FOM Magazine: Formal online meetings - How Corona has created a new market

A 5.5 billion euro market for formal online meetings has emerged during the pandemic. Digital providers now have a unique opportunity to help shape this market. Insights from the field at Linkando, and the assessment of Thomas Gebhart, Member of the Bundestag.

It's no secret that digital business models have flourished during the coronavirus crisis: the share prices of companies such as Microsoft and Apple speak for themselves. However, completely new markets have also emerged during the pandemic - for example for Formal Online Meetings (FOMs).

FOMs are meetings and assemblies that have to follow formal guidelines - for example shareholder meetings, association and society meetings or committee meetings. In contrast, informal meetings such as team meetings usually do not follow any specific guidelines.

Meetings before the pandemic

Before the pandemic, the market for digital meetings was divided into two worlds: On the one hand, small-scale video conferences, for example team meetings, which are covered by providers such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex. On the other hand, large events such as marketing events or conferences, with cvent, meetyoo or hopin being the leading providers.

Formal meetings, on the other hand, were exclusively offline events before the pandemic, as digital formats were usually not desired for this type of meeting.

There were two main reasons for this:
Firstly, the legal situation was unclear, as many relevant questions had never been asked before: Are votes and elections held digitally legally valid? How must minutes be kept? What formal requirements must invitations and the course of events meet?

Secondly, participants preferred the offline format for formal meetings: there was little trust in digital technology and there was little experience with digital platforms as well as with digital conviviality and a culture of debate.

New meeting culture
The pandemic has created a new situation: Due to lockdowns and contact restrictions, online meetings were now the only format available.

You can read more about how the whole thing has developed here.