If you're thinking about going virtual with a conference, check out these words of wisdom from C. David Gammel, CAE, president of High Context Consulting, LLC:
Changing a face-to-face event to an online-only event is like an athlete changing from running shoes to diving flippers.
You can still go fast but you better be jumping into water right after you put those flippers on. If not, you will do a face plant within seconds.
Don't make the same mistake so many of us in the magazine world did when the Internet came along and just plop real-word content online. It doesn't work that way, as we found out all-too-painfully. Your audience is different, the way they interact with information, vendors, each other, and your organization online is different, and their attention span is waaaaay different.