This is something the team tested at EAG London 2021. The feedback suggested this wasn’t super well-received. Virtual attendees reported feeling on the sidelines, and they made a quarter as many connections as in-person attendees.
There are some other costs here. If we let people access Swapcard virtually, it could be confusing/frustrating for attendees to receive requests from people who just want to book video calls. This may sound minor but realistically, if we allowed people to attend virtually, a lot of people could ask to do this, making the event a bit strange and hard to navigate. It would also force the team to process a bunch of applications for people who aren’t planning on coming.
Perhaps there’s more we can test out here; I like the idea of people listed as resources/contacts rather than attendees.
I wonder if attendees could be blocked from scheduling virtual evnts (or virtual attendees are blocked from scheduling virtual events) during the conference itself?
Yeah, that could work. So, they’re just there in Swapcard with some contact info? I find it hard to think of a good balance here, where virtual attendees get or provide value but it isn’t too confusing…
As I understand it event apps (maybe not swapcard beyond the basics?) can allow for different categories of attendees—e.g. speakers and attendees. You could add a third category “virtual attendees”. It would take some onboarding work, but I could imagine it becoming normal to have folks online but not in-person?
This is something the team tested at EAG London 2021. The feedback suggested this wasn’t super well-received. Virtual attendees reported feeling on the sidelines, and they made a quarter as many connections as in-person attendees.
There are some other costs here. If we let people access Swapcard virtually, it could be confusing/frustrating for attendees to receive requests from people who just want to book video calls. This may sound minor but realistically, if we allowed people to attend virtually, a lot of people could ask to do this, making the event a bit strange and hard to navigate. It would also force the team to process a bunch of applications for people who aren’t planning on coming.
Perhaps there’s more we can test out here; I like the idea of people listed as resources/contacts rather than attendees.
I wonder if attendees could be blocked from scheduling virtual evnts (or virtual attendees are blocked from scheduling virtual events) during the conference itself?
Yeah, that could work. So, they’re just there in Swapcard with some contact info? I find it hard to think of a good balance here, where virtual attendees get or provide value but it isn’t too confusing…
As I understand it event apps (maybe not swapcard beyond the basics?) can allow for different categories of attendees—e.g. speakers and attendees. You could add a third category “virtual attendees”. It would take some onboarding work, but I could imagine it becoming normal to have folks online but not in-person?