In today’s digital age, our requirements for meeting rooms are changing. Nowadays, just a plain room with a projector and a few power outlets won’t cut it anymore. Things are too fast, too hectic, and often the attendees aren’t in the same city—or even on the same continent.
Enter live event chat. Not only do these allow businesses to host their meetings online, but also, unlike “standard” streams, they encourage attendee participation. With live event chat, everyone who is viewing can ask questions or interact with the people holding the meeting virtually. That means no more raised hands, impatient throat clearing, or confused mumbling!
Virtual over Real—Why Live Event Chat?
The most obvious answer to this question is volume—if a company rents a meeting room for fifty people then the venue will, at most, allow fifty people in. If that’s not enough, the company has two options. One: to find and hire a bigger (and likely more expensive) room, or two, to reduce the number of attendees they otherwise could have had.
First of all, no company wants to find itself in the position of turning people away. And yet, booking an extra room can be just as tricky depending on the available resources.
Fortunately, the perfect solution is only a mouse-click away—online events and live chats and streams.
With an online live event chat, there is no real limitation on attendees. You can invite any number of people in the whole world—simply invite them to attend via a link or email. And you can even charge them a low-level fee to attend if you wish, thereby increasing revenue exponentially.
Live Event Chat—A Real-Life Example
One such service providing virtual meeting rooms today is RumbleTalk. RumbleTalk is leading the way with its simplicity.
On the left-hand side, a video and text block will outlay the presentation, and/or the speaker that is holding the meeting. On the right-hand side of the screen, the attendees have a chat window.
All of them are listed on one side of it, with the actual conversational chat window right beside it. That way, all attendees can tell what’s going on in just a heartbeat, and the organizational team has an easy overview over who’s there and who’s not, as well as who said what.
With RumbleTalk, users can have a proper profile, including a username and profile. This not only makes the whole experience a more personal one, but also, it allows the hosts to more easily identify people by name or photo.
Interactions with the Speaker, Questions, and Comments
RumbleTalk specifically encourages participation, comments, and questions from attendees by giving them chat-space next to the video section of the screen. All attendees can post their comments, and like in any regular chat room, the moderators and hosts can then reply and add their own comments.
The advantage of this over regular Q&A’s is that no comments get lost. All comments are saved in the chat log, and can be dealt with one by one. As such, this medium actually facilitates communication with attendees as comments are never lost or ignored.
Not only that, but RumbleTalk also incorporates features similar to YouTube. The viewers can “full screen” the video that’s being streamed if they wish. This allows users to tune out the chat section if it gets too busy or too distracting for them. It can be much more pleasant to view the video without the chat in some circumstances. And for slower internet connections there are quality settings, and an indicator shows whether the content is live or not.
You can even pause the viewed video. Unlike in “real” meetings, where missing something will inconvenience the listener, in a virtual setting, the webinar or meeting can be paused, or even rewound. No more missed info or lost context!
Trolls, Mediation, and Moderators
Unfortunately, in any live event chat of a certain size (remember, this can be several hundred people or more), a few may try to interrupt or disturb the flow of the event. Obviously, this needs to be regulated, and repeat offenders need to be banned, or at least warned.
RumbleTalk has excellent moderation tools, as well as spam prevention. Anyone with moderation rights can simply remove users or ban them from using the chat section altogether. This way, the event retains a friendly and positive atmosphere for all the serious attendees. Now, these tools may not always be necessary for smaller or private live chat events, however, they are always available. This gives peace of mind to hosts and companies wanting to use these services for their events.
All in all, RumbleTalk provides a great alternative to traditional meetings, saving valuable resources, facilitating communication, and allowing near-unlimited attendees for companies that want to host big (or small) events, meetings, or seminars. Go to {enter link} today to learn more about how RumbleTalk can be part of your live event solution.