Now more than ever, your members are hungry to connect with one another. In looking at the reactions to moving events online, one of the things I’ve noticed in discourse has been the fear that virtual conferences will not be able to satisfy this need. While it is true that virtually you cannot offer the visceral experience of a hug, or the serendipity that comes from running into a former colleague in the hallway, my experience has been that meaningful connections can form online, and there are steps you can take within your event design to encourage this process: the secret sauce? Be intentional every step of the way.
Let’s look at a few different examples of virtual networking, and how your design can impact outcome:
1. Choosing a session style designed to breed lively attendee chat dialogue
When I first entered the virtual conferencing space four years ago, it was very hard to find a platform that offered attendee chat functionality. Online “broadcasts” were just that: very highly controlled pieces where information flow was intended to go directly from presenter to attendee.
Now, more and more platforms are offering attendee chat as a feature, indicating a larger trend toward optimizing for social interaction online. And that makes sense. An attendee chat can be a really powerful place for real relationships to form, as people will naturally begin to identify those they are interested in connecting with on a deeper level.
Picture yourself sitting in a session at a typical in-person conference. The speaker is at the front of the room, and each attendee is independently playing with the concepts in their minds. A point made by the speaker might trigger a question, or an example from their own experience, or the memory of a related article. Now in the online space, your attendee chat can be a place for these thought bubbles not only to live, but to trigger even more ideas.
And according to our data, this is exactly what happens. In a bustling attendee chat, we see about ~33% of chat messages containing direct @ mentions to another attendee in the chat. What does this mean? People are responding to each other, and building off of each other’s ideas. What we’ve learned in following the stories behind some of these interactions is that it can meaningfully lead to relationships forming because of this powerful shared experience. That’s because people are engaging around the topics and issues they care about most.
What we’ve learned: the outcome of meaningful attendee chat sharing and relationship building doesn’t happen on its own (and for some sessions, it shouldn’t happen. Can you imagine trying to process deep technical training while meeting your future best friend in a chat?)
We see the most meaningful attendee chat interactions take place when the video session is an interactive conversation among speakers. In this sense, you can think of the speakers as conversation starters, and the attendee chat is then a glorious continuation of that conversation.
If you’re looking to dive deeper into designing sessions for attendee chat interaction, head on over to this article and scroll down to, “if you are looking to stoke lively community conversation”.
2. Holding breakout discussions by topic
We love ourselves some video breakout discussions, but we love them even more when they immediately follow a session designed as an interactive conversation. The session’s lively attendee chat full of conversation will have gotten the juices flowing through text discussion. Now, wouldn’t it be powerful to have attendees dig deeper into the issues on video together?
The mechanic of beginning in an attendee chat and then leading to a video discussion creates an important starting point for discussion. The attendees all have a shared experience now to discuss. Further, some may recognize names from that attendee chat, allowing folks to interact immediately with those they have already encountered. This is particularly valuable for introverts, who will generally have a harder time jumping into conversation on video.
Your attendees will all have chosen to continue their conversation because they are collectively passionate about the session’s topic, so conversation will flow and connections will be made more naturally than if they were all placed in a room with the simple premise to “network”. Here, the networking will be a natural byproduct of a focused conversation around a mutual interest or problem to solve.
3. Setting up a virtual happy hour (with a guiding question!)
Some of the best memories you may have from past conferences you attended were back at the hotel bar. No reason you can’t hold a BYOB version virtually!
In our experience, what will determine the success of your happy hour is how you get the ball rolling in a meaningful way. In the virtual space, you must be very intentional about the reasons you gather people. Have you ever been in a zoom room where no one knows what to say next? Doesn’t that just make you cringe thinking about it?
We recommend establishing a guiding question, especially one that encourages storytelling. Stories make for more active, enjoyable conversation and tend to build off of one another. Even better, if you can line up one or two attendees before the session who volunteer to share a story, you will avoid the awkward moment when no one is brave enough to start.
Your guiding question doesn’t have to tie specifically to the session content. One we love: “What is your quarantine horror story?” We all have a story, and it makes for easy laughs and free flowing commentary.
In the virtual world, we feel so passionately that content drives networking. The beauty of virtual conferencing is being able to watch a community of people come together who all share the same objective and interests. If you design with intentional interaction in mind, and let the content drive networking as a byproduct, then you’ll be in great shape to meaningfully allow your members to connect!
