Amani Roberts (MPI Southern California Chapter), owner of The Amani Experience and host of MPI’s World Education Congress Digital Experience—June 13-15—shares some of what remote participants can expect.
What’s your involvement with the WEC Digital Experience?
I’m going to be hosting the live portion of the show on the app and LinkedIn Live and helping with some aspects of the production, too. I’ve been a DJ/emcee for over 16 years—that’s kind of where I honed my hosting skills—but I’ve also been interviewing people on podcasts since 2008 and involved in the livestreaming space for at least the last three years.
Can you speak to some potential advantages of the WEC Digital Experience?
I think it helps to show the quality of speakers and education we have. It will create a little bit of FOMO and hopefully get people even more interested in WEC 2024 in Louisville. It will just really give people an idea of what’s going on at WEC23 and tee up the general session speakers. I imagine some in-person attendees may even watch the general session pre-show streams and get excited about going to those live. The WEC23 Digital Experience will also offer MPI some really quality content to use during and post-event to raise awareness of WEC and the education provided.
If people can’t be in attendance in-person for whatever reason but they choose to invest in and pay for the digital [access], that means we have an audience and, as an organization, we [should attempt to] reach as many members as possible. Whether in-person at WEC—which is a preference—or they tune in digitally, it’s a good thing that we’re trying different ways to reach people. The WEC Digital Experience can also be a good recruitment opportunity—maybe some people who are not yet members of MPI will pay for the digital version and see the quality of attendees and programming and then go further by joining the association.
Cost to join the WEC23 Digital Experience?
It starts at $99 for the WEC Digital Experience, which is a great value for the content [remote attendees] will get. While not everything recorded will be streamed live, all recorded content will be available post-event.
What is some of the content that will be included in the Digital Experience?
The live WEC Digital Experience will include all five of the main stage sessions and seven concurrent sessions (including the MPI Town Hall). But then we also have a section Wednesday and Thursday, 12:45-1:45 p.m., during which I’ll be interviewing different attendees, speakers and sponsors, so virtual participants can hear from a variety of people who are attending in-person and hear about their experiences and what they’ve learned so far. That’ll be through the app as well as LinkedIn Live through MPI’s page. We’ll also be able to take questions from virtual participants—I’m really excited about that. So it’s like for each of those days, we’ll have an hour-long show coming live from the floor of WEC23 to help give people a glimpse—including some lessons learned, highlights and impactful moments from the previous day and what’s to come.
What are your expectations for the WEC and the Digital Experience?
For the digital side, I expect we’ll have a nice crowd, engaging in the chat, sharing their learnings—a nice community of peers. In-person, I’m excited about all of the keynotes and the wisdom they’re going to share, as well as some of the breakout sessions—one of the best parts of WEC is learning in the smaller, more intimate settings. I would hope that people who join the WEC Digital Experience will join the chat and say hello, let us know where they’re attending from and build a conversation—it shouldn’t just be us talking to the camera, it should be back and forth.
