Taking Events Entirely Online
What We’re Learning And Doing Differently
Since inception, humble has curated programming & events to solve specific growth and innovation-related problems for businesses, early-stage founders, and investors that are transforming respective industries. I’m pleased to share, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, our programming is resuming entirely online. Whether on Hopin, Zoom, or any other technology, the convening will be curated around purposeful content.
Our digital events are an extension of our in-person Pop-Up series to introduce some of our most influential partners to our network of investors and innovators around purposeful content. We recently hosted one with VC in DC — long-standing in-person quarterly events for investors at DC-area venture capital, angel, early-stage growth equity, and venture debt firms. I’m a Board member, and this event was open for all of our VC in DC members.
The VC in DC Virtual Pop-Up was an all-in-one live online event where attendees could learn, interact, and connect with people from wherever they’re sheltering in place. The theme of this particular event was “COVID-19: Investing And The New Normal.” The purpose of this curated event was to educate, entertain, and solve specific investment-related problems in the backdrop of COVID-19. Investors shared recommendations for how firms can manage uncertainty in our rapidly changing world.
The schedule was a focused 1.5-hrs in which you watch a mini TedTalk, participate in AMAs with key subject matter experts (SME), learn from some informative discussions, meet new partners, and collaborators. We were pleased to welcome Sean Stone as our keynote speaker and a panel of SMEs discuss relevant topics and answer attendees questions:
- Christian Souza, VP, SVB: Advice about loans and alternative financing solutions for portfolio companies
- Kendrick Nguyen, Co-Founder, Republic: Sourcing deal flow entirely online
- Angie Collier, VP, Dupont Circle Solutions: Helping strengthen, track KPI’s, and mobilize sales teams during COVID-19
- Natalie Buford-Young, Managing Director, Deloitte: Issues facing early-stage startup management
Finally, the day culminated with Chatroulette-style networking.
The event sponsors were Revolution, Franklin Advisory, Blu Venture Investors, Motley Fool Ventures, and TEDCO.
What We Learned
We used Hopin as the platform for hosting the online event. Hopin’s platform is easy to understand and navigable by any attendee. Interactions (polling/chat) between attendees as well as a Chatroulette-style video networking feature help individuals build meaningful connections through digital engagement.
We’ve found a lot of features attractive to hosting an event that mimics the warmth and feel of in-person events like a stage for keynotes, rooms for breakout sessions, and networking.
We learned attendees LOVED our Chatroulette-style networking. When you join a 1-on-1, you are paired up with one person at a time via Hopin’s video chat for a predetermined amount of time set by, us, the organizer. Once the time is up (I capped the meetings at 5 minutes), Hopin automatically moves you to the next person.
What We’ll Do Differently
Matching is 100% random in the networking portion. You’ll never meet the same person twice at a Hopin event; however, we can set specific groups of attendees to meet each other. For this particular event, VC in DC members were matched with other members. In the future, we’re considering setting certain ticket types to match with only different ticket types. We could have folks in other markets only be matched with people outside of their geographic market so that they can expand their network. Also, we'll probably extend this portion beyond the 30 minutes we set for this event.
On the backend, Hopin features everything we could need to manage an event from end to end: Registration pages, expos, sponsors, reception areas, backstages, and analytics. In advance, we provided potential questions they’d be asked, video tutorials, and ran demos of the platform with each speaker. We may want to think about running the show with everyone together. Not just the individuals, but get the whole set of people on the day before or a few days before. A 15 to 20-min demo for all speakers:
- 5-min for stage (get all speakers from the green room to live stage in order)
- 5-min for panel
- 5-min for networking
- 5-min for debriefing back in stage
There are some things you can’t prevent when producing an online event like someone’s internet connection. Yet, you can never be too prepared. Setting speakers up for success and enabling the best overall experience for attendees are two areas we’ll continue to perfect. For now, we believe Hopin is the best platform to produce high-quality, memorable events on scale.
