Connect feature spotlight: Host successful virtual meet-ups

[KarenVChin]

Hey there! Welcome to our weekly mini-series where we, the Connect Moderators, share tips and tricks on how to enjoy the redesigned Connect to the fullest. Every Thursday, we will focus on one aspect of the community to help you feel more at home.

Since the start of the global pandemic, @ErmesT and I, @KarenVChin, have hosted over 30 virtual Local Guides meet-ups. Creating and hosting a virtual meet-up is a demanding yet rewarding task that requires careful preparation and begins long before the meet-up happens. We have learned from trial and error. Challenges include managing the technical aspects, keeping the audience engaged, ensuring everyone’s safety, and respecting their privacy. You can conquer these hurdles and host a successful virtual meet-up with the proper preparation and mindset.

Here are our virtual meet-up tips and tricks.

Plan

• Read and bookmark these two helpful Community Guidelines posts found on Connect. How to organize a successful meet-up and How to write a great meet-up recap will give you a great foundation on the mechanics of how to have a successful virtual meet-up.

• Make yourself known on Connect. Local Guides are more interested in attending a meet-up hosted by someone they know and respect. Making yourself known on Connect means writing engaging posts, such as sharing your Local Guides’ experiences to gain the community’s attention. It also builds your reputation and credibility as a host. Don’t copy content or photos from the Internet. That’s plagiarizing! Write about things that interest you and in your own words. Respond quickly to comments in all your posts, including your Connect meet-up post.

Create

• Don’t do it alone. Running a virtual meet-up is much different from having an in-person one. It is a complex operation in a set time frame. If you do it alone, you will be like an octopus with eight arms swinging everywhere simultaneously. Before the meet-up starts, you must admit and verify attendees who ask to join and then welcome those attendees. If you have prepared slides, you will have to present them while also watching the meet-up’s Chat thread. Doing all this alone is almost impossible.

• Find a partner you can work with. Your partner can provide valuable feedback, share the workload, and bring fresh ideas, making the process more enjoyable and less stressful. They can also help manage the technical aspects of the meet-up, such as admitting and verifying attendees, allowing you to focus on the presentation. This is the perfect time to determine who will do what.

• Choose a meet-up topic that truly excites you. This is not just a recommendation; it’s a rule. If you are interested in the subject, you will put energy and passion into your presentation, which will show during your meet-up. Local Guides will RSVP and attend your meet-up because they share your enthusiasm for the topic. Therefore, choosing a topic you are genuinely passionate about is essential to avoid disappointing yourself and your attendees.

• Choose the best time to engage a global audience. Connect is an active, 24/7 international community. If you want attendees outside your time zone, choosing the best time to engage a larger audience will give you a greater turnout.

• Prepare slides to present during the meet-up. Keep it simple. Don’t use too many animations because Local Guides’ internet bandwidths vary between countries. You could also lose your connectivity or where you or your partner are in your presentation. This will help the audience stay focused on the topic. It will help you manage the flow of the event.

• Take care of your guests’ safety. Having unexpected guests can sometimes create awkward and unpleasant situations. The key to your meet-up is the meet-up access link. Handle it carefully. Do not allow anyone to share it inappropriately. Be sure to remove an attendee if they misbehave immediately.

Host

• Start your meet-up with a warm and welcoming tone. This initial gesture of hospitality will make your attendees feel comfortable and included, setting a positive tone for the rest of the event. If you have any reservations about a potential attendee, do not feel obligated to welcome them to your virtual meet-up. Your comfort and the comfort of your attendees are paramount.

• Be mindful of the time and respect your attendees’ time. Free video conferencing services like Google Meet limit the time a virtual meeting can last. So, if you lose control of the time, you risk cutting your meet-up short without being able to finish. Be sure to create a timeline and rehearse before your meet-up. This can differentiate between success and disappointment for you and your attendees.

• Always include an engaging situation or two. For instance, taking a group selfie to be included in your Connect recap and on social media can help reinforce the feeling of belonging to your meet-up. In our meet-ups, there is always a ‘Selfie Time’ halfway through. It’s a fun way to break the ice and make everyone feel more connected. Always respect your attendees’ privacy. Please tell your attendees before taking their photos to let them turn off their cameras if they don’t want their pictures taken. In addition to the ‘Selfie Time,’ you can include interactive polls, Q&A sessions, or a short game related to your meet-up topic. These engaging situations will make your meet-up more interactive and fun.

• Interact with your audience throughout your virtual meet-up. This will make them feel valued and important, enhancing their overall experience. Read the Chat throughout the meet-up and take the time to share any relevant information and the Local Guide’s name with everyone.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this quick introduction! You can find more information about how to use Connect in the Community guidelines section, where this mini-series also lives. If there’s a specific feature you want to learn more about, let us know below, or check out the rest of the topics in the series:

• Make your Connect profile shine
• Translate what others share into your language
• Get answers from the community with polls
• Stay updated on the content you care about
• Reach Local Guides on and off Connect
• Style your posts to make them stand out
• Host successful virtual meet-ups (this post)
• Host successful in-person meet-ups
• Write engaging meet-up recaps

[ShekharMuz_5]

Hello @KarenVChin , sometimes connect feature walks with its Moderators, because without Moderators ,connect may not draw attention among local guides .

[KhokonSharker]

Thank you very much @KarenVChin and @ErmesT for this important discussion. Here, I got an idea of how to conduct clean discussions and beautiful virtual meet-ups by participating in the last meet-up.

Also, it’s nice to see a picture of me here.

[ErmesT]

Thank you @KarenVChin for this post, and for making our working method public, so that it can help others organize virtual meet-ups in an organized and effective way.

But let me add a few notes that couldn’t have fit into the post.

Connect is a global community. A Community that never sleeps, we could say.

Connect is a community where friendships can be born between people who live in very distant parts of the world.

I can confidently say that Karen and I were friends long before we met in person, thanks to the amazing community that is Connect. So amazing that I once called it“The Global Village”.

To keep these friendships alive and strong, virtual meet-ups are a fundamental tool. They allow us to virtually meet those who perhaps we will never be able to meet in person. They allow us to discover cultures, foods and traditions different from our own, told directly by those who live them.

This is why Karen and I started organizing virtual meet-ups long before these became “official”. Therefore, when the pandemic arrived, we were already ready, and this allowed us to start immediately with some “virtual” meet-up.

Creating virtual meet-ups, especially for people like Karen and I who live nine hours apart, is an exciting experience. We spend hours discussing the structure of the meet-up, choosing images to use in the slides, rehearsing the times to make sure we stay within the scheduled 60 minutes.

We use shared Google documents (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms) and create an album in Google Photos that we can both contribute to

We really enjoy organizing virtual meet-ups, so we have done more of them. Little by little we have developed a method to make virtual meet-ups attractive and fun. A method that today we are happy to share with the entire Community, because virtual meet-ups break down barriers and borders.

[SoniaK]

No wonder your virtual meetups are always so housefull! These are great tips for hosting virtual meetups, @KarenVChin. I will surely keep it in mind next time I host one. Thank you for the detailed 'how-to’s. They will be very helpful to a lot of LGs, including me.

[ErmesT]

Thank you so much, @ShekharMuz_5
Hehe, @KhokonSharker , that meet-up was an amazing one, with people joining from at least four different continents.
I am happy you’ve found our tips helpful

[ErmesT]

Thank you @SoniaK . In addition there is an extra fun during the preparation. We works online on shared documents, and we test the timing a couple of times. You should see the “speaker notes” on the slides, where we also add the timeline that we must keep to bu sure to finish the meet-up in the right time.
Working in two helps a lot also in discovering what may works well and what to cut in the presentation.
@KarenVChin is extremely picky, and her input is essential to creating a perfect meet-up.
Do you have any suggestions for future meet-ups to organize?

[KhokonSharker]

I was also surprised that our local guides from four different continents connected at this meetup. It was a really informative meet-up.

I understand that choosing a flexible time in all countries is a difficult challenge. Through the hard work of both of you , we learned some very important tips. Thank you very much @ErmesT & @KarenVChin .

[Shaunak]

Thank you so much for this informative post @KarenVChin

[giteshsharma]

Thank you @KarenVChin for your information.