What should you charge for a virtual conference?

From time to time, every industry must adapt to some inconvenient technological advance. Suddenly, some part of what you offer can be reproduced or distributed in a new form. The temptation is to ignore the issue and hope it goes away. But if you don’t act, eventually some competitor, existing or new, surely will.

Reinvention is a painful process. Hollywood’s reaction to the advent of television followed the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The same emotions played out in the response of the music industry to the arrival of digital downloads and streaming.

In retrospect, some of this looks absurd. Businesses often overestimate the extent to which a new channel of distribution will cannibalise their existing offering. VHS video, assumed to be the death of cinema, revived interest in feature films; more print books are sold now than when the Kindle was introduced. Live theatre broadcast to cinemas may serve as a gateway drug to the real thing.

Starting now, this same debate will be replayed around the sudden explosion of online video. Churches, town councils, conferences, public lectures, theatres and opera houses will need to consider how and when to share their ‘content’ online. Live-streaming, an optional sideline before the crisis, is, like it or not, the new normal.

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For instance, it would be a pity if churches lose the filmmaking skills they have developed during lockdown. What began as simple camera-phone footage has blossomed to include aerial drone shots of the church to the accompaniment of hymns sung by virtual choirs. (Each chorister sings individually at home to an emailed accompaniment, and their voices are mixed together afterwards.) Many will have noticed that their online congregations are larger than their physical ones.