Smooth The Path

Member Informed Strategy, Innovation & Marketing

  • Home
  • Speaking
    • Presentations
    • Upcoming Events
    • Happy Event Organizers
    • Happy Participants
  • Services
    • Clients
  • Resources
    • Associations of the Future
    • New Member Engagement Study
    • Association Industry Innovation Research Study
    • New Strategies for Member Onboarding, Engagement, and Retention E-book
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

October 15, 2020 By Amanda Kaiser

In-Person Conference Conventions Don’t Work Online

Engagement is the next big hurdle for virtual conferences. People are registering, but they are not engaging. Why?

Lately, I’ve been attending many virtual meetings to dissect what works and what doesn’t. Yesterday I attended two very different meetings, each with the same number of attendees, and hosted on Zoom.

The first meeting was what I’d call a webinar plus-style presentation. This session was about a topic that I’m very interested in. The speaker presented from a slide deck (webinar-style). Every ten minutes or so, they paused and asked us a question to which we would reply to in the chat (plus). The meeting was scheduled for 75 minutes, and by the 20-minute mark, I was half-listening and occasionally chatting while also paying bills.

The second meeting had no slides. The moderator enthusiastically welcomed everyone as they came on, posed a fun question, sent us to breakout groups to discuss. Once back in the main room, she led us through a series of thoughtful questions and discussion. The conversation was so good that I wished we had much more time when we started to wrap up. It seems the standard 60 or 90-minute in-person session is way too long for virtual, while the quick collaborative in-person session is way too short for online.

We are starting to see that all the conventions we learned while hosting our in-person conferences might not work online. It is time to start reinventing virtual conferences rather than pulling conventions from our in-person meeting structure. Get ready to experiment with format, cadence, timing, duration, and more to see what is the most engaging in this environment.

Related:

  • Chat or No Chat at Your Next Virtual Presentation
  • 101 Technical Glitches and Counting
  • Reconsider Virtual Verbal Debriefs

Filed Under: Conference Tagged With: attendee engagement, attendee experience, co-creation, collaboration, conference, conference experience, conference registration, connection, networking, participant, virtual conference, virtual meetings

Follow

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Sign up for member insights & association inspiration.

Work With Me

Recent Posts

Association Strategy
Association Marketing
Association Innovation
Association Leadership
Association Value
Member Experience

Member Engagement
Member Research
Member Insights
Conference
Membership

Member Research

Blog

About

Happy Clients

Speaking

Popular Presentations

Contact Us

More Resources

Copyright © 2021 Amanda Kaiser