Purpose is different from format. Planners often think, "I'm organizing a conference, so that means there will be plenaries and concurrent sessions and evening events." But different groups gather for different reasons— knowledge sharing, community building, problem solving, activism, sales. Start with your purpose and then design your gathering to meet that goal.

• What is your group's most important reason for coming together? 

• Design your meeting's activities with fresh eyes and new ideas

We often adapt our in-person formats to the virtual tools we know, even if they aren't a good match. But one-to-many presentations need different tools than networking or "hallway conversations."  We also get stuck in the rut of using the same structure for our conference year after year. 

Convivia customizes your interactive events based on the interests of your attendees. We will help you:

• Use attendees' motives and interests to design your activities

• Choose platforms that allow attendees to choose who they talk with 

• Extend networking opportunities before and after the conference

When considering whether to register for your virtual conference, many people will think back to pandemic-era meeting. Unfortunately, many of those conferences were run as a series of webinars, with very little opportunity for attendees to meet and engage with each other. We can help you show potential attendees what the conference experience can be, with customized marketing materials based on prior convivia meetings. Conference registration sites should:

• Show people interacting and moving around a virtual space

• Highlight conference strengths identified by prior attendees

This gets to the crux of the making your virtual conference a success. By facilitating human connections during your meeting, we'll ensure that attendees have the opportunity to become part of your community—meeting one another, sharing ideas, addressing field-wide challenges, and developing new projects together. Convivia's activities and events, often scheduled between presentational sessions, will:

• Help attendees practice moving and set a lighthearted tone 

• Provide entertainment as a starting point for conversations

• Highlight commonalities in attendees' profiles

• Help exhibitors connect with potential clients

Convivia listens intently to your attendees. What do they want from attending your conference? What was their experience in the conference? How can we improve next time? We'll help you:

• Learn about successes and problems by tracking attendees' digital footprints—which sessions and events were well attended and which were not? Which events held people's attention for longest?

• Hear attendees' voices through multiple methodologies

• Improve your next virtual meeting's design based on the feedback