A community-building experience: HR Fest, enabled by Hop-in technology

This blog post is part of a series where I share my insights and predictions on selected innovative Human Capital related technology solutions (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/human-capital-technology-insights-series-personal-zsolt-szelecki?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_recent_activity_details_shares%3BtOuw1SYJTRKHQBzxA90u3w%3D%3D&licu=urn%3Ali%3Acontrol%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_recent_activity_details_shares-article_description ). The views and opinions expressed in the blog are of my own.

(1) short factual introductions of the solution and the firm

HRFest is a young, dynamic team, started about five years ago, with fresh ideas about how HR practitioner could be better connected, engaged in thinking together on the challenges of their profession. (https://hrfest.com/eng/) Since then, they have become a lead provider on physical and online community event, conferences. Hop-on is is a virtual event management solution (https://hopin.com/)

(2) my own, obviously subjective, perception of the uniqueness of the value proposition (USP)

Covid19 has been a blow for any event organizers, traditional or innovative. I was fascinated to see and be part of how HRfest reinvented itself. Using technology would not make them stand out – in fact, there was no alternative to that. The achievement that captured my imagination is how they combined community power, networking, and technology to create different online interactions. I can see this: with current technology; you can operate processes, manage a project and deliver services.

But this is not why people visit conferences. Maybe they collect some excellent new ideas on a session, and perhaps they check their competitive position. I often heard participant saying at any events: "well, this is the breaks that create real value. Networking, refreshing old acquaintances, and most importantly, creating new ones. I also see this as a critical potential value, but getting this value online is far from easy. This is the very same problem, why highly relationship-driven business models suffer badly from the lack of physical meetings, gatherings, or client entertainment. Mayor tech companies find a relatively straightforward answer to how they deliver services but not how they nurture and build relationships. This is the trick that HRFest has done much better than others – I do not argue that they cracked it all but made enough progress in learning from event organisers and any related business.

I and list three factors that I think contributed the success:

creating a strong bond with opinion-leading influencers in the HR community via a broad and well-functioning advisory panel. This approach ensured that the topics include not the fashionable items of the day and reflect on the emerging issues, dilemmas or tacit fears, and expectation of a broader professional community.

Besides big names presenting in plenary, more focus has been on small group sessions, where interaction is the norm online. Small sessions, though, require massive coordination and logistics efforts, as you will learn in the challenges sessions.

Creating a platform for short and ad-hoc meetings, much like you do in breaks and networking buffet lunch sessions. I would argue that, in some sense, the online "rapid rendezvous" system is less awkward than trying to do this in physical settings. If a system puts you in touch with randomly chosen individuals, it makes it easier for introverts, or less experienced networkers, who otherwise would hesitate to take a step forward.

(3) client value received based on their feedback

Here are some verbatim quotes from clients to underpin some of the findings above. I would highlight three clusters of typical client feedback, setting repeating patters:

Event participants enjoyed the seamless cross-referencing and short, intense interactions as opposed to making your choice and stick with it: "if I wanted to jump from one session to the other, this was one click away, no need to cut through the crowds, just to miss your session", or "the chance for listening in and hopping from session to the session was much more provided than any other F2F event."

The other group of comments focused on the content relevance: "I loved the online platform ", "truly colourful content, everyone could find her/his own thing", "presenters with practitioners' attitude."

The third feedback group underlines the value of community feeling. Quotes included "loved the continuous dialogue, via Q&A, networking", "nonstop involvement and change to influence the course of dialogue", or simply put "Community!"

  (4)The challenges faced when implementing.

A networking event depends on, well, networking happening, intensive interaction. Even if the content and platforms are provided, this is a far cry from enough. This is why success is mostly determined before the event itself by doing lots of Digital skills coaching. Not only enabling presenters and participants with less digital literacy. Educate the presenters, participants, and surprisingly the sponsor organizations too to share certain norms of interaction. This is like building a mini-community culture for the duration of the event. Surprisingly, most effort has been put into aligning sponsor expectations and action. As opposed to a classical physical event, online sponsorship required much more pre-meditation, focus, and disciplined communication from would-be sponsors. As for the presenters, one issue is the diverse levels of digital savviness. There is no one time fits all approach; therefore, the organizers focused on connecting the presenter with each other and also using the even Advisory Board and informal networks to act as a sounding board for those who appreciate. Finally, educating the participants to use chat and comments functions – during the event, as much as 3300 chat happened, which is more than 4 per participant. There were dedicated facilitators in all modules who kept pinging, reminding participants of the options.

Even though Hop-in technology is well-tested, the diversity of technology infrastructures brought challenges. Many called in from unreliable home systems, and corporate systems sometimes pose other challenges on security. Even though the core technology and the cockpit infrastructure are robust, the result could be as good as the weakest point from an experience point of view. If you add to this the time pressure, which comes from the high paced, dynamic event design, you might imagine the stress levels and firefighting that is instead the norm than an exception. Yes, rehearsals and tests helped, but the only approach that works is to expect the unexpected. Keeping the background staff motivated is critical but more difficult in an online setting. In a physical event, there is a quick feedback loop, gestures, a pad on the back from people, not necessarily online, or at least not naturally developing. One solution is to encourage feedback within the organizer squads. The other is deferred feedback: collected and share participant feedback after the sessions and try to personalize them, so the right people get full credits. And balancing almost inevitable short term burnout with long term motivations- most of them related to the success of building a community.

Finally, Sponsor expectation management. Even though Sponsors' education happened, some had more comfort with the online version's pros and cons, some less. The pandemic challenges forced sponsors and participants to rethink what they want to get out of such an event. And the answers are in several different clusters. 

(5) point of view about where this solution might develop in the future. (again, my bet, speculative)

Therefore it is expectable that future online event, conferences, workshops, networking events will diverge in the future, rather than seeing the emergence of super event that is equally good for different purposes. Such specialized event might include a combination of networking, best practice sharing, community feeling, knowledge sharing focus, among other things.

Hybrid work is here to stay. Almost all organizations see their future of work as a combination of two factors. First is  'get things done, to be performed from home, virtually. Secondly, 'work socially' to collaborate, innovate and build a relationship in a physical, social space, whether you call that Office, Co-working space or a Café. I expect the online events, fitting well with this trend: they would become increasingly less content-focused (presentations) and more collaborative. How could this be enhanced? Few directions, worth considering for both even management firms and relationship builders in general. More short interactions create a more significant likelihood for extending your relationship network. I see room for two kinds of contacts: directed and spontaneous. Based on the topics you are interested in, the comment you made as a relatively simple AI algorithm can connect you with possibly like-minded people with similar interests. I remembered a few years ago that British Airways has an experiment for passengers opting to seat them next to people with a similar profile (based on LinkedIn access authorized). This has privacy implications but, more importantly, a less expected outcome: most travellers want to sit by someone different, not a professional or industry peer.

Therefore, I see a real case for random and directed recommendations too. Directed, because there are slim chances that you would approach anyone at random, at your own initiative – this would look weird. But if it is known to be ad-hoc, system-driven, people may not develop second thoughts on "why me, why now?". This sort of guided networking, spontaneous or directed, could add a lot of relationship value, growing the network horizontally.

The other direction I could see gaining traction is deepening relationships. Using the concept of mindfulness, online space can provide you undisturbed time with a person, or rather a small, intimate group connected via shared interests or style. Small pop up groups are thinking together on a dilemma of cross-sharing stories. Technologies like Hop-in could very efficiently support this effort.

Last, I see an upside potential by combining robust knowledge management repository systems and temporary communities (like a conference participant group). The KM systems used by large corporates can efficiently structure, store and distribute codified knowledge under the notion that "we are a community" as a firm. Sometimes this assumption is correct, sometimes not. But sharing identity is essential for people to feel comfortable asking (potentially silly-sounding) questions or sharing less of the gloomy PR versions of practice realities. Building a community sense is not possible in a day or two; even a week-long marathon even is slim for that. Online event organizers should continue putting more emphasis on pre and post even community experience. Employing a professional online community steward in creating trust and fellowship before the actual event is the only way. Why, post-session, then? I do not see them ex-post interventions at all, but rather an early foundation building for your next event. Leveraging the experience, knowledge inputs, and aha moments from a successful online event is the best platform to distil the feeling of belonging. After all, a well-researched trend, that gig economy workers tend to show more loyalty and belonging towards their professional peers than their employers. Event organizers could catch this wind and reposition themselves as professional community builders, as the HRFest team already does.

(6) What I have learned from all this? My biggest takeaway

Suppose you accept the notion that the most significant value of any online professional event is a relationship (and professional content comes only second and related to relationships). In that case, there is a lot to learn from successful online event management practices and business models, well beyond the perimeters of its own. Using a sailing analogy: you may have superior sails hoisted (technologies); without the wind (relationships), it makes no good.