Many companies won't go fully back to large "real world" / IRL events vs. digital for awhile

It's not because IRL events don't work. They do. They are a Top 3 source of pipeline and influence for most B2B companies.

No, they won't go back because large events are so much work

Most events professionals in B2B have kept their jobs even with little to do, and are much happier doing virtual events that nominally sign up 1000s or more

That's OK but it's not the same. It's so, so much easier to do a virtual event however that no one wants to go back.

For a few years, many Cloud vendors will stay "mostly digital" or light hybrid. They won't want to invest the $2m-$10m+ (or more) it takes to put on a world-class event at scale.

This will lead to more sub-scale events but fewer bigger events to meet customers in '21-'22

Then the data will be clear, that IRL events remain a painful, expensive, friction-full experience. That also massively delivers.

Then, everyone in '22-'23 will rush back to doing Big IRL Events in Cloud/SaaS

Even / especially as we all now work distributed :)