It has been two weeks since the ICF Annual Conference 2020 ran entirely online, and we've had enough time now to look past the day-of adrenaline and see what actually landed.
The short version: attendance held up better than we braced for, the sessions people actually watched were not the ones we expected, and a few things about a screen-only conference turned out to be improvements rather than compromises. None of that was obvious going in — plenty of associations moved their annual meetings online this year assuming it would be a smaller, quieter version of the usual event, and that has not been our experience or, from what we can tell, everyone else's.
What surprised us
We built the schedule assuming the marquee keynote and the competition results session would draw the biggest crowds, same as every in-person year. Instead, the best-attended live sessions were the smaller, practical ones — a cave-humidity troubleshooting session and a session on renegotiating wholesale terms drew standing-room numbers, virtually speaking, while some bigger-name sessions ran under a typical in-person turnout. Members are dealing with immediate, specific problems this year, and they voted with their attention rather than with their badge.
The other surprise was who showed up at all. A first-time attendee, a small farmstead producer, told us afterward: "I've never once made it to the in-person conference — it's a two-day trip and a hired hand I don't have. This year I watched four sessions from my kitchen table between batches. I finally know what a conference actually is." That's not a small thing. If a screen-only format keeps bringing in members who the travel and lodging cost has always shut out, that's worth carrying forward even once travel is possible again — not as a replacement for meeting in person, but as an option that clearly reaches people the in-person format never has.
We also underestimated how many members would watch a session after the fact rather than live. Recording views over the two weeks since the conference have already outpaced live attendance for several sessions, which tells us the value of a virtual format isn't just lower cost — it's flexibility around a make schedule that doesn't stop for a conference, live or not.
Hallway conversations don't happen on a webinar platform, and several members told us that directly — the deals, introductions, and gripe sessions that happen between sessions at an in-person event were the thing most missed. A chat window is not a replacement for standing next to someone at a coffee station, and we heard that from enough members that we're treating it as a real gap rather than a minor complaint.
What we're changing next time
We're looking at a moderated networking block for future virtual events rather than assuming chat alone covers it — something closer to small breakout rooms organized around a specific topic or region, so the conversation has a reason to start. We're also going to build the schedule around the session types members actually showed up for this year, rather than assuming the marquee slots will draw the way they did in person.
Two events from the same stretch are worth a second look if you missed them or want the recording: the Export Paperwork webinar that ran July 30 walked through documentation for cross-border shipments, and a workshop the following day covered late-summer make adjustments for alpine-style wheels heading into fall aging. Recordings for both are available through the events portal.
If you attended the Annual Conference and haven't filled out the feedback survey, it stays open through the end of the month, and it's the single biggest input into how next year's format gets built — virtual, in-person, or something in between. Tell us what session you'd have paid to attend in person and skipped online, and what you'd never have watched at all if it hadn't been on a screen.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.