Whether they’re poster sessions, start-up pitches, galleries, student projects, or something else, small-scale presentations can be valuable opportunities to increase engagement, help presenters get feedback from judges and attendees alike, and encourage innovation.
However, as an organizer, they can also be overwhelming. Often, before the event even starts, you’re busy collecting projects and supplemental materials, reminding presenters to send you overviews of their presentations, responding to last-minute changes, and getting everything set up and in order. Once the event begins, you’re keeping in contact with judges, collecting votes, and calculating ratings to determine a winner. Depending on how many presentations you’ll be hosting, just managing everything can be exhausting!
To help out, Whova has launched the Artifact Center, a new dedicated function for supporting poster sessions, startup pitches, and more online. Whether your event is virtual, hybrid, or in-person, the Artifact Center helps take care of any tiresome logistics, like collecting materials and managing the competition, and makes the presentations easier to navigate and interact with than ever.
Save time gathering materials
Presenters can submit their materials through Whova without taking up your time, from photos and PDFs to pre-recorded videos and even a livestream link from any major site. Whova will show you how much of their presentation has been set up and allow you to automate email reminders to make sure everything is ready for the big day!
To ensure they’re submitting the right materials and to personalize the Artifact Center for your event’s purpose, you can choose to include or not include some of these features as up options, or to make them required instead.
From there, the information is compiled into virtual displays, which attendees can navigate easily and even choose to interact with these presentations online by leaving comments, likes, and even votes if you enable them. These online displays also mean that judges can easily go back to review items and digitally submit votes and feedback, which will be automatically calculated by Whova to make choosing a winner simple!
An organized digital space for poster sessions, start-up pitches, galleries, and more
The Artifact Center creates sessions that you can easily access from the same platform as the rest of your event, directly inputting these sessions to the event agenda and keeping presentations secure by only allowing registered Whova attendees to view them.
To ensure the tools meet the needs of the session, organizers can choose between different purposes, such as poster sessions, start-up pitches, and galleries, and can even customize their own type of presentation. From there, presenters can feature images, videos, PDFs, and a livestream — anything they need to ensure the best presentation possible.
Add a competitive element with judging and voting features!
Add some excitement by turning the Artifact Center into a contest! Don’t worry about tallying votes or calculating ratings; Whova will automatically show the entries with the highest scores and allow you to choose which to announce through the app from there. If you want to ensure presenters get feedback, you can even make it mandatory for judges to leave comments, and if they’re voting, choose how many votes each judge gets.
Customize the competition by selecting a panel of judges
Depending on the type of competition, the tools for judging can be very different! Whether you want to select an elite panel of judges, give the privilege to certain speakers, or let everyone have a say, Whova allows you to choose between different judging setups.
Once you’ve enabled judging, just choose whether you want to give the privilege to all attendees, only certain ticket types, or manually select specific participants. Don’t worry — non-judge attendees can still interact and encourage presenters by liking and commenting on the item profile!
Take interaction beyond the day of the event
At previous in-person events, chances to engage with presentations ended when the sessions did. Now, interaction can continue well after the scheduled session is over.
Did an attendee have a conflict during the scheduled session time? With the Artifact Center, presentations can stay open until the end of the event, and you can choose to leave the event up for days, weeks, and even months afterward. Attendees can continue to check out and interact with all the items, and the presenter can in turn choose to continue to engage and answer questions, allowing the benefits of these sessions to continue long after the event.
Interactive online presentations like you’ve never seen before
Whether your event is virtual, or you’re shifting back to in-person, the Artifact Center can help maintain strong, interactive presentations. Save time collecting materials, support presenters with online profiles and displays, and make it easier than ever for attendees to cast votes and for judges to conveniently review items to make decisions and give feedback.
Interested in how else Whova can support your upcoming event? Request a free demo today to learn more.
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