With the ongoing pandemic causing people to cancel their travel plans worldwide, the $325 billion event-planning industry has been on a downward slope in 2020. A survey conducted by the Professional Convention Management Association showed that 66 percent of events were postponed or canceled as a result of COVID-19. However, PCMA research also noted that nearly 70 percent of businesses eventually switched their events to a virtual platform.

That niche is where Falcon Events comes in.

Falcon Events offers event streaming services and has expanded to meet heightened demands due to the onset of virtual events becoming the new normal. Since March, Falcon Events has hired more than 80 previously furloughed workers out of the entertainment, airlines, service, and other industries. 

Falcon Events produces a range of virtual experiences, from technology conferences to corporate town halls to keynote addresses. Launched less than a year ago, Falcon has been catapulted to the forefront of the virtual event marketplace and has been on a fast track of hiring unemployed talent from across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. 

A company built exclusively for online occasions, Falcon provides end-to-end services for streaming event content to a worldwide audience, including transcriptions and translations of events. Falcon also partners with clients to supply production assistance, platform presence, and increased audience engagement. 

With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Bill Mott, CEO, and Joshua Butler, COO, initially incubated what we know today as Falcon. But in 2020, as demand took off, so did the founders’ need for production resources and qualified staff.

One staffer is Kendall McCrae, who joined Falcon as a furloughed flight attendant from American Airlines. Her customer-service skills derived from the travel industry were a match for Falcon’s Talent Support Team, which assists high-profile conference speakers in presenting to online audiences. 

“Falcon took me under their wing when I was worried about being one of thousands on the hunt for a new job,” McCrae says. “I am so grateful to work for a company that is expanding quickly but still maintains a personal touch with each of their employees.” 

Russell Turns was a full-time sound engineer at well-known Dallas venues, Live Nation’s House of Blues and The Bomb Factory, but he was furloughed due to the pandemic. Now, Turns has a new position in virtual event production through Falcon.

“An entertainment industry that I thought was guaranteed to always be around, be recession-proof, petrified in 72 hours due to COVID,” Turns says. “I’m very happy to use my skills in a newer field.” 

When the company originally launched in December 2019, they had merely 20 events projected for all of 2020. By mid-March, all of these events had been canceled, while companies scrambled to safely address concerns about the pandemic. As entire industries pivoted to virtual and hybrid events, Falcon will end 2020 having completed more than 175 successful events. 

Today, Falcon has outgrown their original office, upgrading to two buildings in Las Colinas totaling 10,000 square feet, cheekily called The Nest—where over 50,000 hours of content has been streamed this year. Working through data innovations, Falcon produces content with 45 concurrently run virtual “stages.” 

Get on the list.
Dallas Innovates, every day.

Sign up to keep your eye on what’s new and next in Dallas-Fort Worth, every day.