Your Event’s Gone Virtual, Now You Should Go Global

Picture this. You get an email about your dream event, and you’re immediately excited by the opportunity to learn and listen to a fantastic speaker lineup. You’re just about to click register, but once you open the link, you see that the event is entirely in English. 😔  This is a problem that roughly 83% of the global population has to endure, as only 17% of the world speaks English, and only 4.6% of this populace has English as their first language. 🤯

One of the biggest advantages of the events industry going virtual was the increase in accessibility. Attending an event became as easy as opening your laptop from the comforts of your own home. But, why stop there? What if instead of the event just being able to be streamed by English speakers, it could be streamed by any participant in any home, anywhere in the world! 🌐

Operating a business in our modern and globalized world demands an understanding of the instruments that are key to be successful in international affairs. Effective communication is one of those pivotal ingredients that the events industry has not fully mastered. What event professionals don’t realize is that not only do language barriers limit attendee accessibility, they are also impacting your revenue and opportunities.

Traditionally, event organizers select the language that they believe the majority of their attendees speak (which is most commonly English). All sessions from the speakers to the workshops are being operated in just that one language. This process fails to consider a market of participants that are not fluent in English, leaving out opportunities to reach more attendees.

Accessibility should be a top priority for every brand and event, and thankfully, there is software that exists to help you do just that! Cadence is actively working on providing our customers with the tools to reduce any barriers that would limit an attendee’s access to an event. With our partnership with Wordly, you can imagine a world where your participants can see and hear presenters’ spoken words in their own language.

Wordly is working on making that future a reality with their software that simultaneously provides real-time translation to multiple languages, fully powered by AI. Attendees can listen to a webinar and read subtitles on their respective devices translated into the language of their choice. Wordly’s software also allows any hearing-impaired attendees to easily follow along with live closed captions. They currently support 15 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, Germany, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish to name a few.

When your attendees can enjoy, learn, and speak with each other in the language they are most comfortable with, authentic engagement and connections can be forged. Moreover, you create a powerful event experience and increase your event ROI as a result. As we’ve said multiple times before, there isn’t a one size fits all solution and nobody’s perfect! But we’re continuously trying our best to bring the power of events to as many people as possible so we can all #ExperienceEveryMoment together.

To see Wordly in Action, book a demo here.