27 karma · joined August 25, 2017
We're trying to create a new format that could only exist in the digital world. Fast paced micro-events throughout the year that keep attendees on their toes and help foster community as people get to engage more.
Doing one big conference at the end of the year is the old way of thinking. It's blindly taking the real world conference and making it digital. A movie has a different language than a play. We're trying to figure out that language as opposed to just filming the play.
After talking to lots of people over a year, ON24 and GoToWebinar are usually the two players that most people strongly dislike. We believe that innovating on the actual attendee and organizer experience is the right long-term approach instead of merely collecting and analyzing some data points.
I'd recommend trying out Slingshow and comparing the two. It'll take you a couple of minutes to see the differences. We're far from perfect and have more work to do in terms of data, but we think we have something quite unique and delightful.
Currently, at the event start time, the Slingshow event page becomes the actual event, and attendees can enter using Google, Linkedin, or email even if they didn't register. There's no unique link that you only get when you register. It's all just one link, and the registration is essentially just an email capture + reminder email. There are many advantages of doing it this way (and some disadvantages), including being a good catch-all for internal and external use cases.
As far as you're concerned, your flow would be very similar to a Zoom call or Google Hangout. Just create the event, set the start time, email it out, or put it in Slack, and at the time of the event, your members/staff can enter the event. No registration is required.
However, you may still have concerns around members sharing the event, and that's what we're working on fixing next, for example, domain restriction, manually admitting people etc. But it's the same issue you'd face with using Zoom or Google Hangout as a link even with a password is still a shareable link. We recommend for now having the waiting room open and admitting people one by one (it's super quick in Slingshow with Cmd+K) or importing a list of emails as "pre-approved."
I hope this wasn't too confusing. If you'd like to give Slingshow a shot and still have questions, I'd be more than happy to jump on a quick call with you or send a short Loom to make this more concrete. Please feel free to create an account and message us on the Intercom, and we'll walk you through it. We have more work to do in this area to make it more intuitive, but we've think a lot about these different "entrance flows," so thanks for asking this question.
Also, we currently don't have a video of the attendee experience, but you can scroll to the Blocks section to see screenshots. Feel free to create an account to check it out also!
And right now, the best way to get a demo is to sign up for free(no credit card required) and create an event that starts right now. We are thinking about adding a perpetually active networking block on our website, especially since people really “get it” once they experience the product. Or maybe just more gifs or videos throughout our landing page can get the experience across.
Values can sometimes feel cliche, so we have tried to make them more memorable and thought-provoking by using short metaphors with a backstory. Appreciate your thoughts here, this is something we’re still thinking about.