Executive Summary

The Nevada Division of Minerals hosted the National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs (NAAMLP) annual conference. The event brought together participants from the Environmental Protection, Abandoned Mine Lands and Wildlife Departments in Nevada, as well as the California Department of Conservation and the US Forest Service Abandoned Mine Lands Program. 

Due to fire risks, the organizers only had two weeks notice to transition to a virtual event. With Whova’s assistance, they were able to smoothly make the change and support over 93 speakers including state governments representatives, directors and CEOs of private companies. 

About the Nevada Division of Minerals and NAAMLP

The Nevada Division of Minerals administers the state’s abandoned mine lands physical safety hazard awareness and mitigation program. They are also a permitting and regulatory agency for oil, natural gas, geothermal resource, and dissolved mineral exploration drilling operations in Nevada. The National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Program (NAAMLP) was established in 1977 by the US Department of the Interior and oversees abandoned mine land issues across the nation. 

The annual NAAMLP conference is dedicated to discussing and preventing safety hazards and environmental problems on abandoned mine lands.

Whova assisted the organizers in smoothly running the event to ensure attendees had plenty of opportunities to make connections and discuss important topics in their industry.

Challenges

• Pivot the event online with two weeks notice

Within only a few weeks, the NAAMLP annual conference’s organizers needed to pivot their entire in-person event to be streamed virtually. This required a comprehensive online platform that could assist them quickly and effectively.

• Ensure plenty of leads for virtual exhibitors

The organizers wanted to guarantee exhibitors would still have high engagement levels from the remote attendees.

• Provide valuable networking opportunities

The event is an important networking opportunity for government officials and private organizations in Nevada. The organizers wanted to help attendees set up meetings and discussions during the event.

• Help speakers engage the audience

The NAAMLP organizers wanted speakers to have engaging sessions where attendees felt compelled to ask questions on the virtual platform.

Solutions

• Hold online sessions smoothly on Whova’s platform

With the all-in-one event management platform at their fingertips, the organizers seamlessly transferred their information online in under two weeks.

The NAAMLP organizers easily uploaded Excel spreadsheets complete with speaker names and emails to quickly update their information into Whova’s platform. They were also able to add speaker information one at a time. 

Besides that, the organizers used Whova’s pre-made templates to upload attendee, exhibitor and sponsor information. 

Whova’s online agenda builder made building their event online simple. The organizer was able to add sessions and fill in any important information through the platform. Besides that, they were able to link their Zoom accounts to make the streaming process even faster.  

• Improve exhibitor ROI with Whova’s Passport Contest

Whova’s Passport Contest was a great success in engaging attendees in a friendly competition to increase exhibitor leads. Attendees could comment, like or sign up for deals on the virtual booths to earn stamps. Attendees who collected at least 12 stamps were entered into a raffle.

The contest led to attendees collecting over 500 stamps and over 30 participants meeting the winning requirements.

Attendees could interact with booths to earn stamps in the Passport Contest

• Empower speakers to upload information

Even better, the organizers saved valuable time by allowing speakers to upload their own information through the Speaker Center. Whova automatically emails speakers personal links where they can input all of their contact and session information into Whova. The organizers could also fill in the information themselves if speakers were unable to do so. Any changes made by the organizer or speakers were automatically updated in Whova’s Speaker Center.

Similar to the Speaker Center, exhibitors could upload their information through Whova’s Exhibitor Center. By allowing the speakers and exhibitors to upload their own information, the organizers were able to successfully pivot online in a short time period. 

• Engage attendees with Whova’s gamification features

The NAAMLP organizers took advantage of Whova’s other contests to increase attendee engagement.

In the Leaderboard contest, attendees earned points by participating in the Community Board, surveys, polls and session feedback. On the Community Board, the attendees posted many discussion topics, meetups and icebreakers. 

The attendees could see point rankings on the app as they competed for the leaderboard prize, and by the end of the contest the number one attendee had over 138,000 points! 

Besides engaging on the Community Board, attendees uploaded their best photos on the app to compete in the photo and caption contests, where attendees could vote for their favorite photos and captions. 

• Attract attendee interest with live polls during sessions

The NAAMLP organizers also used live polling to capture attention and gather attendee feedback for the whole event. They set specific times for their polls to show up in the app before and during the event so they did not have to worry about coordinating them while the event was live.

Speakers were also invited to set up their own polls during specific sessions. They were easily able to gauge attendee interest and spark discussions during their presentations.