The recent launch announcement of Zoom’s own virtual event platform ‘Zoom Events’ came as no surprise as virtual events continue to be adopted across the globe for business and social events and experiences.
Thanks to Zoomtopia 2021, the annual celebration of Zoom customers, I was able to experience this conference powered by Zoom Events.
Being the experience enthusiast that I am, it is very tempting to major on my event experience (it was high calibre by the way) but I know it would be more valuable to start by sharing my learning and insights about Zoom Events.
There were 3 key questions I had before attending Zoomtopia -
Q1. What is Zoom Events?
Q2. What types of events best suit Zoom Events?
Q3. How much does Zoom Events cost?
And Zoomtopia delivered - here are the answers:
Q1. What is Zoom Events?
Zoom Events is a virtual event platform for hosting single-session and multi-session events.
Zoom Events:
Includes everything in Zoom Meetings and Webinars and builds on the functionality by adding dedicated event hubs, customisable registration and ticketing options, and attendee networking through a chat-enabled lobby.
You can host a variety of events, free or paid
You can publish your event to a private or public directory to make it easy for attendees to join.
Q2. What types of events best suit Zoom Events?
Zoom Events allows you to set up 1 of 3 types of events including:
Event – a single session Meeting or Webinar
Summit – a series of sessions in a single day
Conference (coming soon) – spread your event over a total of 5 days with the ability to host up to 13 concurrent sessions.
Backstage Beta feature (coming soon): Zoom Events will be bringing a green room to the virtual space with a Backstage feature, this will give speakers, panelists, and production support a centralised space to respond to Q&A, monitor chat, or mingle before going live.
Q3. How much does Zoom Events cost?
The pre-requisite to buying Zoom Events includes a minimum of 1 x Pro license. To host an event you will need a Zoom Events license which can be purchased on a monthly or annual plan.
Zoom Events licenses are priced based on attendee capacity, plans available from 500 attendees up to 10000 attendees. Full pricing plans available here
Zoom offers a product demo but does not guarantee a free trial of Zoom Events.
A quick word on my Zoomtopia experience
So I couldn’t help myself, here is a quick takeaway about the experience. Zoomtopia allowed me to get under the bonnet to see that Zoom is a dynamic brand that authentically wants to connect people and improve access and inclusion.
Zoomtopia was peppered with the words ‘Zoom for you’ and the multiple speakers brought a consistent and vibrant energy showcasing not only the technology but their purpose and mission.
The event production was seamless – the production partners understood their assignment. Speakers presented coherent content effectively to camera both in studio and remotely - it felt like their were talking to an audience. Zoom live transcription feature was also enabled in keynote sessions to expand accessibility.
The lobby area brought a buzz to the event – visually it showcased what was happening live in my chosen session whilst having sight (but no audio) of the other live sessions taking place at that time. There was supposed to be functionality for chat in this space, I saw the button, but when I clicked on chat it did not load and after a few attempts I gave up. This also meant that I could not access the profiles of other attendees, but since I joined the event for educational purposes this did not really impact me.
I think the one area of improvement would be the provision of designated live tech support during the event.
If you are interested to have a comprehensive look at the Zoom upgrades announced at Zoomtopia read here.
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