Executive Summary

With Whova’s support, the Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy Annual Conference (CLECON) joined librarians from 35 states and 2 Canadian provinces. The virtual training conference included many workshops to educate attendees on brain research, community outreach, sensory storytime, and more. 

Using Whova’s all-in-one event management platform, the organizers successfully managed over 50 speakers and facilitated impressive amounts of engagement on the app. 

Interview with the Organizers

About the Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy Conference

Since 2008, The Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy (CLEL) has collaborated with organizations worldwide to strengthen child literacy through library services and community advocacy. 

The organization educates and trains library staff, increases community awareness, and works with state and national agencies involved in early child literacy. 

Using Whova’s app, the organizers easily communicated with attendees and tracked the session attendance of CLEL members to verify training requirements. 

Challenges

• Tracking attendance for training credits 

The Training and Advocacy Committee offers free professional development training for all CLEL members during the conference. The organizers needed to track session attendance to sign off on these training requirements.

• Virtually networking at the event 

Since growing from a small Colorado organization to a nationally recognized event, the CLEL conference provided ample opportunity for librarians across the nation to learn and collaborate. The organizers wanted attendees to have plenty of opportunities to network and participate in discussions.

• Managing speakers across the nation

With almost 50 speakers joining from different time zones across the nation, the organizers needed an efficient way to manage their information and efficiently send them event updates.

• Updating attendees with changes during the event 

The organizers needed an announcement system to promptly update all or specific attendees if any last-minute changes occurred.

Solutions

• Automatically keep track of attendance 

Whova’s attendee activity feature automatically creates convenient lists of virtual session attendance. Along with providing names and emails, the lists show how long each attendee stayed in a session. The organizers utilized the lists to verify attendance in specific sessions needed for training requirements.

The organizers could view attendance lists for each session

• Connect attendees with Whova’s speed networking sessions

The CLEL organizers took advantage of Whova’s speed networking sessions to encourage one-on-one interactions. Attendees easily found the networking session in the online agenda and joined directly in Whova’s platform.

Each virtual speed networking “table” could hold up to two to four attendees, and after a set period, attendees were randomly shuffled into new groups. The CLEL organizers set networking tables for 10 minutes, so attendees had plenty of time to network and discuss their industry. 

Organizers could manually start sessions in the app or schedule a time to start automatically. Each video chat included attendee profile information and options to message fellow attendees directly.

Attendees could meet face to face in speed networking session

• Share discussion topics on the Community Board 

Whova’s Community Board, a virtual chat space designed to encourage networking, helped attendees chat and meet each other online. Attendees could share photos, introduce themselves with icebreakers, and join social groups with similar interests. 

Attendees posted numerous discussion topics about job openings, screen time accessibility, and virtual storytime options. Attendees could also search for other attendees in the app to send 1:1 messages or create a new group chat. 

• Empower speakers to upload their information 

Whova’s Speaker Center made it easy for the organizers to manage speakers’ information across different time zones without the hassle of emailing them individually. 

The organizers could email all or specific speakers through Whova’s platform, inviting them to upload their sessions and biography details online. The organizers or speakers could change and update the information at any point leading up to the event, where it was automatically updated on the app. 

• Instantly notify attendees through the app’s announcements

The organizers utilized Whova’s in-app announcements to notify attendees of speed networking sessions, surveys, session recordings, and more.  

They could send announcements to all attendees, select individuals, or choose specific groups of attendees. The organizers also kept the app open for six months after the event ended so that attendees could have extended access to information in the announcements and sessions recordings.

Attendees could find the organizer announcements in the Community Board