#15 - Must-Have Features for a Virtual Conference Platform

This week I attended my first fully virtual conference, Women In Product Conference 2024. I'd avoided them during the Covid shutdown for a variety of reasons The event used a platform called RingCentral which had many features I appreciated and a few features that were missing. Plus a couple frustrating technical issue that drove me mad. Since interacting with it dominated my week, I wanted to talk about these kinds of platforms.

The event was rather eye-opening and, as a product manager, I found myself intrigued by all the features a virtual platform would need to replicate the utility and purposes of a live event. The virtual event platform would have to also support a wide range of features common to remote work and online courses.

The ability to?determine what features a product should have, define clear specifications for those features to be implemented, and prioritize the development of those features?are all vital skills of a digital product manager. To that end, after experimenting with the platform, combining that with my long experience as an attendee and staff at the annual Game Developers Conference, and my other events and remote work experience, I’ve created a list of what features a virtual conference platform would have to have.?And a list of features I would want to prioritize next.

User Personas

When it comes to a virtual conference platform there would be a few different kinds of users or personas to consider which would need different kinds of features to support their user stories.?

• Organizers - The organization that runs the conference. They sell tickets, book speakers, set the agenda, promote the event, and overall are responsible for the conference.
• Speakers - These are people giving sessions at the conference.?
• Staff - Moderators, volunteers, and/or paid support staff who help facilitate, answer questions, and support the speakers. These folks help the conference run successfully.?There might be several levels of these types of users defined by the organizers or platform
• Attendees - People who have tickets to attend the conference
• Sponsors - People who help fund the organizers and the conference
• Exhibitors - People who pay the organizers for space to showcase something. These can be recruiters, vendors, or performers/games being shown.?Some conferences may provide exhibition space for free.

Glossary

Clarity in communicating is vital. I usually create a terms or glossary section of most Product Requirements Document (PRD) or Game Design Documents (GDD, a document similar in purpose and function to a PRD used in games) for any terms that may be ambiguous. This ensures there is a common and persistent terminology being used throughout the development process.

• Event - refers to the entire conference specifically as it is happening live on the platform
• Session - a timed event within the larger event. This could be a talk, workshop, roundtable, or panel
• Stage - the space in a room where users see who is sharing and presenting
• Room - The virtual space where a session is held some platforms may refer to this as a stage)
• Booth - a type of room used by exhibitor which supports more different kinds of info sharing as well as a stage.

For this article, I assume the reader is already familiar with common functions for chat and remote work/event functions such as screen sharing and breakout rooms.

Must Have Features

All users must be able to:?

• Connect and disconnect from voice and video quickly and easily
• Opt to share only voice or only video at a given time.
• See when other users are muted
• Share their screens
• Participate in event-wide and local session chats (ideally with the ability to view and participate in either at any time)
• Authenticate and access sessions based on ticket level
• Authenticate and access platform features based on permissions level aligned at minimum to the personas defined above.
• See who is speaking when there are multiple users sharing their cameras on stage.
• Create a personal profile (described below) viewable by other users
• View the personal profiles of other users from their messages in chat and from a directory.
• Put clickable links in chats?

Organizers must be able to

• Set multiple authentication levels and bar attendees with insufficient ticket access from entering certain sessions
• Send out messages to all attendees such as announcements
• Set other permission levels based on personas defined above
• Receive reports about how how many attendees attended each session
• Communicate back and forth with all staff in real time via chat

Staff must be able to?

• Grant video/voice permissions to attendees in a room allowing them to "come up on stage"
• Remove participants from a room or the event entirely

Speakers must be able to?

• Record sessions and access those recordings after the fact
• Hear and speak to staff and attendees
• Share their screen and camera at the same time

Attendees must be able to?

• Enter and exit sessions freely
• See an agenda of all sessions and what sessions are happening now

Nice-to-have features

These are features I would prioritize lower than the above features and consider releasing later.?

Users can

• Directly/privately message each other
• Begin a private video/video call with other attendees?
• Schedule meetings with other attendees
• Create new rooms for group conversations which other users can find and join
• Create a profile for the event that others can view from in-chat
• Upload a profile picture which will show on their profile, in chat, and on the video screen when the user has their video turned off
• Vote on questions for Q&A
• See how many other attendees are in a session
• Create their own agenda from the event wide agenda of sessions they wish to attend
• Receive reminders when sessions on their agenda are starting
• Access the session room from their agenda and the event-wide agenda
• Get a sharable link for a session or room.?
• Get from the agenda directly to the room of the session via button/link
• Blur their backgrounds or add virtual backgrounds for privacy.
• View closed captioning for any speech on stage at a session
• Add reaccs (emojis used to concisely respond to a specific post or message such as a "Like" or a "+1") to chat messages.
• Reply to chat messages creating a thread
• See if other users have replied to chat messages in a thread
• Use emojis in chat

Attendees can

• Submit questions for a Q&A
• Vote in polls offered by Staff or Speakers
• Vote on questions posed by others in Q&A
• Ask questions anonymously in Q&A

Organizers can

• Open the event space early for attendees to explore and set up their profiles
• Create virtual booth space “prominence” based on sponsors/exhibitors level
• Receive session analytics including how many people attended sessions and how many left early

Staff can

• Create polls for a session or event-wide
• Be highlighted or otherwise differentiated from other users in chat
• Highlight comments from the chat to the room
• Create breakout rooms in a session they are moderating
• Mute participants in chat and on stage
• Distribute surveys to attendees to rate sessions

Exhibitors can

• See how many people were at their booth
• Create smaller rooms within their booth
• Allow attendees to book private conversations (ideal for recruiting convos)

Speakers can

• Distribute their slides or supporting workshop materials with a room

Profiles should support

• Profile picture
• Pronoun field where users enter their own pronouns (please, not a limited drop down of options)
• Job title
• Company
• LinkedIn?(which ideally does not take more than 2 clicks to reach from a person's chat message).
• Short bio

Conclusion

Virtual conference platforms require a lot of features and serve several types of users for even a minimum viable product (MVP). But a thoughtful implementation and selection of features will allow for successful events for everyone involved.

Caveat: I have not performed a comprehensive requirements gathering with other users nor a competitive analysis of the market to write this (or most other entries in the #FeatureFriday series). A responsible product manager must do so before attempting to build such a platform or even claim any PRD is complete.

Some features here were specifically listed due to their absence on RingCentral. Others were noted because I really liked using them on RingCentral.

If you see something missing or disagree with feature priority, please do comment. Particularly if you attended #24WIP with me this week!

Heather Arbiter is a Product Manager and Gamification/Game Designer who has been working remotely since Covid. She's participated in online communities for over 20 years and studied them as graduate student at RIT. She has attended and served as a Conference Associate (the "Staff" at the Game Developers Conference) for 12 years, in increasing levels of responsibility. She has worked as a Volunteer Coordinator for PlayNYC, NYC's largest games expo, and as a volunteer supporting for the Game Devs of Color Expo in NYC. She's been an attendee at a variety of networking events, recruiting events, in-person conferences, and online classes all of which informed this article.

As of this writing, Heather is available for hire.