Even before the U.S. government declared COVID-19 a national emergency last March, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, saw the viral writing on the wall for its annual event called Atmosphere. In light of the catastrophic spread of the pandemic, the Santa Clara, CA-based network-technology firm made the official decision to terminate its conference in the first week of March, ahead of the federal declaration and roughly 19 days before it was to open in the new Caesars Forum Las Vegas. Ending Atmosphere also meant denying attendees what previous surveys had found was its single most popular facet. "The most irreplaceable aspect of the in-person Atmosphere is the one-to-one engagement between attendees and all aspects of our organization," says Steve Gouldrup, Aruba's director of global events.

Ever since its inception shortly after the turn of the new millennium, Atmosphere had grown exponentially, increasing from a meager 20 attendees in 2003 to 4,500 in 2019, an audience that usually included standing and prospective customers and partners, as well as employees. The event expanded so fast and furiously that in 2009 it began splitting off into several multinational versions. Guests came to congregate for a week, shake hands, and mingle for hours – all the familiar (and taken for granted) bonding rituals of face-to-face gatherings. They also came to listen to keynote speakers, attend breakout sessions, and watch hands-on demonstrations of new technologies.

While Aruba's dilemma was similar to that of many other companies in 2020, what separated Atmosphere from other events was a particular – even singular – aspect, perhaps much more challenging to duplicate virtually: a sense of community. While many live gatherings might brag a comparable communal spirit, Atmosphere was in a class few likely belong to. In the early 2000s, many attendees adopted a collective name for themselves – Airheads. Instead of an insult to their IQs, the self-imposed title was a label of pride. In fact, the name was a riff on the moniker shared by a former online Aruba community known as "Webheads" but with "Air" referring to the medium the company's technology often used.

Air Conditioning
After officially pulling the plug on Atmosphere, Aruba was faced with a couple of options – one unwelcome and the other burdensome. The company could simply postpone it indefinitely or make a hasty and unforeseen pivot. But like any crisis, Aruba's contained a gleaming silver lining of an opportunity: An online-only version of Atmosphere would, by definition, potentially be able to cross borders and draw in a much larger international audience. That, in turn, meant the company could probably expose an unprecedented number to its latest innovations in networking and data as well as several key business announcements it planned to issue. With those intriguing possibilities forming an incentive, Aruba decided to substitute a virtual version for the physical one, postponing it to early June and renaming it Atmosphere Digital 2020.
The rescheduled date still gave Aruba a less-than-leisurely two months to produce Atmosphere Digital compared to the usual nine. After confirming the new date, the company's next action was to set goals for the deferred affair. Given that a virtual gathering could realize a much larger number of attendees, Aruba focused its objectives on racking up pure numbers in two related areas: 40,000 registrations and, ultimately out of that sum, 20,000 attendees, the last metric being close to five times what physical attendance had recently run. Furthermore, Aruba wanted to generate 100 stories about the conclave in publications that covered the technology and business sectors. It also planned on using the virtual gathering as a forum to announce new corporate initiatives.

Aruba's decision to forge ahead with an online-only Atmosphere still left it with a common, if sky-high, challenge. Attendees at virtual affairs rarely display the singular focus they exercise at an in-person one, if only because the time and money spent traveling to an event persuade them to fully immerse themselves. In a virtual gathering, there is little to impede them from going into the kitchen, watching a movie, posting on Facebook, and checking email. "My number one concern was to create a memorable, engaging, fun, and unexpected virtual experience for each attendee," says Claudine Goldsmith, Aruba's director of customer experience.

Turbulence Ahead
Inventing an experience that would fulfill Goldsmith's desire to provide the unexpected meant one of the most important logistical considerations would be Aruba's choice of a virtual-event platform. Fortunately, it didn't have to start from scratch. While the company teamed up with numerous agencies to produce Atmosphere Digital, arguably the most significant was its partnership with The CXApp, an Inpixon company, to design its platform. Aruba didn't choose the company blindly, as it had worked with The CXApp previously on mobile apps for its in-person assemblies, including Atmosphere, and was confident the Silicon Valley company could fashion a fully customized digital platform.

Next, to make the experience as user-friendly and personalized as it hoped, Aruba had to construct several layers from the technical to the educational, starting with the event's look and feel. The company and The CXApp decided on a general template for Atmosphere Digital with which more than 200 million people around the world would be instantly familiar: Netflix. Mirroring the streaming service meant that participants, whether in London or Los Angeles, Mexico City or Milwaukee, would encounter a format with a distinctive and recognizable design and which could feature content personalized on demand. Moreover, just as Netflix might put its hottest shows such as "The Queen's Gambit" or "Tiger King" on its landing page, Aruba could position much of what it deemed the most important subject matter and materials front and center. Aruba would also incorporate a simple search bar and denote which sessions, keynotes, and demos were new or featured must-watch content.

Subsequent to the moves it made above, Aruba chose sessions that would essentially mirror the types available at the standard event, with hundreds of forums on how to harness the power of data, automation, artificial intelligence, and so forth. Keenly aware of the sometimes subtle but important differences between how people behave in person and online, Aruba snipped the sessions from the typical 60 to 90 minutes to between 30 and 40 minutes each. And to expand Atmosphere Digital beyond its temporal borders, Aruba would make sessions available on demand after the event closed.

Expecting several thousand attendees to hail from outside the United States, Aruba translated 75 of Atmosphere Digital's 327 sessions into seven languages, such as Spanish, Korean, Mandarin/Simplified Chinese, and Thai. Aruba also devised virtual analogs to the usual training and certification classes to make it even more essential to those who were advancing their careers or sharpening their skills. Since product demonstrations were a perennially popular part of Atmosphere, the company brought in Kaon Interactive Inc., a specialist in 3-D applications, to help fashion show-don't-tell demos with various degrees of interactivity. Leavening the agenda to offer the unexpected diversions that Goldsmith worried might be difficult to replicate online, Aruba tacked on musical interludes, lounges to hang out in, and contests to compete in. Other key components Aruba worked in were live collaborative elements that took the pulse of the Airheads and other attendees: real-time chats, surveys, polls, and moderated Q&As. As a kind of maraschino cherry on top of all this, the company hired James Corden, host of "The Late Late Show," to emcee.

Even with a Netflix-like look, abbreviated sessions, translated content, and a high-profile host, Aruba knew it was vital to ensure the technical quality of what attendees would see and hear. With the help of The CXApp, the company created a mix of live, prerecorded, and "simu-live" content. The last was a combination of live and prerecorded content that would then be livestreamed to the audience at certain times so it all appeared live. Concerned that online video can sometimes scream "homemade" because of poor visual and audio quality and notoriously unpredictable internet connections, reps from Aruba's production agency, GJS Media Productions Inc., recorded all session presenters and edited the footage to look consistent on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

Air Time
When Atmosphere Digital opened its virtual doors from June 9 – 10 last year, the thousands who logged on were greeted by the affable James Corden, whose bonhomie imbued the affair with the look and feel of a TV production. Besides his general introduction, Corden also performed the transitions between keynotes, including speeches by astronaut Dr. Garrett Reisman and the then-editor-in-chief of Wired magazine (now CEO of The Atlantic), Nicholas Thompson. The live keynotes kept attendees locked to their screens, especially with the Q&A periods and the chat function that gave viewers a realistic semblance of sitting in an auditorium, peppering speakers with queries, and schmoozing with each other. With a rapt online audience of thousands, Aruba rolled out its key announcements, including new products that support hybrid workplaces for large corporations dealing with the pandemic, as well as its billion-dollar acquisition of networking-hardware company Silver Peak Inc.
After the announcements, guests could move on to various sessions. Navigating to them was a smooth process aided by the combination of a familiar interface with its built-in search tool, calendar, and notifications. The shorter-than-usual sessions held online attendees' attention with the stickiness of Gorilla Glue, with few abandoning the assemblies before they ended. Guests from outside the United States found they didn't have to struggle with a language barrier, thanks to translated content readily available in multiple languages. And while 85 percent of the classes were prerecorded or simu-live, all had the same silk-smooth appearance resulting from Aruba recording and editing them ahead of time, a process that gave them glitch-free consistency.

Since demos were a major component of past Atmospheres, Aruba set up the 3D Innovation Zone to showcase sponsors' wares along with its own new offerings. Attendees entering the area were welcomed by a video from Corden before being invited to "walk" around a room modeled after Aruba's own corporate lobby, where an interactive map let them choose any of 22 demos. Once they clicked on a particular demo area, guests could watch a live presenter put a product through its paces, ask questions in real time, and examine the item from different angles, giving the experience its intended 3-D effect.

In keeping with its desire to prevent guests' attention from drifting away, Aruba offered unexpected diversions, such as DJs spinning tunes, bingo, and trivia challenges. One prerecorded amusement was a hot-wings-eating contest for Aruba employees. Those who had signed up for the gustatory challenge received a package of wings and blistering sauces. Before Atmosphere Digital took place, the company filmed participants competing to see who could gobble the most of the fiery fowl. Aruba then ran footage of the competition during the conference. Attendees could also laze in topic-themed lounges, including one labeled "Airheads," naturally.

A Castle in the Air
Success is often the result of multiple small acts performed universally well. And Aruba's many well-executed parts – e.g., the Netflix-inspired interface, celebrity host, translated content, live entertainment, and so much more – impressed the Corporate Event Awards jury so much they bestowed on Aruba the Judges' Choice Award, the competition's top honor. "I've seen many virtual events in the past year, and this really stood out," said one juror. "The whole environment was nothing short of exceptional."

So it comes as no surprise that Aruba's results met and exceeded its goals. Registration brought in 45,000 people, about 12 percent above the company's target. The actual number of attendees topped 22,000, 10 percent above what it aimed for and about five times the previous in-person high. If the number of registrants who converted to attendees seems a little modest, think again. Research by ON24 Inc., a provider of digital platforms, found that for virtual gatherings with more than 100 attendees, the average conversion rate falls to 43 percent – meaning Aruba bested that norm by 15 percent. Finally, 132 articles about Atmosphere Digital appeared in various media outlets, 30 percent more than the company's objective.

"Shifting Atmosphere to a virtual event in two months was a Herculean task," says Heather Hite, president and founder of RockIt Events Inc., the marketing and events agency that helped put on the gathering. "The end result led to a one-of-a-kind digital event experience." Despite all the turbulence it had faced during a time of unparalleled crisis, Aruba ended up walking on air. E