surge of inevitability. Innovate & adapt – don’t give up & surrender!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

So yesterday morning I had a bit of a rant in this post, stating my belief that the global meetings, event and convention industry is pretty delusional – we won’t be going back to live, in-person meetings any time soon. Given that, we should be doing better at virtual events since what a lot of organizations and people are doing right now is of marginal quality, dubious value and shoddy delivery.

That ruffled some people. Then, just a few hours after my rant, it was announced that the massive CES show in Las Vegas, which draws tens of thousands to the city in early January, was going virtual.

Point made.

So later in the day, I went down into my broadcast studio, fired up a new stage set I had been playing around with, and filmed my viewpoint from that blog post. The only way I can get really good at virtual is to do a lot of virtual. So, why not film my blog post!

Rant on! Face facts. Reinvent. The future is virtual.

I like the “breaking news” metaphor. Part of my art of reinvention for this virtual space is to translate my 25 year track record at providing deep strategic insight to a real time world that is fast. I think I’m off to something here – opportunities to interpret significant, disruptive breaking news in a way that will help people interpret it.

The CES story is typical of what is unfolding in virtually every other industry out there. With the massive changes imposed by Covid-19 and the pandemic, existing business models have been shattered. Supply chains are broken, consumer behaviour is skewed, day to day activities are altered, new product ideas are coming to market. You either see the opportunities unfolding in all of these disruptive trends and become a part of it – or you don’t.

In my industry, I see countless people sitting back, just saying over and over, ‘we’ll wait for a vaccine.’ That will not be a magic solution, a panacea, a magical formula that will suddenly lead us to a world in which thousands of people get into small, closely defined spaces in meeting and conference facilities. The process of making a site ‘safe’ is going to be deeply complex – and then, interrupted by those who view any attempt to guarantee the safety and life of their fellow human as an affront to their constitutional freedom.

So with everything that is going on, I know one simple fact – my future is found in my basement!

Watch for another new studio set later today!