We are using Hopin, as I mentioned a couple times in the OP. It’s a relatively new platform that we think is pretty exciting because unlike YouTube Live or Twitch (which started as ways for individual streamers to broadcast to vast audiences) or Zoom (which began as a videoconferencing tool intended for organizations), or some of the other free online platforms you may be thinking of (or in the case of Zoom, not actually free…but usually paid for by someone else at this point), Hopin was marketed towards encouraging people to take their entire conferences online in order to reduce the environmental cost of running such large-scale events (until all those platforms kinda got adopted for mainly other things in the wake of COVID, of course). As such, it approaches virtual events differently, and in short it allows us to organize the event in a way that we can’t do with those other platforms.
By the way - I helped run an entire other workshop series this summer with Zoom, and have been either the event manager or media lead at several offseasons where we streamed the event on YouTube or Twitch, so I’m well aware of the capabilities of those platforms. They are good at what they do, but they were not the right fit for this event.
I already wrote about our goals in a prior reply, but we’ve been running some internal tests of our final event over the last couple days so I can actually show you. This is only part of the event, but I think it’s illustrative of a couple key things I wanted to point out.
For comparison, we usually host our events in a university building (or two).
The thing we particularly liked about Hopin was that provides an additional layer of organization at the event level, not just the session level; everything about the event is contained in the platform, like at our in-person events where (almost) everything is contained in the same building.
- In the middle, you can see (some of) all the sessions, searchable, filterable with tags, with descriptions. At our in-person events, an attendee could just walk down the hallway and see, “oh, there’s room 101, with the mech classes. Oh, there’s room 103, with the biz classes”, without having to leave the building, or look back at their email. This gives us that hallway, virtually, without attendees having to leave the platform. With YouTube, Twitch, Zoom etc. this would be a ton of separate links, and attendees would have to keep going back and forth between their email (or a different page) and the stream if they wanted to find another session. And keep in mind we are running 30+ sessions, plus activities, with up to 6 happening concurrently at any given time. So, at best, if you made everyone share streams, that would be six different links; at worst, if you left it up to presenters to each manage their own streams, that would be about three dozen links to juggle.
- Additionally, those sessions work like videoconferences, so attendees can turn on their audio/video and share their screens, in addition to chat, rather than just passively watching a primarily one-way stream of someone talking like on YT/Twitch (granted, those have chat too at least). I don’t think I need to elaborate on how that’s closer to an in-person event. In our testing, the video quality was pretty solid, to boot. So aside from the workshops, that’s also how we’ll be running our roundtables and games.
- Also, we can create an infinite amount of them. At our in-person events, if we can spare it, we usually set aside a room as a volunteer lounge where presenters can hang out between sessions. Here we can create an additional “session” for that, not to mention a planning team room as well. And, the sessions are persistent throughout the event – so presenters can hang back to continue a convo with an attendee while the next round of sessions starts, without (in the case of shared streams) having to worry about leaving so someone else can broadcast.
- On the right, you can see there’s an event chat for broadcasting messages event-wide, like having a PA system (or a couple of runners) at an in-person event. With YouTube, Twitch, Zoom etc., every stream/call is a separate, self-contained entity with a different link, different comment box, etc.; the concept of “event-wide” doesn’t exist there at all.
- On the left, there’s Networking. That works like speed networking/speed dating/whatever you want to call it – attendees can randomly meet other attendees at the event, talk with them over video for a while, and then optionally exchange contact info (we’ve set it up so students only match with other students and adults with other adults, of course). That helps provide an equivalent to randomly meeting someone else (like while sitting next to them at lunch or something) at our in-person events, and is how we’re going to do our speed friending activity.
- Also on the left, there’s a Reception and Stage. At our in-person events, we have a front desk / reception area where people check in and where we also post some key info, and a large space of some sort where everyone gathers after check-in and where we kick off the event before directing everyone to their separate sessions. Having that available all within the platform allows us to maintain that event flow here.
- At the top, note the flyout schedule. At our in-person events, we post our event schedule at strategic points so attendees can always refer back to it as needed without having to go back to their email or whatever. Likewise, here we can set up a schedule available to attendees at any time, no matter what part of the event they are in.
All that, taken together, allows us to provide an cohesive experience that we think is about as close to attending an in-person event as we can create in a virtual format. Like I said, we designed this event to be more than just a workshop series - we want it to be a place for teams to continue connecting with other teams and meeting new FIRST friends while we are all being kept apart. So that’s why we chose Hopin, even though it is a paid platform (and still in early access, and does not offer nonprofit discounts or donations of any sort at this time).
Regarding the registration fees then – reminder that those do not go into any of our pockets. We are not asking people to pay us. At our in-person events, the fees primarily go to cover snacks and refreshments that everyone can partake in, meals for the presenters that are sharing their knowledge with everyone, and supplies like signage and tape that everyone benefits from; anything left over is saved up by the organization to support future events. Likewise, here the fees primarily go to cover a platform that everyone can use and everyone benefits from, and possibly some prizes for the CADathon that everyone can participate in; anything left over is, again, saved up by the organization to support future events. So from that perspective, we don’t think maintaining our registration fee here is unreasonable.
For some additional context, we started planning this event as early as March/April, when the future of the pandemic within the coming months was still extremely uncertain. We initially wrote up plans for three event possibilities – in-person, hybrid, and fully online – and I can’t count how many times we went back to the drawing board as things evolved, not just with the pandemic situation, but also with changes in resources available to us. When it became clear that a fully online event was our only option, we opted to still try moving as much of the conference-style experience we wanted to provide in in-person and/or hybrid form as we could into a fully virtual format. So if it seems like we’re doing things differently from other online workshops you are thinking of - that is because we never set out to build just a series of online workshops in the first place.
If you happen to have an issue with the very concept of a paid online event, then all I can really do is point you towards the many conferences, summer camps, and other such events out in the world that went online this year and are still charging registration fees, successfully at that, even though there are other online events that are free. As the meme you posted alludes to, there’ll always be folks who think that paying for a movie that will show up later on their cable or Netflix subscription where it wouldn’t cost them extra is silly - that the “free” option is good enough. But there’ll also always be folks who find some value in some aspect of the paid option that they do not feel the free option provides. But I hope we can agree that that is a strictly personal value judgement, and leave it at that.
But if you are still wondering why we decided to adopt this event model, though, I hope this (admittedly lengthy) post sheds more light on the rationale behind our decisions.
