My worst virtual conference experience: censored and banned from the Fast Company Innovation Festival

Negative outlier "anti-wow" experiences can provide the greatest CQI insights to improve virtual conferences and redress gaps in training and preparation of such events by conference organizers.

The worst customer experience can provide the greatest opportunity for innovation.

Innovation idea

I suggest that Fast Company do a special issue on how to innovate on hosting virtual conferences for deep meaningful learning, slow thinking and networking purposes for all levels of participants, in the spirit of DEI and open innovation.

• How can Fast Company create higher rates of "wow" Waltz Disney customer experiences?

My worst virtual conference experience

On the first day of the conference, I spent more time with customer service about multiple glitches than I have ever done on a live event. I felt like an end user experience assessor at the dress rehearsal. I provided ample feedback so that Fast Company could fail fast forward and make amends. At one event with useful information in the chat box, I discovered that you could not copy and paste the chat function. I shared that information with customer service and was told that it would be turned on for tomorrow.

At the evening virtual cocktail party, I networked via Zoom with some participants. I asked if people would be willing to share their Linked-in profiles for networking purposes. Nobody mentioned that putting links into the chat box was not allowed.

During the cocktail event, I told the group that the chat function was disabled from copying and pasting. The tech staff said that they would turn it on, but you have to leave Zoom and re-enter, so that you could access the information in the chat room at the end of the cocktail hour. I did that and discovered that the chat function had disappeared. The tech support took screen shots of the chat, and I was told that they would share the information with the participants afterwards. This did not happen.

The following day, I went to one event on Thought Leadership Development: the one event that I most wanted to go to. The system malfunctioned, and the workshop did not occur.

At the creativity workshop about story telling and marketing, the presenter only spoke about products and services, so I asked a question about how to do marketing and story-telling about causes, and I shared my link below as an example of thought leadership development.

I was removed from the event and could not re-entered. I was blocked by the host to re-enter.

I found the community guidelines after the event

Here are the community guidelines. They did not tell me or the group at the cocktail party that participants are prohibited from copying or taking screenshots of Q&A or any chat room activity that takes place in the virtual space. There is no specific mention of doing screen shots of the customer service exchanges.

So much for open innovation. There is no mention of about adding urls of related content to the presentation. So much for collaborative learning and networking.

Fast company should have an informed consent process to prompt people to read the guidelines in advance with a check-off box. Plenty of room for CQI.

Fast company is better than this! Will Fast Company respond to these concerns and explain the rationale for their guidelines?

Lesson learned!

What percentage of attendees read the community guidelines in advance of an online conference? I am sure that I am in the majority, but I will read them in advance and never attend a virtual learning event if it bans screen shots of information and contact urls.

Here is how customer service responded. Needless to say, I was frustrated by this experience but was frank in my feedback. At the end cocktail party,

I removed the e-mail address as requested.

Fast Company Community Guidelines