How did your day begin? Maybe with coffee, a scroll through social media, or a quick glance at your schedule? Hopefully breakfast got involved somewhere along the way, and helped fuel you to this point in your day. The point where you discovered that Matchbox Virtual Media has started a blog and this is our first post!
(Yay! Applause! The crowd goes wild!)
If discovering that we exist was part of your day, then allow us to introduce ourselves. In a nutshell, we’re a company that produces interactive virtual conferences. We collaborate with partnering organizations to survey their industry and clearly articulate the most urgent conversations. Facilitated discussions are then held with subject matter experts around pressing topics, and we record those discussions. During the live virtual event, these recordings are played while the experts (a.k.a. session speakers) can engage by typing into an ongoing chat with the virtual attendees, while attendees network and inspire one another as well (the interactive part).
Over the past 30 million years, prehistoric fish crawled out of the water, homo erectus controlled fire, and we discovered germs and started washing our hands (finally). Like every momentous event in history, the inception of Matchbox one year ago has changed us for the better. As the company grows and we gain experience, we’re in a constant process of incorporating feedback, researching, experimenting, refining our methodology, and ultimately perfecting our service! About 5% of our motivation to write this blog is because we’re proud of our company and passionate about the work we do. The other 95% is because we’ve become quite insightful on some seriously impactful topics, so why on Earth would we hoard these gems? We’re passionate about moving forward together, making a difference in the most inclusive way to the largest population of people that have something important to discuss.
In the past year, a sample of things we’ve learned about include collaborating for genuine co-creation, how to match virtual engagement to in-person standards, how to maximize value for both the event hosts and attendees (since virtual events of this type are new and it’s okay to be a little apprehensive at first), and how to best utilize the data so nothing from the event is lost. Remember, there is no maximum capacity for virtual attendees, and there is a live chat occurring during the sessions; this means that transcript provides a whole lot of data.
Remember that time you were at an in-person conference and you had a curious thought but it wasn’t Q&A period yet? Did you save your thought until the end and share it with the room? With your table? Please say you at least wrote it in your notebook? Many curious thoughts from curious people are captured in virtual events, since the ongoing chat is equally accessible to anyone with a keyboard.
We’re aiming for innovative thinking and are loving the conversations that occur along the way. If you love the idea of building communities virtually, discussing important topics with others who care, giving a voice to more people, modernizing to help sustain the environment, networking to create meaningful connections, or exploring how to best leverage post-event data, then you should continue reading our blog!
Another great way to stay in the loop, is by attending our free Matchbox Original events. The next opportunity to see what we do, chat with our staff, and hear from existing clients, is this February 4th from 1-2:30pm (EST) at Your Virtual Conference: from Idea to Execution. Broadly? We’ll be discussing the hosts’ experiences, monetization methods, and our winning content curation strategy. Specifically? It’s all laid out for you to enjoy at https://bit.ly/2FSSS44.
