Explore Digital Possibilities

First Google and Face­book moved their con­fer­ences online.

Yet Apple remained silent.

Final­ly, we heard from Apple. They did­n’t just “move their con­fer­ence to a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence” but rather, promised a whole new expe­ri­ence con­sid­er­ing the shift from in-per­son to online.

We are deliv­er­ing WWDC 2020 this June in an inno­v­a­tive way to mil­lions of devel­op­ers around the world, bring­ing the entire devel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er with a new expe­ri­ence.

Phil Schiller

Inter­est­ing­ly, just after this announce­ment, Google flat out can­celed their event. Apple’s word­ing of the shift did­n’t go unno­ticed in the android com­mu­ni­ty, and I sus­pect I’m not the only one who thinks that com­pa­nies who only take the in-per­son event online, with­out reimag­in­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties, are mak­ing a mis­take.

I have no doubt this was a dif­fi­cult deci­sion. It’s one that many com­pa­nies, my own includ­ed, are wrestling with.

The under­ly­ing ques­tion though is beyond con­fer­ences. When some­thing moves from phys­i­cal to dig­i­tal, whether it’s a con­fer­ence or a cred­it card, the new dig­i­tal for­mat opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Com­pa­nies that only think about how to use dig­i­tal to repli­cate the “old way of doing things” are going to miss the point. It’s hard­er work to imag­ine new capa­bil­i­ties opti­mized for a new for­mat… but the pay­off is impor­tant. Not only because dig­i­tal offers effi­cien­cies that phys­i­cal for­mats don’t/can’t, but because com­pa­nies are com­pet­ing on expe­ri­ence more than any oth­er cri­te­ria, even price!

If you want to under­stand how to win in what­ev­er world emerges from the virus, you’re going to have to under­stand how to max­i­mize and per­son­al­ize for each indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence you are design­ing. It’s no longer enough to deliv­er “one size fits all” (a con­fer­ence that you can do either in per­son or online). You’ve got to under­stand the pos­si­bil­i­ties each plat­form / for­mat man­i­fests and take advan­tage of them to the delight of your atten­dees / users.

I like to refer to this “look at the pos­si­bil­i­ties rather than one-size fits all” trend as omni­ex­pe­ri­ence. I’ll be writ­ing more on this as time allows.