Virtual Meetup Kit

This is a guide document made for Ethereum Meetup Support Program participants. It includes answers to questions about how to organise virtual meetup.

Golden Rules

Are usually similar or same for both In Person and Virtual Meetup.

Golden rules are on the top of the Meetup Kit

(Virtual) Event planning fundamentals

• Good marketing - promotion on social media is the key

• Content is King - content is your event, engaging sessions tailored to your attendees are critical

• Keep virtual attendees engaged - by polls, Q&As

• Data is the only way to prove event success. Measuring engagement and capturing attendee data are the only way to prove event ROI and attract sponsors

Virtual Event is built around:

• Content

• Attendee engagement

• Data

Virtual Event relies on:

• Video quality

• Connectivity and content

• Agenda - is important mainly when you have more speakers, longer event/ conference

Virtual Event vs In Person Event

• Virtual event requires the same care and attention as an in-person event

  • both requires promotion

  • engage your attendees

  • create memorable moments for attendees (relates mainly to confs & bigger events)

  • event success

Virtual event vs Webinar

Webinar fundamentals

• Showcase project / product/ company content

• Invite people to sign up

• Participate

Virtual event fundamentals

• Expansive which leads to roundtable like discussions

• Presentation track

• Virtual booth space

• Virtual meeting space

• Usually a lot of participants

Reasons why organise Virtual Event

• Accessibility - allows you to accommodate more attendees

  • mainly the ones who are unable to attend in person

• Budget - you need way smaller budget for online events than for in person ones

  • you don’t need to provide food, pay for venue, save on swag (although you may ship swag to attendees - depends on budget & sponsorship)

• There’s no other option - due to travel bans, virus, weather ...

Virtual Events Check list:

• Create a short guide for attendees - Explaining how to join your virtual event - write a few sentences and add them into event description. Great is to send out this guide before event the starts

• Create a short guide for a speaker - to be familiar with tools that you’re using and avoid crewed ups, technical issues during event

• Event website - optional, but important when you’re organising conference/ longer event

• Event registration - required for events meetup.com / Eventbrite / https://zmurl.com/ - for Zoom events

• Live presentation content + prepare welcome slide / graphic with sponsors, Q&A slide,

• Live, one-way audio/video - speaker

• Question and answer - prepare Q&A slide - graphics

• Live polling - optional but great to have some polls

• Note taking/favorite slides - have a volunteer to do this & tweet it out

• Record content - optional but nice to have & share recording, notes with attendees afterwards

• Feedback surveys - send it out after event to participants

Roles for virtual meetup hosted via Virtual Event Platforms:

Two or three people are required to host a good virtual meetup.

• Co-host & Moderator can be one person

• Co-host (helper) & Chat moderator can be one person

Host

• Share Keynote application, fullscreen with slides

• Troubleshoot when slides don’t advance (click on Keynote slides to bring them to “front”)

• Set speaker views as “Spotlight video,” as necessary

• Send participants to break out rooms; send heads-up note to all rooms; bring them back when ready

Co- host (helper)

• Monitor participant view

• Watch for raised hands

• Mute/Unmute people for Q&A

• Communicate any user-reported streaming issues to team

• Scroll through the gallery view and ask people to turn on/off their video

Chat moderator

• Monitor chat

• Post links in chat when appropriate for partners

• Ask questions to participants in the chat

• Respond to any chat questions

• watch out for any inappropriate activity

Ideas for Virtual Event

Ideas for the beginning of the meetup:

• Welcome everyone with cute picture or funny meme - optional

• Encourage participants to add their social media handle to their names - nice to have

• tour your space - optional

• 20sec dance party - optional

• show me random stuff that’s nearby- optional

• Break out rooms - Think of them as “small tables” where participants can get to know one another on a more personal level. When you have groups of over 10 people, not everyone will be heard. Breakout rooms create the potential for everyone to feel connected at your event.

  • great for brainstorming about project in a smaller groups - you can put attendees in the groups or it can be auto generated based on the amount of participants

Ideas during meetup:

• Polls - Create 3 to 4 polling questions that can be set up before the event. This is a great opportunity to gauge what information your audience is interested in, their level of expertise, and their current understanding or opinions on the content you are sharing.

• Reactions - at Zoom you can use reactions, use them for feedback during meetup, ask moderator to post question and collect feedback

Ideas for the end of the meetup

• Take a screenshot of the gallery view with everyone raising their drink

• Ask everyone to share an answer to a question in the chat box synchronously (such as “How are you feeling?” or “What’s one word that reflects what you’re excited about today?”). Give everybody a chance to scroll through and read this before you end the meeting. Read some of your favorite answers loudly and allow the community to share some of their favorites, or give dedicated time for participants to read them in silence.

Tips for Virtual Event

• Send follow up after meetup or recap with links to attendees - ask them at the beginning of the meetup to drop you an email address

• Record meetup & post it on YouTube channel (YT channel coming soon)

• Prepare attendees for virtual event by creating guide explaining how to access the event

• Zoom has Q&A option - in Webinar settings (extra paid feature)

  • create Polls in advance

• Always record to cloud when using Zoom

• Zoom has also live language interpretation when using Zoom Webinar and it can translate audio for example English into German

• schedule a dry run:

  • hand off content

  • go through slides

  • pick who's going to run QA

  • test audio & video

• Let speaker to record his presentation, play it as a video at the event if there are technical issues during dry run

• Let attendees know that meetup will be recorded - or add it into description of the event

  • make sure to send out follow up with shared recording of the event

• Interact with attendee’s during the event with QA

• Use raise hand feature to interact with attendees

• Monetize your zoom event with eventbrite thanks to zapier (not recommended)

• You can stream your Zoom meetings to Facebook

• Define strong WHY behind your (virtual) event - this should be probably discussed with others

• Don't do longer virtual event than 2 hours, ideally try to fit whole event into 1 hour, max 1 and half our - little ice breaker session at the beginning, polls,presentation, polls, Q&A, Thanks everyone for attending, Goodbye

• Hosting quality event delivers incredible value to your audience

• Social media is a great engagement tool to leverage - share a short message with attendees to post pictures of favourite takeaways from the event, their setup how they’re attending the event... to make attendees feel like they’re apart of a community

• Share those pictures, tweets in a recap

• Facilitate attendees into a group chat, let them get to know each other before the event

More tips are in this blog post and this one 🤗