September 17, 2025
Attendees are the heart of any event – the experience is designed for them, and their engagement is key to its success. That’s why Whova has been helping organizers create memorable, interactive experiences with event app features that keep attendees involved throughout the event.
One of the most popular tools for boosting engagement, the Whova Community board, has successfully fostered a sense of community. Its leaderboard gamification incentivizes attendees to post updates, keep up with announcements, and participate in meetups. Organizers love the results: stronger networking, increased participation, and enthusiastic feedback from attendees.
However, not all engagement is visible. Many attendees interact with the event app in more private ways, such as exchanging contact information, scheduling 1:1 meetings, sending direct messages (one of Whova’s first capabilities), and taking notes (a hidden gem many users overlook).
Because attendees only have a short window of time to learn the app, helping them quickly discover and use these powerful tools is no easy feat. You’ve invested time and resources into setting up the app – naturally, you want attendees to get the most out of it and enjoy a smooth, memorable event experience.
Whova’s at it again – tackling another challenge to help your event shine! ? We’re excited to introduce a brand-new feature in the Whova app: Join the Crowd.
This fun addition gives attendees a peek at how others are using the app’s more hidden features – like private messaging, exchanging contact info, taking notes, and more. For each feature, we show fun stats, like the highest number of private messages sent by a single attendee (yep, someone’s really networking!).
Attendees can try to beat the record and climb the leaderboard – turning everyday actions into friendly competition. And don’t worry – we keep it anonymous unless someone explicitly wants their name in lights as a record holder.
By showing that others are actively using these lesser-visible features, it helps normalize them. Attendees feel more comfortable diving in, exploring, and getting the full value from the app – whether it’s sending a quick DM, scheduling a 1:1 chat, taking notes or or even giving a shout-out to the organizers for putting together such a great event (and app!). It’s like a gentle nudge that says, “Hey, everyone’s doing it – go ahead!”
Even the attendees who prefer to stay quiet on the community board can still discover useful tools, like note-taking, and get more out of the Whova event app that organizers have invested their time and resources to set up.
For organizers, this means better app utilization without extra work. Your attendees discover more features on their own, make deeper connections, and get more out of the event you’ve worked so hard to plan. Win-win!
Features with Limited Visibility to Others
Many features attendees use – posting on the community board, creating meet-ups, chatting during sessions, breaking the ice – are visible to others and drive natural adoption. But other valuable features don’t have the same visibility when used, making them more difficult to discover.
So what are these “more hidden” tools?
- Direct messaging: reaching out to interesting contacts privately, with or without templates
- Personal agenda building: curating a customized schedule so nothing gets missed
- Session note-taking: capturing key insights and takeaways in real-time
- Contact information exchange: connecting with new professional contacts
- One-on-one meeting scheduling: setting up focused conversations
- People bookmarking: flagging important contacts for strategic follow-up
- Organizer appreciation messages: sharing genuine feedback about the event
These features often deliver the highest long-term value for attendees, but without visible usage cues, they can be underutilized. That’s exactly the gap Join the Crowd fills.
Join the Crowd vs. Leaderboard
How is Join the Crowd different from the existing leaderboard feature? Both features gamify attendee engagement through friendly competition, but they target completely different behaviors to maximize your event’s impact.
Leaderboard Drives Public Participation
The Leaderboard rewards visible community actions like posting updates, sharing articles, or creating meetups. Attendees earn points for these public interactions, creating buzz and encouraging broader event participation. Often paired with organizer-sponsored prizes, it’s perfect for generating visible energy and social proof.
Join the Crowd Unlocks Hidden Participation Power
While attendees are actively networking through private messages and scheduling meetings, this activity is not visible to others. Join the Crowd changes that by showcasing the interactions and encouraging attendees to try those networking tools. For example, when people see that “240 attendees are messaging others” or “30 attendees are setting up private meetings”, they’re more likely to use these features themselves.
Attendees see the usage stats and can try out each feature directly from the dashboard.
Together, these features maximize both community engagement and other app feature usages, even for the most introverted attendees!
How to View the Top App Users
Join the Crowd is ready to work for you – no setup required. It’s enabled by default, so you’re good to go from the start.
Attendees can easily access it through the Community Board on both mobile and web by navigating to the community tab and looking for “Join the Crowd.” No complicated instructions, no extra steps, just instant access to powerful engagement insights that drive feature adoption.
Attendees can easily Join the Crowd through the mobile and web app.
The feature displays interactive cards that show real-time activity across key event engagement actions:
- Messaging other attendees
- Building personal agendas
- Adding interests to profiles
- Taking session notes
- Exchanging contact information
- Using message templates
- Scheduling private meetings
- Bookmarking attendees
- Thanking organizers
Each card poses a question about a specific networking action – like “How many attendees have already messaged someone?” or “How many attendees have built personal agendas?” – and attendees can tap to reveal the actual numbers, stats, and current record holders. A countdown timer shows when the next update occurs, keeping the competition fresh.
Attendees can tap to reveal the most recent stats and see who’s leading the pack.
From the cards, attendees can easily try these features for themselves and have the potential to become a record holder for each feature.
When attendees hit record holder status, they’re notified via email and in-app – that’s when they can choose whether to display their name publicly or remain anonymous.
Note: At Whova, we take privacy seriously and respect all data privacy laws. All participant information remains private unless they explicitly give permission to display their name.
How You Can Leverage Join the Crowd
While boosting the usage of those features can help you improve the attendee experience, it can do more than that! Here’s how you can leverage Join the Crowd:
- Showcase Session Engagement: Hundreds of attendees adding sessions to their agendas gives you a compelling, data-backed story to tell in your closing remarks, showcasing the strength of your content and the relevance of your programming.
- Create a More Connected Community: By encouraging visible networking activity, you create the momentum that brings people together – helping you build a stronger, more connected community around your event.
- Extend Your Event’s Impact: By tracking contact exchanges, you gain powerful proof of lasting connections, showcasing how your event continues to create value long after it ends.
- Gather Authentic Feedback: Gathering more appreciation messages provides authentic feedback that highlights your event’s impact and fuels compelling participant highlights for future marketing.
Turn Hidden Event App Engagement into Measurable ROI
Ready to unlock your event’s hidden networking potential? Join the Crowd automatically transforms private app activity into actionable insights that prove your event’s worth – no setup, no extra work.
New to Whova? Request a demo and see how our platform helps you create more engaging, connected events.