Four speakers and a host of international delegates were billed to appear at the international summit on employee engagement and social media, which took place on 21 and 22 April at Covent Garden's Grand Connaught Rooms
However, at late notice, Simply Communicate and audience engagement specialist Crystal Interactive, chose to make the event virtual, with no loss of content or audience participation.
"The event was originally intended to be live, with a webinar link offered as a means to extend participation to a small external audience," said Simplysummit organiser Marc Wright.
"But faced with the crisis of many international delegates and four of our speakers being stranded overseas, Crystal Interactive have made that link available to all of our registered attendees and reconfigured the agenda to permit live link-ups with speakers who are still in the US."
Crystal Interactive was already providing the feedback technology for the panel discussion on employee engagement as well as providing an online audience participation element.
"It has now become routine for us to create a virtual facility for external audiences, so it was just a matter of ensuring that everyone who needed it, had access to the webinar link," said Crystal's managing director Chris Elmitt.
"By designing the sessions to make virtual participants (who we referred to as VPs) feel an integral part of the discussions, questions came pouring in from our online audience and we were able to incorporate these with those of our live audience and the speakers could respond instantly to live and online comments."
US employee communications expert Steve Crescenzo and Jim Ylisela, a US internal communications consultant, delivered their joint presentation from a Chicago venue. This was viewed by the online delegates and the 80-strong live audience in London.
A split-screen facility allowed the live panel discussion to be viewed. The remote speakers and the questions were fed-in via keyboard and interactive wireless laptops at the venue.
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