Jo Lankester from October Events mixed pre-recorded talks, live panels, and Slack discussions to keep online attendees engaged. She found people watch about 45 minutes before dropping off, and switching between formats helps hold attention. The platform didn't track which sessions people left, making it hard to see what worked.
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45 minutes
Hey Summit
Chapters
So we did a mix of pre recorded talks, live hosted panel sessions, and then they were linked together by our live hosts. And then we were then taking attendees out to Slack to take part in discussions, speaker Q&As and interactive exercises. I think that mix was really good. I think it changes up the pace a bit like you would in a in person event. It's still, I think if you just had talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, it's less exciting. I suppose the thing, the big mindset shift that we've had is that you can't expect somebody to sit in front of their computer for four hours. It's not like an in person event. People are much more likely to pick and choose the sessions they're interested in. So our average viewing time is 45 minutes, which we were actually really, really pleased with because I think that suggested people were watching probably two sessions and then participating in some discussions. But yeah, I think, I don't know if we have. I don't think one of the drawbacks of the hey summit platform we used was that we didn't get really detailed attendance data for each session. And so it's difficult to tell exactly when sort of when people were dropping off or whether panels are better than talks. But my gut is, my gut feel is a mix is good. Okay, good. Thank you.