Zoom Makes a Convincing Case for Continuing Your Virtual Events

Outside is making a comeback. With that, lots of us are happily returning to offices, restaurants, and all of the in-person activities we participated in before 2020. Still, there’s no denying the convenience and accessibility of virtual events (like ours! #shamelessplug), especially if you’re the person in charge of them. That’s why Zoom, which became an indispensable resource for many last year, continues to update its product, even as our virtual habits begin to ease up.

To be honest, the updates are pretty impressive.

They include an overhaul of the Zoom Events feature, which allows users to host multi-day and multi-session events. It includes an ability to “co-host” or, in other words, facilitate, an event with up to 20 event co-editors. Events can also be spread up to five days and 13 concurrent sessions, with options for session “sizzle” videos, and batch agenda uploading.

The updates are also beneficial for attendees. According to a blog post announcing the changes, they include:

• Conference lobby: A persistent space for registered participants to connect, network, and view sessions before and during an event
• Session chat: Attendees can chat before, during, and after a specific session to focus on conversation related to the session topic
• Chat moderation: Your teams can monitor the event chat with the ability to remove messages as well as disruptive attendees
• Attendee itinerary: Attendees can keep track of sessions of interest in one central place and build their schedule by adding sessions to their itinerary
• Attendee networking: Event-goers can form new connections by adding others as contacts in the Zoom client
• Livestream sessions to lobby: Attendees can view live sessions at a glance from the lobby before joining
• Sponsor support: Fund your events with built-in sponsor benefits, including dedicated spaces, tiered levels, video upload, and chat
• Session directory: Attendees can easily search for sessions and filter their view based on tracks, audience type, products, or levels
• Surveys: Get insights on the attendee experience and evaluate session success with post-session surveying

In addition to these Events updates are some fancy new capabilities for your more casual, day-to-day calls. Our personal favorite is auto-generated captions available to all free Zoom meeting accounts.

And if you’re tired of awkwardly waiting for everyone to actually dial in, “Attendance Status” will allow you to “see whether everyone who accepted the meeting invitation has joined the meeting and send a quick chat to check on their status, allowing you to start meetings faster and avoid wasting time at the start of a meeting.” This feature is also available to those with free accounts.

There are more updates, like two-way chat in waiting rooms, and the ability to stop incoming videos, which you can learn about here.

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