Hosted our first remote @collectivestrng event last night! It's a monthly event series that we usually host for about 50-100 womxn and nb people on a weekday evening with snacks and drinks.
Here's a thread about how it went over Zoom.
Here's a thread about how it went over Zoom.
We use Meetup for event listings/RSVPs. So we used Meetup to email guests the Zoom link day-of. This was an issue; not everyone got the email. Meetup wasn't designed to handle this, so there's no way to easily just give people joining info after they RSVP. (@Meetup pls fix this!)
Event format: we usually do either fireside chats with an expert (plus a group activity), or a fully interactive workshop. This month was a workshop I was facilitating with lots of group and 1:1 peer coaching work. We used Zoom breakout rooms for both.
Breakouts worked great, especially because we had tested the tech setup thoroughly and learned that there's no way to keep slides up when people are in breakouts. So we set up a separate google doc with all the prompts for all the breakouts, and gave that link out at the start.
One challenge is that a lot of the activities were 1:1 peer coaching, so you'd break out to a 1:1, come back to the group, then go back to the same 1:1. Issue: if someone has a tech difficulty, then someone's partnerless. If someone has to leave early, same.
So, we had @theledu jump in. She was on "crowd control" (making sure folks could hear, monitoring chat, etc.), so we'd just put her into a breakout if we needed her to make it even. That helped! But next time, I'll rely less on 1:1s for an event like this (free, community).
1:1s can totally work in a more formal setting, though -- if the workshop is with colleagues / part of work, or is a paid ticket, you'll get more consistency.
I'm still gathering feedback from attendees, but overall, the response was really positive. Someone said they cried happy tears at the connection they made! And it made my day to do something with this community even though I couldn't see them.
I missed the snacks, though. No one brought me a cheese plate :(
The biggest thing I can suggest to those moving somewhat complicated events to a remote format is to really, fully test the tech in advance—with some other people in the Zoom with you, ideally, so you can practice using all the features and understand precisely what does what.
For example, we got enough people in the test to run a couple breakouts and practice how long it *really* takes to move people into groups, have them join the groups, and then get them back from the groups. That helped us plan timing.
And I got to practice things like sending participants in breakout rooms an announcement when it was time for them to swap who was talking, or recreating the breakouts to go from small groups to 1:1.
All in all, a super positive experience, and we'll be doing more events this way. I've used basically all the conferencing software a lot of times in different ways, but this was a new bar. If you have questions about bringing your event to Zoom, hmu! I am happy to answer!
