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  • 1.  Discussions Feature - Has anyone used it?

    Posted 10-26-2021 13:15
    Has anyone run an event that's used the new Discussions feature on Attendee Hub yet?  We're preparing to do an event with about 3000 virtual attendees on the Attendee Hub, and we're planning to highly utilize this feature, however, we're incredibly nervous since it's so new, and we are having trouble figuring out how to prepare for troubleshooting.  Anyone successfully do it?  Any words of advice?
    #EventApp-Building/managing
    #Creating/ManagingEvents
    #Miscellaneous
    #ManagingVirtualEvents

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    Rachel Becker
    Director, Business Solutions
    EAB
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  • 2.  RE: Discussions Feature - Has anyone used it?

    Posted 10-27-2021 08:02
    We haven't used it yet but I am interested in others experience also. The limit of 6 people in a room is a negative for the way I could see it being used for our events and was actually a turn off for one of the customers who I did a demo for.

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    Melissa Williford
    Technology Services Project Manager
    ORAU
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Discussions Feature - Has anyone used it?

    Posted 10-28-2021 10:02
    We had small discussion groups planned prior to the rollout of the feature so it was well-timed for us.  We asked if people wanted to facilitate a small discussion group during our registration process, so this gave us leads for discussions. We had three 30 minute discussion times per day, sometimes with multiple topics.   We mirrored the discussion times in the Agenda by also creating collaborative sessions, then adding an external link to the discussion page. This way they showed up on people's calendars and weren't forgotten.  While there isn't reporting specific to Discussions at this time, so I don't have great participation metrics, I can see that about 1/3 of my registered attendees attended the "live" session aka clicked on the link.

    We didn't experience much in the way of technical issues, there were a very small number of people who couldn't get their audio/camera to connect. Since this is a browser-based experience they usually have to allow the site access to the hardware, which can be tricky for Mac users.

    Overall this was an easy, low-effort enhancement to add to our virtual event, I would use it again.

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    Amy Willis
    Meetings and Exhibits Manager
    Safety Pharmacology Society
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Discussions Feature - Has anyone used it?

    Posted 10-28-2021 10:12
    Yes! We are using this week for a 300 person virtual conference. We are using the feature for lunch time networking where folks can drop in and chat with each other. We also did one "virtual networking" session during a break between breakout sessions and created 4 different "themed" discussion areas. The themed didn't work out that great as only 2 of the 4 themed areas generated interest, but those that did worked well. I'd imagine our small conference was part of the issue (that and people need a break from sitting in front of the computer all day). The lunch time "meet & greet" open discussion has been pretty popular, though. 

    It is nice to have just 6 people - it's like being a table at a real conference. There is no chat feature in the room and the video all runs in the browser (no separate Zoom app/window to open). The running in the browser caused me issues on the first day where it locked up my screen, dropped me out of the group, and then locked up my zoom app when I tried to open it to host a session after being the in the discussion room. However, that was a momentary issue and after a long minute my zoom app worked again. I have tried the discussion rooms again and did not have any issue. Others report similar issues as me and the one thing we all have in common is a weak Internet connection.  So I'd advise folks with weaker/slower Internet connections to make sure they have all other applications that use bandwidth closed while using the discussion rooms. 

    Other than that, it is a hit and folks really enjoy catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

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    Jami Dennis
    Arizona Geographic Information Council
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    Original Message