Industri pameran harus kembali terselenggara secara offline. Online hanya perantara dan pelengkap di masa depan.
Psikolog ternama, Abraham Maslow pernah memperkenalkan teori hirarki kebutuhan manusia yang amat populer. Ia membaginya dalam lima tingkat kebutuhan.
Pertama, kebutuhan fisiologis. Yakni kebutuhan mempertahankan hidup secara fisik berupa sandang, pangan, papan. Setelah kebutuhan ini terpuaskan, maka muncul kebutuhan kedua yakni kebutuhan akan rasa aman. Aman secara fisik dari ancaman bencana alam, tindakan kriminalitas, dan hal mengancam lain.
Kebutuhan ketiga, kebutuhan sosial, berupa cinta, kasih sayang, dan rasa memiliki dimiliki. Kebutuhan inilah yang mendorong orang bersosialisasi, memiliki komunitas, sahabat, pasangan. Kebutuhan ketiga, ialah penghargaan. Manusia melakukan sesuatu karena dorongan ingin berprestasi dan diakui.
Kelima, aktualisasi diri dengan menunjukkan dan membuktikan diri pada orang lain. Dari lima hierarki kebutuhan berdasarkan teori Maslow ini jelas menegaskan bahwa manusia tak bisa hidup sendiri. Ia butuh orang lain untuk memenuhi kebutuhan sosialnya. Itu kenapa, di kala pandemi, banyak yang mengalami tekanan dan stres manakala pertemuan fisik menjadi terbatas.
Sebagaimana hakikat manusia sebagai makhluk sosial ialah harus berinteraksi, maka kegiatan MICE khususnya pameran pun harus kembali berlangsung secara offline alias tatap muka.
Menurut Direktur Utama Dyandra Promosindo, Hendra Noor Saleh dalam obrolan yang tayang di kanal YouTube MICE Indonesia, kurang pas jika kegiatan MICE secara online dibandingkan dengan kegiatan offline. Menurutnya, online bukan pilihan.
“Seperti teori Maslow, kebutuhan manusia ialah berinteraksi. Tapi dengan adanya bencana jadi ada keseimbangan baru. offline tidak akan pernah mati selama manusia masih ada,” tegasnya.
Teknologi dan digitalisasi hanyalah pelengkap. Di masa depan, teknologi hanya memudahkan pelaksanaan kegiatan MICE secara offline tapi tidak menggantikan.
“Event akan berkembang dengan memanfaatkan teknologi. Protokol kesehatan akan berkurang di sejumlah aspek sementara manusia menyesuaikan diri. Momentum ini membuat kita optimistis bahwa ke depan bukan kembali ke zaman dahulu tapi justru mengembangkan yang ada,” pungkasnya.
English
Online Is Not An Option, Exhibitions Must Go Back to Offline
Exhibition industry has to go back offline. Online technologies will only serve as the medium and complementary tools in the future.
Abraham Maslow, a well known psychologist, once introduced the popular hierarchy of needs theory. He divided our needs into five levels.
First, physiological needs. They refer to physical survival needs like clothing, food, and shelter. After these needs are met, then the second needs appear: safety. One needs to feel safe from natural disasters, criminal acts, and other threats.
The third one is social needs, i.e. love, affection, and a sense of belonging. This need pushes people to socialize, partake in communities, as well as have friendships and relationships. Next, needs for reward. Humans do something out of our motivation to earn a reward and recognition.
Fifth, self actualization by showing and proving self to others. From all five needs in Maslow’s hierarchy, it’s clear that humans cannot live alone. We need each other to fulfill our needs. That’s why during the pandemic, many feel stressed out due to limited physical interaction with others.
Thanks to our natural instinct to socialize, MICE events (especially exhibitions) need to go back offline. In other words, we have to start conducting physical events again.
General Chairman of Dyandra Promosindo, Hendra Noor Saleh, in MICE Indonesia’s podcast on YouTube said that online MICE events are not comparable to offline ones. He believes that online is not an option.
“As Maslow theory puts it, humans need to socialize. But there’s a pandemic, so there’s a new equilibrium. Offline (events) will not disappear as long as humans still exist,” he affirmed.
Technology and digitalization are just complementary tools. In the future, technology will only facilitate offline MICE, not replace it.
“Events will innovate using technology. Health protocols will start to decrease in some aspects as humans adapt. This momentum makes us optimistic that the future does not mean going back (to pre-pandemic) but innovating using what we already have,” he concluded.
