For decades, companies of all sorts have relied on live events to communicate all sorts of internal and external messaging. Customer-centric sales-oriented events, sector-focused trade shows, internal town halls, and investor presentations all work beautifully in a live format.
Live in-person events have been essential for many businesses — and they’re the lifeblood for some. Doing business without them would’ve seemed impossible a couple of years ago.
Paradigm Shift
Enter COVID-19.
We don’t need to remind you how much the world of business operations has changed since the beginning of the pandemic. Like us, you’re living it every day.
For months, live events were completely shut down. Several years later, you’re likely still feeling the effects of the pandemic on live events, despite many starting to come back in full or hybrid models.
Unprepared for Change
Nearly overnight, organizations rushed to turn live events into virtual ones. As lockdowns eased, some events started transitioning to hybrid, with a smaller (often distanced) in-person audience and a larger virtual audience.
The effort that many events teams went through to pull off these transitions was nothing short of monumental. In the early months of the pandemic, companies pulling off virtual events at all would call it a victory.
There was (and still is) one big problem: most businesses aren’t equipped to run virtual or hybrid events. This is true even of organizations with in-house events teams. For most organizations, the idea of a hybrid or virtual event had never crossed the radar until COVID-19.
There’s a huge need for an all-in-one event app that handles live, virtual, and hybrid events with ease and experience.
At Bluewater, we’ve created such a solution, and it’s the first of its kind. We’re excited to introduce you to Parallel.live, the first and only virtual event platform built by event pros.
Introducing Parallel.live
Parallel.live is a state-of-the-art virtual event platform from the minds and techs of Bluewater, an industry-leading experiential and events company. Our Parallel virtual event platform augments or extends your live events, so it’s perfect for hybrid and virtual-only events.
We provide an intuitive, customized, user-friendly front end that will increase attendee engagement. Our software also has a robust backend featuring enterprise-grade on-demand video, a schedule-based CMS, and support for sponsorships. We even have a virtual trade show floor. All of this is packaged into a virtual experience platform built for the real-world needs of event organizers.
Wow Guests with an Online Event Space and Exhibit Hall
Parallel.live is far more than a glorified live streaming service. Your guests will be impressed with an immersive virtual event space, where they can click into multiple virtual spaces and presentations or even over to the virtual exhibit hall. Attendees can explore stages, exhibit halls, booths, event content, and more— either live and in real-time or at their own pace. The platform even has virtual breakout rooms for team sessions or specific content reviews.
Virtually Mingle with Engagement Tools Like Rich Chat and Video Chat
Networking is a huge component of many live events, and we’ve created some interactive features to increase audience engagement for your next event. Event attendees, exhibitors, and event staff can all use rich chat and even video chat to connect and network.
Designed by Event Pros, Not Silicon Valley
Parallel.live, functions better than other solutions because it’s designed from the ground up by event pros, not by Silicon Valley. The Bluewater team has decades of live event experience and intuitively understands clients’ needs. The platform is built with your real-world needs in mind — not the needs that some Silicon Valley tech firm thinks you have.
Big tech had some limited solutions in place before the pandemic began (there’s a reason Zoom became a household name in 2020), and it’s rushed to create event solutions and virtual presentation integration in the past year. But these solutions miss the mark because the teams that made them are tech people, not event planners.
Only Bluewater has the right combination of an award-winning live events team and a capable software team. Parallel.live is just as tech-forward as the rest, but it has a deeper understanding of real-world events management baked into its core.
Hands-on, Professional Virtual Event Staffing, and Management
In the pre-COVID days, plenty of firms lacked an internal events team robust enough to execute a large-scale event, so they turned to firms like Bluewater for that level of professional staffing and event execution. And it’s the same today with virtual and hybrid events.
Many businesses need more than a video conferencing platform to host a successful virtual or hybrid event. They need an outside team to execute the event. We offer this kind of hands-on staffing and management alongside Parallel.live, so you can rest easy knowing that our award-winning live events team and our skilled software team will staff and manage your virtual event and platform for you. We also offer strategic consulting to work alongside any internal teams or agency partners in the planning stages of your event.
Get Started With the Best Virtual Event Platform
If you’re looking to host a webinar, town expo, or any other all-virtual meeting (say, a company town hall) and want to do better than “company executive on a custom Zoom background,” Bluewater can help. You bring the on-camera talent, and we’ll do the rest with our 30-foot LED wall and professional-grade on-site studio. Learn more about our broadcast and streaming studio services. Ready to dive deeper into Parallel Live, our high-quality virtual event software? Check us out at parallel.live. To learn more about what we can do for you, request a demo today.
