18 months ago we embarked on a wild adventure. Building our own, in-house software for online events.
Why?
Partly because we didn’t like how tech companies were telling us that we should run our events, partly because we couldn’t find something out there that could do what we wanted to do.
Also, it was incredible fun. And the feedback from our audience and sponsors alone was worth it.
We were able to deliver a unique experience and have 100% control of the results.
Are you interested in doing the same? Here are 10 lessons that will save you time and money:
1. Start with Zoom. Take the simplest, most universally accessible tool out there and try to identify its limitations. It’s important to be able to justify building a custom solution. Are these limitations critical? Is there anything else off the shelf that you can use first? Going down the in-house development route is not for the faint of heart!
2. The availability of no-code and automation tools means that development cycles are cut down dramatically and you can go through iterations, testing things out as you go with throwaway prototypes.
3. There’s no better audience to experiment on than your own. You can enable better interactions when you can build in matching rules that suit the needs of the people who have been a part of your community.
4. Look for low-stakes scenarios to test with real attendees. It’s not enough to run synthetic tests, as people do the darndest things. In the early days, we recruited university students and our own friends in the events industry, who could bring a critical view to what we were trying to do and give us brutal feedback.
5. Implement data points to measure the performance of every feature. It’s not enough to ask for feedback. Asking people and observing their behaviour are two very different things.
6. Build a dashboard that gives you a high level view of what’s going on at any time. Do things that don’t scale, which means don’t start by automating everything! Maintain some control behind the scenes until you’re comfortable with predicting behaviours.
7. Have a support call set up, and make it easy to reach, so you can do troubleshooting in person
8. Build for mobile. Company firewalls can rain on your parade, so make sure people are able to join on mobile if needed.
9. Remove ALL friction. Don’t make people sign up twice for something. Hell, don’t have them sign up at all if you can avoid it. Be proactive, send calendar invites and monitor the RSVPs, then adjust your messaging accordingly. Make it easy for people to access the event at the last minute.
10. Expect people to be late, to come and go, to close their browser unexpectedly. This is real life.
Finally, keep your cool. You can do this!
