As the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic continues and with social distancing measures and travel bans making it difficult to stage physical events, DCD has announced it is rescheduling its physical events to 2021. Key events from the market leading conference series will be hosted online for the remainder of 2020.

“Deciding now to deliver our entire 2020 conference programme virtually gives us time to focus on the highest quality content whilst also providing certainty to our partners and global audience,” says George Rockett, Co-Founder & CEO, DCD. “The success we’ve experienced with virtual conferences to date has made this decision much easier and we’re now 100% convinced we can evolve this product to fully meet the industry’s knowledge and networking needs.”

Since pivoting DCD>New York at the end of March to a virtual conference, DCD has produced four online events to date, engaging a live audience of 5,764 individuals. The move has received overwhelming support from partners, speakers and attendees.

Re-inventing B2B events

The DCD virtual event experience incorporates the thought-leadership elements that attendees have come to expect, including keynotes, panels, and fireside chats, all with live Q&A, polling and other interactive features. There's also a virtual demo stage, which, combined with roundtables and 1-2-1 networking functionality allows delegates go deeper into topics, share their own insights and build new connections at the click of a button.

"We're building some cool features into our virtual experience that enable us to take our audience on a defined content journey," says Rebecca Davison, Head of Production at DCD. "We can take individuals listening to a virtual keynote into a virtual roundtable discussion on the same subject and then into a 1-2-1 video meeting with the speaker; all this from the comfort of their home/office, and with no travel time. It's a compelling argument for combining our renowned face-to-face conferences with virtual activations in the future.”

Growing online audiences

Dan Loosemore, Chief Marketing Officer at DCD added that, "the pandemic has once again shone a light on the importance of the data center industry to the wider economy. Our news headlines reflect continued market growth and we're seeing a real thirst for digital content that's translated into an increase of 45% in web traffic since early March. The virtual events have been so successful I'm sure they'll become mainstays in our programming into 2021, allowing us to deliver even more vital content to our global audience. The future looks hybrid for data center infrastructure, and for the events that support them."

Below are audience statistics from the most recent DCD virtual conferences:

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