Virtual Networking at Out of Office: Using Crowdcast as a ‘venue’
One of the most interesting elements of our first Out of Office event was the audiences full use of the live chat, Q&A and poll features available on Crowdcast. Every speaker’s session included a successful 10 min Q&A with questions being submitted by individual attendees, and up voted by live audience members. The most successful questions are funnelled to the top of the list, and by the end of the speaker’s 30 min presentation, the host joins the speaker on screen to go through the top voted questions.
For an on-the-ground event, an audience Q&A may be a pretty minor part; but for an online event it can often make the difference between an event that’s valuable, and one that isn’t, to your audience.
One of our main challenges is to provide the same networking value that face-to-face events are notorious for. Using Crowdcast as a platform to stream Out of Office has been hugely impactful in shaping the event, and we’re really impressed by all the specific features dedicated to improving attendees, speakers, and organisers, experiences. Here are just some of the things you can do when you register to watch Out of Office on Crowdcast.
Live chat
The live chat is a prominent feature of every session, making it super easy for the audience to participate in the current presentation, and talk with other attendees. You can start chatting from the minute you’ve registered for the event. Here’s a sneak peak of what you can expect:
As the event organisers, we also have full control over the chat and can delete anything inappropriate and/or ban trolls. This is a crucial part of ensuring we’re creating a safe and professional space for everyone, and is one of the ways we’re enforcing our Code of Conduct.
Live Q&A & Voting
Speakers are invited to participate in a 10 min audience Q&A at the end of their presentation, where they answer the highest voted questions presented by the host.
All questions are submitted via text; but if they are answered during the live Q&A, they’ll receive a timestamp, enabling people who are re-watching the videos to find the exact location where the question was answered. That’s time saving magic right there.
A HM A: Ask Human Made Anything
It’s a little cheesy, a little fun and a lot of solid, practical information. We’re hosting an AHMA (it still makes us smile!) between 7:15 — 7:45 PM BST, at Out of Office. You can read more about what we’re doing, and how you can get involved here.
Polls
Polls are a quick way of gathering data around a specific topic: how many remote business owners vs remote employees are here? Is this the first time you’ve watched Out of Office? How do you identify yourself? A. remote professional, B. digital nomad, C. I don’t like labels.
Everyone is invited to submit and answer polls and Crowdcast enables specific polls per individual sessions. You might want to ask about remote culture in Laila’s session, and you may ask in Libby’s about specific processes around agile management.
User profiles
Signing up to an event couldn’t be simpler.
This is, of course, ideal for an attendee; and it’s pretty perfect for us organisers too. By ensuring people sign up with Facebook, Twitter or Google, we’re ensuring our community isn’t flooded with fake profiles and trolls, and the people signing up are people actually interested in joining us for the event. This increases the networking value, and means others are more likely to start and participate in conversations.
We encourage attendees to build their profile to help them get to know each other better. It’s also a great way to showcase the remote projects you’re working on, which can be something useful for anyone interested in getting into remote work.
Stream to Facebook
Will the event be streamed on Facebook?
And we’re delighted Crowdcast added this new feature, which you can read more about here.
We’re really excited to try this, but we still encourage you to sign up to the event to make the most of the conference. We’re limiting comments and question on Facebook, and we won’t stream the live speaker’s Q&A so if you want to ask a question, participate in a Q&A or chat to the rest of the audience, it’s better to join us on Crowdcast.
