For many people, gamification may be new. You may be asking, “What is gamification exactly?”. Well, gamification is exactly what it sounds like, fun little games or challenges inserted strategically into the meeting. A few ideas for gamification are:

• Who Said That – Collect quotes from speakers and participants during the meeting. At the end, do a series of “Who Said That” and see if participants can guess.
• Trivia – Who doesn’t love trivia? It’s the perfect friendly competition and you can theme it around meeting objectives.
• Scavenger Hunts – Curate a list of things you’d like your attendees to keep an eye out for, or tasks you want them to complete on your app during the meeting. Whoever checks off the most wins!

There are so many fun ways to get attendees involved throughout the duration of the meeting and keep attention while enhancing participation.

There are very few people that like to look at themselves in a mirror let alone in a virtual meeting. This keeps your mind reeling and analyzing your every move and how you look. The best way to deal with this is to turn off self-view. This will make the virtual meeting more like an in-person meeting. You don’t look at yourself when you are in a conference room so don’t do it in a virtual meeting.

If you want to take it to the next level just turn your camera off completely.

Even virtual events need sponsors. But choosing the best sponsor for your virtual event is just as important to it’s success. Choose a sponsor that fits your niche, the topic of the event and most importantly that resonates with your audience – even in a virtual setting.

Let’s review a few features that will help you make an informed decision to ensure your attendees have an amazing experience at your event. Keep in mind this is just a shortlist of features – depending on your specific event requirements, there could be more.

• Custom Branding – can your event be branded with your logo and custom colors and font? This is a basic feature that most organizations and associations require.
• Sponsors – is there any opportunity for sponsor placement and branding of sessions and activities on the platform
• Functionality – Is the platform formatted to allow multi-day events and, concurrent breakout sessions. If your conference agenda normally contains 10 concurrent breakout sessions, it’s imperative that you know if the platform that you are selecting can accommodate that.
• Does the platform have a built-in registration module? How advanced is it? How much can you customize? Explore the payment feature and costs associated with that customizing your selected.
• What type of attendee engagement will the system allow?
• Question and answer.
• Chat features
• Is there live polling?
• What about gamification?
• Social media – does the system have a social wall for live interaction and engagement. What social media integration features are available?
• Hybrid Events – looking to the future. Will this platform grow with you for future events? It is forecasted that in-person conferences and meetings will look differently in the near future. Conferences and events will comprise of both hybrid and in-person events. Will the platform be able to accommodate hybrid events? Microsites – Will you need access to an event microsite to connect attendees? A microsite will contain all of your event information including schedule, speaker’s photos, bios, sponsors, instructions on how to connect to the platform, social media engagement and more.
• Push Notifications – this is an important feature to consider. How will you communicate with attendees during the event?. On most conference apps, push notifications play a huge role during virtual events. This is especially important if it’s a live event and there’s technical issues or changes to the program.