I have noticed recently that a lot of workshop and seminar type of events have been offering people the option to watch the event live online if for whatever reason they can’t make it to an in-person event. In a lot of cases they were free too versus having to pay for a ticket to actually be at the show. Not including any necessary travel expenses either. For information based type of seminars I think it can actually make sense to choose that option.
I guess the main drawback is if your motivation to go to the session is to try and meet people or the speakers then of course you probably won’t have that luxury unless you actually go there. But many times I find that people literally just want the information. It kind of reminds me of a funny scenario where there was a person that really wanted to attend this exhibition to learn all about the new stuff. For the most part he sat in conferences to learn about the details. But in the end he was expressing how he could have just did the same thing at home as the company broadcasted the event live where it was the exact same stuff.
If your goal was to do other things such as mingle with others then that is different. But with so many options to get seminar and conference information free through company provided streams it’s something you should actively look for instead of only thinking you must travel to get the same information. If you are a business too it might be a good idea to start offering digital viewing options as well.