“Do we have to postpone our conference?”
Not necessarily. While the coronavirus outbreak is affecting the event industry, you have a great alternative option – Go virtual! All your efforts to line up speakers and promote your event shouldn’t go to waste. You can run your conference without compromising quality, learning, networking opportunities, and most of all, safety.
Whova has just released a Virtual Conference Platform and Hybrid Conference Platform with a great set of features to allow your attendees to participate in online sessions with live Q&A, live polls, discussion, virtual meet-ups, etc. Whova’s award-winning engagement and networking features have already been popular for pre-event interactions as well as virtual events that involve remote audiences. With Whova, you can still provide event experience online with just as much excitement as they would offline.
Virtual Sessions Accessible Anytime, Anywhere
Whova’s new Virtual Event Center allows you to facilitate live streams and recorded videos of your sessions in one place. It’s easy for attendees to access them through the Whova mobile event app, as well as through web browsers on their laptops.
Attendees will be able to view all of this information whether they want to do so during the time of the event, or later on, whether it’s because of the effects of the coronavirus or any other reason. All they will need is an internet connection and they will be ready to watch any session.
All live streams and videos can be accessed via our Web Portal too, which allows attendees to watch talks on their laptops/desktops with bigger screens.
< In the Whova mobile app, sessions with live stream/recorded videos are marked in the session list and session detail pages. These are also offered through the Whova web portal for attendees to watch on their laptops/desktops with a bigger screen. >
Setting it up is very easy. Whether you choose to use Vimeo, Youtube, Zoom Communications, Google Hangouts, Facebook Live, or another service, the Whova app can seamlessly display the videos. Simply put the link of their hosted video/live streams in the Whova dashboard. Then, they will be shown on the Whova mobile app and web portal together with the event schedule, session overview, speaker bios, presentation slides, and live interaction features.
< It’s easy to integrate your video / live streaming into Whova >
Virtual Conference ≠ 8-hour Webinar. How to Bring Amazing Attendee Engagement just like Face-to-Face Conferences?
Whova’s attendee engagement features have already been very popular to boost pre-event interactions remotely. So, no worries, you can leverage Whova to engage your attendees throughout the entire virtual conference, or even before then. Find out what you can do with Whova:
<Online community board, live Q&A, live poll to double event’s virtual engagement>
Virtual meet-ups & discussion – even more effective than in-person events
Whova’s Community Board allows everyone to come together and mingle online in one place, whether you’re an organizer, an attendee, or a speaker. You can create conversational topics specific to your event and boost attendees’ interactions. Would you like to enable attendees to get together based on their locations, industry, or interests, even remotely? Anyone can create virtual meet-ups on the app and share useful information in a group setting.
Announcements – instantly notify remote attendees with important event updates
You should give your attendees live updates and constant reminders more often now than during you would have for in-person events. Whova helps you send out announcements through both a push notification and emails at the same time. This spikes the message open rate to over 75%, ensuring that your voice is heard by your attendees no matter where they are.
Live Q&A for virtual sessions – make everyone part of the conversation
Attendees can ask questions on every session detail page and vote on good questions. Speakers can either give an answer through the Whova app, or directly cover certain questions during their live session. They can select questions with high votes, or pin certain questions they would like to answer. This makes sessions engaging just like they would be in person.
Live polling – A fun way to increase participation
People love to be included during a live session. While they can’t raise their hands to show their opinion in a virtual conference, live polling can be a perfect way to involve everyone in sessions. Not only does live polling get attendees excited about a session, but it also gives you the ability to see engagement rates, instant feedback, and data to use for next year’s event.
Session feedback & Survey – collect more feedback with Whova
Now, more than ever, you may be wondering how your attendees enjoyed your event as you can’t see them in front of you. Easily create and send surveys to attendees within the Whova app and then watch as feedback comes in at a higher response rate than if you were to use outside tools. By integrating survey and session feedback with the much-loved Leaderboard feature, you naturally entice attendees to submit feedback.
Virtual exhibitor hall – help exhibitors create business opportunities
Yes, a virtual booth is possible! You can still give a great opportunity for your exhibitors to promote their organizations and products through custom profiles with product photos, in-app coupons, giveaways, and raffles. Attendees can leave comments, request information, and sign up for exhibitors’ newsletters all through the Whova app. Exhibitors can identify people of interest with attendee SmartProfiles, send messages, and promote their business in the Community Board.
Virtual Networking Opportunities
The Whova app provides an exclusive place for attendees to network, learn more about one another, and connect. Smart networking with Whova often becomes more effective than in-person, random networking without having a good way to identify people to connect with and organically boost attendee interactions.
< Whova’s Matchmaking and Icebreaker that make remote networking easy, effective, and fun! >
Matchmaking – Help attendees virtually meet the right people
Whova’s technology recommends people with commonalities including professional and educational background, location, interests, industry, as well as abundant information manually inputted by attendees. Your attendees can plan targeted networking with recommended connections, and create more business & career opportunities with fellow attendees and virtual exhibitors.
Virtual hangout – from 1-on-1 messaging to meetups, e-business card exchanging, and more
Even though virtual, your event can be massive, spanning across countries and industries. Attendees can see who else worked (or is working) in the same companies, grew up in the same town, went to the same school, or have any common interests. With a quick in-app message or post on the Community Board, your attendees can virtually hang out with people of interest.
Ice-breaker & Leaderboard – Spice up your event
While finding ways to connect on a personal level can often feel difficult especially when they can’t see each other, Whova enables attendees to introduce themselves by selecting fun icebreaker questions to answer with their reason. Similarly, the Leaderboard encourages overall event engagement and a higher percentage of networking. Every time an attendee completes a challenge, he or she gets awarded a higher rank in the Leaderboard or even a prize!
Examples of Virtual Conferences with Whova
With Whova’s virtual conference support, instead of canceling or postponing the events, many organizers have already started to move their events online. Below are just a few of them:
This Way to Sustainability Conference (https://www.csuchico.edu/twts/)
Fair Trade Campaigns National Conference (https://conference.fairtradecampaigns.org/program)
virtualOPEN 2020 (https://venturewell.org/open/2020-schedule/)
Online resources
Every event whether online or offline should have a dedicated place to keep and share resources so that attendees can access them at any time. This comes in handy for presentation slides, articles, and any other documents related to the event. If attendees wanted, they could even write a personal note and download it later.
The most exciting factor to witness by far is how speakers use article and document sharing to get audiences more prepared for their sessions. In fact, speakers have enjoyed a more engaged audience just by sharing useful information to read prior to attending their session. And for virtual conferences, it’s helpful to have a central place to share presentation slides.
Live Check-in
Whova makes it easy for attendees to plan the sessions they want to attend. Attendees can enroll in a session by adding it to their own event agenda. If there are sessions that are mandatory for some attendees to enroll in, you can enroll attendees yourself if you choose.
You can easily measure the attendance of sessions. You will have access to the data on attendees who virtually attended certain sessions and use this list to send follow-up emails, certifications, prizes or anything else.
Create Healthy and Exciting Events with Whova
With all the quarantine measures taking place because of the coronavirus, many event organizers have started leveraging Whova to go virtual. It’s easy to organize your virtual sessions by seamlessly displaying them on the Whova platform, and keep high engagement and participation with Whova’s award-winning event app.
If you need any help with understanding how to run a virtual conference and using Whova to its fullest capacity, please contact us.
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