Losing sleep wondering what the recently announced ZOOM EVENTS are going to look like? Join us as Sam Kokajko, Zoom’s Events Specialist Manager, gives us the inside story. Then we’ll visit with Danny Stefanic, CEO of MootUp, a super-cool cross-device, 3D, environment accessible without a download. And Nile Russell, a dancer and choreographer, unveils Twyli, a language of movement designed to bring a new dimension to Zoom calls.

Can Zoom Buy Happiness or Will It Implode Under Its Own Weight

First came the big acquisition. Zoom announced that it's acquiring Five9 for $14.7 billion in stock. Five9 is a cloud based contact center technology. Good move to offload the customer engagement business to experts, allowing Zoom to continue focus on its core products. Along with the cloud-calling product Zoom Phone, and the conference-hosting product Zoom Rooms, the Five9 acquisition makes Zoom more attractive for enterprise customers. (Zoom stock fell upon announcement, but Five9’s stock rose immediately after the announcement.) 

Zoom also announced massive expansion plans for its Zoom apps and Zoom events platforms. In a nutshell, Zoom has not traditionally made it easy  for 3rd party apps to integrate with them. Now they’ve cherry picked the apps they’d like to have working from within the Zoom platform in order to provide users with the tools they need to run good meetings. 

According to the press release, Zoom Apps seamlessly embed third-party apps within Zoom Meetings and Webinars so that you never have to leave the Zoom platform to use them. At the moment there are about 50 of these apps that have “works from Zoom” status. Many are familiar, like Dropbox, Survey Monkey and Eventbrite. But we all know the dirty truth that integrating anything with anything is never a walk in the park. 

Cvent, one of the old timers in the events world, is about to go public. (One of its leading investors is Zoom.) The company plans to use the money it raises to upgrade infrastructure for virtual, in person and hybrid events. According to the press release, which specifies a partnership with Dragoneer Growth Opportunities, Cvent will emerge with $801 million in cash to accelerate product innovation, increase research and development, reduce debt, and expand go-to market activities. 

Busking on Social Media Services: How Creators Get Paid 

I’ve talked about the irrational exuberance of hybrid meetings but this week I met a naysayer who far outdoes me. With a strong and lauded background in the physical B2B event space, Robert Weissman has a lot to say about why virtual events are doomed to fail. Hoping to do a he said/she said episode with him soon. 

$27 billion. That’s how much Salesforce paid to buy Slack. That means you can even be disrupted by messaging while in your CRM system. 

ComicCon and the Olympics remain virtual and it's bittersweet. The Olympics just seem downtrodden. They didn’t even bother changing the signage from Olympics 2020 (too expensive). Marvel and DC Comics were noticeably absent at ComicCon in San Diego. DC Comics launched its own fan-based events earlier in the year. And Marvel will work with Disney on Disney Day. Same time next year? 

Soft shelled social video platform Discord is molting. Shedding the exoskeleton of it’s gaming roots, Discord continues to reach new audiences daily, with a big push into both education and fandom.

Talking about data security, onboarding and offboarding is not a particularly sexy topic. Accelevents, in tooting it’s own horn about SoC2 Type 1 certification, gives us a good backgrounder. 

What does the future of events have to do with Netflix? This article was sent to us via VEG reader, Catherine McConville.

The Very Grim Hotel Scene: Nearly 500,000 hotel jobs won’t return by year’s end and revenues will be down an astounding $44 billion from 2019 says the American Hotel and Lodging Association in the new study.