Moving Events Online Part 2: Strategies: What can we learn from successful online events?

This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Table of contents:<Introduction> <Part 1: Challenges> <Part 2: Strategies> <Part 3: Platforms>

Fully online events are not very common but they exist. Many people have written about some of their experiences that we can learn from. Being more aware of the affordance mismatch between online and physical events can help us make the most of these tips and augment them.

Tips for organisers

Initial considerations

1. Think about the format of the event. Does it have to be just a day or two or can you split a day into a week or two worth of sessions? A more concentrated event can develop more of a feel of unity but may be more intensive to organise and harder to attend for people who join from their place of work.
2. Think about whether you want the event to be synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous events put much lower demands on presenters and will also have more engagement. People are more likely to attend an hour-long live event than watch the same length video recording. Successful asynchronous events require more intensive moderation with a time commitment for organisers that may span weeks.
3. Think about the formats of the sessions. Do you need to replicate exactly the same formats as in an in-person session? Can you take advantage of the online format? Some conferences offer a Twitter chat as a format. You could also adopt a text interview or panel similar to AMA on Reddit or a moderated online chat. Collaborative document editing such as a Wikipedia editathon or an online documentation sprint are also an option.
4. Think about the virtual space. Do you just want to have a traditional website with lists of links or something that gives the impression of being in space. 3D virtual spaces like Second Life gave people more of a sense of space but they excluded those who found them difficult to navigate. In general, people have good shared mental models of a website and the benefits of a 3D emulation of the physical space are not certain. On the other hand, giving some thought to what should be visually placed together on the website can help make up for the lack of the most natural affordances of space.
5. Think about the medium and modality. Encourage presenters and participants to turn on videos and to attend from spaces that support that. But also encourage people to upload photos (or integrate with LinkedIn) to make the virtual space more personal and add more visual cues to the space.
6. Think about the amount of written text on the event website. Do participants arrive to what looks like a website or something that naturally suggests things happening. Don’t waste space with welcome messages or long descriptions. Even a welcome video just gets in the way. The first thing participants arriving to a website of a live online event should see is where to go next, how to join what is happening.
7. Think about having a chat channel that is constantly monitored by event organisers. Making the chat public is another possibility to enable others to learn from previous questions.

Communication and presentation

1. Have a central repository of information about the event with details of how to connect front and centre and promote that. Don’t rely on emails with links.
2. Have a status board on the front of the event website with what sessions are happening right now and what is coming next. Don’t rely on the schedule with links to sessions. Maybe even have a counter of how many people are in sessions at the moment and have a ticker of questions or chat being asked.
3. Allow participants to sign up for individual sessions and make sure that they can integrate it into their calendar and get individual email reminders. Just having a schedule they can click on doesn’t take into account their need to integrate the event into their life.
4. Think about having stable links to virtual rooms and give the rooms a name. There is some potential for confusion as people join the wrong session or come in for a session that’s still running but it will replicate some of the serendipity of a live event. Having unique links for each session has some technical advantages because presenters and facilitators can prepare ahead of time but if you build enough breaks between sessions, this could alleviate the problem.
5. Let participants promote the event in ways that is natural. Having an event hashtag for Twitter and Instagram is easy. But you should also have collateral to share. Have images that people can put on Instagram, offer a tweet of the day prize for the weeks running up to the conference. Reward blogging about the event, etc. You should also take the time and promote participants and presenters. Have a featured section on the website where you profile a scheduled talk every day or have event attendee write a short blog post about sessions they’re planning to attend and why.

Sessions

1. Each live session needs to have 2 roles for success. A session moderator and session technical support.
2. The moderator (chair) introduces the presenter, keeps track of time and then moderates the discussion. If there is a chat functionality, they should monitor and answer routine questions and collate questions for asking later. They could also interrupt the presenter if the question seems urgent. This could be a role taken on by the presenter themselves as it often is in live events but not all presenters will have the ability to monitor all aspects of the session. It is particularly useful to have a second person available when questions come in via text who can read them out.
3. The technical support person helps troubleshoot issues with microphones, screen sharing, or other technical use of the platform. They may also be responsible for starting the session (depending on the platform). The moderator can play this role if technically adept, or one technical support person can look after multiple sessions. But event organisers should expect the need for more technical support for online events. Often, these people will have nothing to do but their presence makes much more difference.
4. Panels and round tables work well in the virtual format and can be successful when moderated well. This does work best when all panelists’ videos are visible. Most platforms also have features for creating break out groups which may be an option for replicating the unconference format.
5. Lightning talks are becoming increasingly popular at events and these would be very easy to replicate online (although they don’t seem to be). A number of presenters simply pass screensharing and microphone control over and present short (3–7 min) talks. This can be moderated easily and be augmented by the presence of a text chat channel.
6. Not all sessions have to be in the form of a live presentation to an audience. Here are four suggestions for alternatives:
7. Having an AMA (Ask me anything) style Q&A that was popularised by Reddit can be a powerful engagement. A presenter (usually somebody with a unique experience or point of view) can be available for a specified period of time (anywhere from an hour to week) to answer questions that people type in. This works best if the person is sufficiently known or the size of the audience is large to ensure questions are asked. The organisers may also substitute questions.
8. Group chat known from platforms such as Slack or Teams could replicate the experience of a live panel. An example of how this works is a moderated Slack discussion published by the website FiveThirtyEight. This could be organised live and / or published afterwards. But immediacy is important. This format requires a panel of people who are sufficiently acquainted with this form of communication and a competent moderator.
9. Twitter chat where participants follow a topic (using a hashtag) for a specified amount of time (usually an hour) has become an established group communication medium. Here all of the event’s virtual attendees can participate. These work best when moderated and require that participants use Twitter. By its nature, this happens in the public eye but could be replicated in a closed platform by open chat.
10. Editathon is another medium where a group works together on creating or editing a document on a single topic. These were popularised by Wikipedia but can be implemented easily using a shared Google Doc. Editathons can last anywhere from an hour to a week (when they are longer, they are also sometimes called book sprints but these are usually in person) and work best when people commit to them and have some system of communication and moderation.

Social environment

Giving the online event a sense of cohesion (time and place) is perhaps the most difficult aspect to replicate. This is where the Second Life platform offered the most potential because it was possible to see representations of other people in the same space. But virtual environments with avatars are not as easy to navigate for everyone as a website so will ultimately reduce participation. Here are some suggestions based on what has been tried:

1. A constantly open virtual room (cafe) where participants can join talk with each other. This should be constantly moderated so that somebody coming in at any time would always have someone to interact with. One way to promote this space would be to ask all presenters to spend at least 15 minutes there after the session to communicate.
2. Some conferences have tried to have a short (30 min) session at the start of each day and the end of each day to summarise key lessons, answer questions, and point to what will happen next. These need to be relevant and offer some reward to ensure attendance. Perhaps inviting select attendees to give a 3 minute summary of their highlights of the day could be a way to make it more popular.
3. Moderators of all sessions should always start with a summary of how the event is going and what sessions are coming up next (or running in parallel) .
4. A live ticker of how many people are in events or how many people are on the website and available to chat to could be integrated into the interface of the sessions.
5. A unified event chat running alongside the session chats (or instead) could make it easier for everyone to get a sense of the whole event. This would provide a bit of distraction but also bring the event together. This is replicated by a Twitter hashtag at most conferences. So one thing would be to integrate the Twitter stream directly into the session platform. This would work best when moderated.
6. Scheduled BoF (birds of a feather) sessions could also help attendees to meet and interact with like-minded participants. They could be organised around topic, region, or background and limited to 6–10 people per group. Again, some moderation or very clear rules of conduct would be necessary.
7. Some large virtual events have organised physical regional follow ups of participants from the same place. This could give people more of a sense of continuity but would only work for very large events.

The reality of online events is that none of the above will work very successfully if not fully supported (and sometimes not even then). Organisers need to commit to the social aspects of the event and persevere even if there is no initial take up if just to reward the few people who do take part. It is also a good idea to have at least two or three modes of social interaction to give more of a chance for one to take off and to allow for the heterogeneity of the participants’ preferences. These should work together to avoid too much fragmentation but there will never be a perfect balance.

Tips for attendees

If you’re attending a virtual event, make sure that you’ve blocked enough time for sessions and in between sessions. You should also make sure people in your environment know that you are attending the event.

1. Put the entire event on your calendar rather than just individual sessions. Or at least block your calendar for at least 15 minutes either side of any session you want to attend.
2. Book a meeting room for when you’re attending sessions or work from home for the day or days of the online event. Watching at your normal desk at the office invites distractions.
3. Put an out of office on your email so that others know you are otherwise occupied and you don’t feel the social obligation to check and respond to email during sessions.
4. Do not schedule anything else such as meetings between virtual sessions you want to attend. Block time for online socialising such as Twitter or conference chat. Do attend the virtual cafe (if there is one) and do not be discouraged when no one is there).

Tips for organisations that want to encourage online attendance

Organisations who want to encourage their members to attend a virtual conference or virtual training sessions could try some of these.

1. Have an explicit policy that encourages online participation and outlines rules for attending online events or taking online training. Outline rules for when such events can be overtaken by things that come up at the office and when not. Encourage working from home when attending a virtual event. Ensure that line managers respect online attendance.
2. Ensure that all your staff have the technical equipment and skills to attend. Making sure that everyone has a headset with a microphone and ideally a webcam makes attending online events easier. Have a spare collection of headsets to replace broken ones (they break often) without any need for a formal requisition process. Make sure your IT support understands the various online platforms and can support individuals’ connection problems.
3. Dedicate a meeting room to online attendances and virtual training. This could be a room set up for hotdesking or potentially some PCs where multiple people could sit and learn online. But you should also have remote communication pods where the online attendees can feel free to turn on their webcam and speak when required.
4. Have a dedicated space from which people can present online. Ideally, the presenter should be able to present standing up and have at least 2 monitors available. This room or space should have a high quality noise-cancelling headset and a high-resolution camera. The PC in this room should be powerful enough and have a wired network connection to ensure the quality of presentation.

Part 1: Challenges <<Previous | Next>> Part 2: Strategies