IBC 2021 maintains its roadmap reinforcing its measures against Covid-19 and its hybrid model

The IBC management team held a press briefing on Wednesday, April 21, to share the latest news about the show. In it, they have detailed the strict measures against Covid-19 that will be carried out as well as its powerful hybrid bet.

Imran Sroya, co-director of the event, stressed that IBC 2021 represents “a new era of hybrid events that will unite the industry for the first time in a long time”. This has been the important thread around which the meeting has revolved. As his colleague and fellow director Steve Conolly remarked: “The world will be very different and therefore we will have to be different too”.

In the virtual meeting, the variables that will ultimately determine the celebration of IBC 2021 identified by the organization were highlighted: the pace of vaccination, the possibility of international travel, ensuring the visitor experience, the surveys that will be conducted imminently and the feedback from events that are currently being tested with face-to-face and hybrid modalities.

Strict measures against Covid-19

The IBC organizers have remarked their intention to create a completely secure event for visitors. That experience will start with a new website that will be launched in May and will be focused on visitor registration. This process will take longer than usual (10 minutes), requiring more data that can support the subsequent tracking of attendees. In this sense, a photograph will be required, which will be used for facial recognition.

Once on Dutch grounds, visitors will be able to find a perimeter around the entire Amsterdam RAI. In this way, a restrict area will be created within the surroundings so that “meetings or gatherings can be held throughout the area, including outside,” said IBC CEO Michael Crimp.

Inside the venue, automatic badge collection will be encouraged. At this time, it will be necessary to declare that, as a visitor, you are symptom-free and have passed a negative Covid-19 test within the last few hours.

Regarding the organization inside the venues, accreditations will be scanned at the entrance of the different pavilions to control the capacity, a one-way will be followed (“as in Ikea”) and the width of the aisles will be widened. In addition, to avoid the risk of spreading the virus, paper will be eliminated and all marketing communications within the halls will be offered digitally.

A “truly hybrid” IBC

Steve Connolly stressed on several occasions during the meeting the need to adapt to a new hybrid environment: “We believe that the future of events lies in the interaction between on-site and hybrid,” he reiterated.

The platform that will be used, a product of Expoplatform, will provide a structure similar to the one that can be found in person. This model will make it possible to offer recommendations to visitors based on their preferences, as well as to create videoconferences with exhibitors and other digital visitors. Similarly, an important selection of the conferences will be available online.

September or December?

In mid-February, IBC CEO Michael Crimp already announced that if the event could not be held from September 10-14 at the RAI Centre in Amsterdam, it would be moved to December 3-6.

At the time, Crimp admitted that due to the obstacles they were facing, they could not rule out “other scenarios if the situation demanded it”. However, this decision would be made between the end of May or early June. Michael Crimp, in the question and answer session, confirmed that the estimated date would be June 2, although this depends on the results of the surveys and the feedback gathered from them.

As the main novelties of the 2021 edition, IBC will feature new thematic areas dedicated to live and remote production, post-production, OTT platforms and the content supply chain. All training sessions and meetings taking place in these areas will be streamed live on the IBC digital platform. On the other hand, Hall 5 will host the Content Everywhere Hub.