Blog

On January 14, 2021, the Giftedness Promotion Congress of the University of Teacher Education FHNW kicked off. Not in person as planned, but fully digital for the first time. This was a real challenge for the organizers of the three-day event, but one they mastered successfully in every respect—as we can already reveal. Our software supported the team throughout the process.

Live content brings a virtual conference to life, but the entire program doesn't necessarily have to be live. Presentations and other parts of the program can be recorded and uploaded before the conference begins. Furthermore, many organizers choose to keep live elements in their program while still offering participants the opportunity to watch all concurrently streamed sessions at their own pace later on.

RTMP, OBS, and VoD are just a few of the acronyms organizers encounter when they first start exploring the technical side of their planned virtual conference. What these terms actually mean is often "explained" using even more jargon and abbreviations. We’d like to try a more beginner-friendly approach.

Event organizers have a timing problem—and it’s not the usual one about not having enough time to prepare for the conference. The rise of virtual conferences has introduced a whole new complication: participants are no longer in the same location and can theoretically log in from anywhere in the world. To ensure they actually do, the conference must take place at a time that works for all time zones. Is that even possible?

Virtual and non-virtual conferences may differ in a few points, but the goals that sponsors and exhibitors pursue by participating in an event are always the same: establishing contact with the target audience and engaging potential customers. To make this work, a change in thinking is necessary, because the familiar analog-style exhibitor booths are out of place in a virtual environment.

Virtual conference sessions have become a reality for many organizers. However, a conference is not yet complete in this format, as the social framework that turns an event into a communal experience and connects the individual program parts is still missing or, at the very least, has room for improvement.