6 Using Technology in Short-Term Experiential Activities
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There are several stages in the execution of the experiential activity where technology can become a primary enabler for the organizing team as well as participants. These can include aspects such as communication, team formation, collaboration, and project submission.
There are many complex aspects and features of the experiential activity, which may include:
- Online/Offline Participant registration forms
- Promotion and Marketing of the event and promotional content
- Team formation: can participants find partners and form teams inside the platform?
- Community and team messaging functionality
- Livestream: does the platform provide a built-in livestream tool?
- 1:1 support: Is there dedicated support available to address participant concerns?
- Project showcase
One of the initial decisions the organizing team may have to make is to choose a platform to host the activity. While many events can be conducted purely through Microsoft Teams or Zoom, there is greater event cohesion if team members, stakeholders and mentors can collaborate, communicate and engage with each other directly through the platform in an end-to-end experience. Some organizations also have strict rules about which platforms are approved for participant use for privacy reasons. It is therefore important to collaborate invited stakeholders or subject-matter experts when selecting event technology.
Let’s start with the first component of the experiential activity workflow; creating the event.
Planning an Experiential Activity
Every experiential activity, such as a hackathon or design sprint, is centered around a common theme upon which the experiential activities focus the design challenges. For example, a hackathon based on the theme of workplace inclusivity and accessibility, may focus on design challenges focussed on assistive technology, attitudinal bias, workplace flexibility and accommodation. Based on the design theme you identify, you may need different technological tools to enable your participants to fulfill the above mentioned aspects. Below we will discuss some of the existing tools which can help with each aspect.
Participant Registration Forms
Google Forms is a free, user-friendly and general-purpose online form generator. All of the participant responses are stored in a Google Spreadsheet in the creator’s Google Drive. It is generally well-suited for ad-hoc purposes such as original research, customer satisfaction surveys, and participant registration. Google Forms can also automatically provide rudimentary analytics from participant responses.
TypeForm has excellent aesthetics and a polished professional presentation style. While they’re mainly used for surveys and market research, you can use them for lead generation or information collection on a website as well.
Gravity Forms is the most used WordPress form tool, although it requires slightly more technical knowledge as compared to the other options we discussed. This is a great tool to utilize if your website or organization already uses WordPress and you want a more customizable form.
Eventbrite is an event management and ticketing website. It allows users to browse, create, and promote local events. The service charges a fee from event organizers for allowing online ticketing and registration services. However, if the event is free there are no fees.
Promotion and Marketing of the event and promotional content
Here are a few technology tips you can use to increase your event’s promotion and marketing.
Create and use an event hashtag.
Across social media posts as well as other marketing channels and any printed material, reinforcing the hashtag helps remind people of your event.
If your organization has dedicated social media accounts for your event, include the hashtags in the account bios as well. The following social media channels support hashtags: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+. Utilizing a hashtag on these social media channels allows faster and better targeted outreach of your promotional content.
Furthermore, engage your event participants, including guest speakers and performers by suggesting that they use it when referring to the event. This helps you reach a larger following of people who may be interested in the same content.
Optimize your SEO for better outreach.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doesn’t require much technical expertise. It can be simplified to two basic concepts:
- Knowing what words people use to search for events similar or related to yours
- Optimising your content for those keywords
Use effective Social Media marketing.
In general, here’s how you can use the different social channels:
Facebook: This is often a popular platform to market all of your event related content. You can share detailed updates about the event and also answer any questions through the comments and messages.
Twitter: Great for quick, real-time updates both before and during the event. One of the best places to use your hashtag.
LinkedIn: If your event is focused on a professional audience, this is a great place to reach them! Through LinkedIn you can also find communities of people interested in specific topics.
Instagram and Pinterest: These very visual channels are perfect for sharing some teaser images and stories of your event, along with photos from past attendees.
Be sure to obtain consent from any individual you would like to showcase on any media platform associated with your organization.
Team formation
In any experiential activity one of the first obstacles participants encounter is finding group members and forming a team. There are multiple ways to form teams in an experiential activity. These include:
- Allowing participants to register with their own pre-formed teams
- Allowing participants to form their own teams after conducting ice-breaker exercises to enable students to learn about each other at the event
- Matching team members based on complementary skillsets or personality styles
- Assigning team members based on their preference
If you decide to allow participants to form their own teams, you can simply request them to list the names of their team members in the registration form. If they are forming teams explicitly at the event, they can simply list the names of the group members in their project submission.
If you decide instead to organize teams yourself based complementary skillsets, personality styles or group member preferences, you may have to include additional survey questions within your registration form to learn about the qualities of your participants. In either case, you can either notify the team members of their groups via email and allow them to coordinate their own meetings, or explicitly introduce team members to each other at an orientation session of your event.
Community & Team Messaging
Your event will need to enable participants to communicate with each other, as well as give the organizers the ability to communicate with all of the participants for mass announcements.
Here are the different types of technological communications you may want to consider:
- Messaging from Organizer to All Participants for Mass Announcements
- Participant to Participant Direct Messaging
- Participant to Group Messaging
- Document Sharing
- Screen Sharing
- Webcam and Video
These features are provided by various platforms including:
Virtual Meeting Software: Zoom, Microsoft Teams Meetings and Webex.
Advantage: Extremely easy to setup and use. Very convenient for mini events. Most users are already familiar with the software.
Voice Over IP (VoIP) Instant Messaging and Digital Platform: Discord and Slack
Advantage: Allows long term communication. Participants can upload and share files. Groups can set up their own private chats.
Online Event Platforms: Dotslive and VFairs
Advantage: Very customizable to the unique virtual experience you want to create for your participants.
Livestreaming
Livestreaming involves streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. Platforms which enable users to stream in real-time or “livestream” include Facebook, Youtube, Twitch, Zoom, Hopin, and LinkedIn. User interaction via chat rooms are an important element of livestream interaction. These platforms also include features enabling the ability to speak with the broadcaster and participate in conversations in the chat. Livestreaming is a popular way to generate marketing promotion and online engagement.
1:1 support: Is there dedicated support available to address participant concerns?
Often participants and team members may require direct support from a Mentor, Organizer, Judge or Moderator at the event. It can be helpful to enable direct 1:1 support. These can be facilitated through an open Voice Channel dedicated to answering questions, assigning specific Mentors to each team through email, or scheduling a Question-Answer session at the event.
Project Showcase
As an event organizer you will also need to decide whether participants can deliver and showcase their projects at the event through the virtual platform. For example, Devpost is a platform that enables people to participate in hackathons, design and software competitions. Participants create an account and submit their design or solutions through the platform for judging. However, at the end all of the submissions are showcased on the event page. This allows users to create a consistent portfolio of hackathons, which they can show on their devpost account. Similar platforms include Kaggle, HackerRank and LeetCode. If you are hosting a website, it may be useful to showcase some of the past competition submissions on your website. Project submissions can be in the form of short video presentations, demos and/or a report.
Conclusion
These are just some of the many different areas in which technology can be used to enhance your event experience. Always remember, using technology can only add to what your event is about, it can’t become the center of focus. It has to be seamless, intuitive to use and effective at creating better engagement – otherwise it is not necessary to incorporate it. Furthermore, it is best to reduce the overall number of platforms being used. If one platform can do the job of two others, opt for the simplicity of fewer platforms rather than more platforms. Finally, at MacChangers we like to do a simple check for platform simplicity. One member of our team is technology avoidant. If that team member can navigate new technology we would like to introduce to our event, we feel more confident in the platform ease of use.