Hosting a conference on Zoom

[clemrick]

I am a very active volunteer in an international association. We cancelled our annual conference last year and this year we will be virtual.

Anyone out there who has experience with using Zoom for a conference? I already host monthly presentations on Zoom with less than 20 participants, so I know the very basics. I would like to talk to someone who uses the more advanced features.

Also, if anyone can point me to videos or info on the features we could use, like streaming, that would be helpful. I have already found a very good video explaining how to set up Zoom for participants (https://youtu.be/9isp3qPeQ0E)

Thanks

[Soon2BXProgrammer]

if hosting a large conference on zoom it is essential to have a paid plan for that month, so that you can use some of the features like webinar and breakout rooms.

[TravelGeek]

I have no experience with hosting or attending a conference (vs an individual web meeting) on Zoom.

But I recently attended a virtual conference with multiple tracks and breakout sessions and a few thousand participants on a site called HopIn (this one).

https://hopin.to/

It worked very well for me. It seems they have a list of upcoming conferences, some of them free to attend, so you might be able to try it out yourself.

https://hopin.com/explore

(no affiliation with the company, not a paid endorsement, author is not an actor, etc. etc.)

[Soon2BXProgrammer]

The other thing you might explore is getting Slack for text based communication during the conference.

Allows lots of chat rooms.

can have a room per vender/sponsor,
general rooms
specific rooms/etc

[SmileyFace]

How big is the conference? If you are talking hundreds or thousands I would go with a virtual conference provider and not zoom.

[clemrick]

In person, the conferences have been drawing around 100 people. A majority of our membership is retired and not tech savvy. We have a single session at a time so it doesn't have to be very fancy.

[clemrick]

In person, the conferences have been drawing around 100 people. A majority of our membership is retired and not tech savvy. We have a single session at a time so it doesn't have to be very fancy.

[Tejfyy]

In person, the conferences have been drawing around 100 people. A majority of our membership is retired and not tech savvy. We have a single session at a time so it doesn't have to be very fancy.

I would stick with Zoom then. It's user-friendly enough for your audience and while it'll require a bit of a learning curve, the time invested isn't wasted. You could make the case that they can then get a free Zoom account and stay connected with friends and family. Additionally, many may be using it already.
As for the back end, ideally you'd have a dedicated person to moderate the event, another to watch the chat and handle any technical issues participants would have and then the presenter.
Zoom has a host of support materials on all this.

I'm not affiliated with Zoom in any way, other than being a user and have used other platforms.

[02nz]

if hosting a large conference on zoom it is essential to have a paid plan for that month, so that you can use some of the features like webinar and breakout rooms.

And importantly, the ability to have meetings longer than 40 minutes (the cutoff for free accounts).

But I believe Google Hangouts and possibly Microsoft Teams may be able to achieve the same at lower/no cost.