It was my first “real” party in college, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. So, I timidly made my way to the kitchen and took my time making a drink. Before I knew it, I was mixing my new lime-cranberry-iced tea recipe for everyone.
As fate would have it, the resident DJ’s iPhone got disconnected, so I started playing my music. Reggaeton hits filled the dance floor. As I looked at the crowd, people were dancing the night away, cheering me on for the next song. In that moment, I felt included.
Think back to a time you felt included. What did you feel? What was there? And what was not there? Inclusion is achieved when we can bring our individuality to a community. We feel part of something larger than ourselves. We feel psychologically safe and heard.
As event professionals in today’s new virtual normal, we must look to apply many of the same in-person principles to our virtual events: intentional event setup, building an inclusive environment, and enabling continuous interaction.
As an international event organizer and D&I professional, I’ve compiled a handful of tips on how to curate, navigate, and effectuate the creation of inclusive virtual events.
When we plan virtual events, we must apply the same level of rigorous planning as an in-person event, if not more. We must consider the pains, expectations, and behaviors our attendees are walking in with, and understand what gains, satisfaction, and new behaviors we want them to depart with.
The event setup is the foundation necessary to create an inclusive event, by understanding where, who, and how. When all three of these components are diverse and inclusive, your event will also be so.
1 | Event marketing is the “where,” or the building blocks. It is critical to consider which platforms, groups, and websites you are leveraging to promote your event. It is only through inclusive event promotion that you’ll attract a diverse representation of attendees.
Put this into practice
Look for new partners. Identify new organizations or individuals you haven’t worked with to share your event to their networks.
2 | Diverse representation is the “who,” or the structure shaping the foundation. To run an inclusive event, it’s important to put thought into the various demographics and psychographics you want represented in your content, speakers, and attendees.
Put this into practice
Seek diverse perspectives. Review the authors of the material presented and discussed, and look for ways to include additional thought leaders with different views.
3 | Crowdsourcing is the “how,” or the adhesive that keeps the foundation together. Build inclusion by letting your attendees play a role in shaping the event. When you have a diverse set of attendees, you have a greater diversity of thought to leverage, not only to create a sense of inclusion, but also to influence your event content.
Put this into practice
Conduct panel nominations. Survey attendees to learn who they want to hear from and what topics matter most to them. Bonus: The more attendees feel included in shaping the content, the more likely they are to actually attend and be engaged in your virtual event.
The next component to hosting an inclusive event is establishing a psychologically safe and welcoming environment no matter who walks through those virtual doors. This means setting protocols and guidelines for attendees to feel safe and connected. When humans don’t feel safe by nature, we can’t be present and, by default, we’re unable to connect with others.
So, what can you do to establish a place of psychological safety and connectivity?
4 | Establish meeting norms. Any event should have a set of norms or expectations for attendees. These guidelines are there to create a welcoming environment that won’t be full of bystanders if a norm is broken. You should also include a reporting process in case attendees break these norms.
Put this into practice
Have a reporting structure. Assign a single person as the point of contact for attendees to submit feedback on behavior. After the event, that person should contact anyone who has broken norms to offer suggestions on how to best handle the situation during the next event.
5 | Leverage video. A “video-on” culture can create a sense that we are all back in the office, especially when we have an interactive dialogue in full gallery view. However, small distractions, like dogs barking in the background, quickly remind us that we are all managing different work-from-home circumstances. Small, inclusive video practices that standardize everyone’s experience can help employees feel more comfortable participating on video and further the in-person setting.
Put this into practice
Promote virtual backgrounds. The majority of virtual platforms have functionality for changing image backgrounds. Try creating one for your event and sending it to attendees for them to use during the event.
6 | Consider verbal and written communication. Even though we have new communications platforms at events today, that doesn’t mean attendees have changed their personalities. At virtual events, it’s important to build multiple channels of interaction so everyone, from introverts to extroverts, have an outlet.
Put this into practice
Engage across channels. As a speaker at a virtual event, when asking for attendee responses consider calling on people to verbally share, entering the question in the chat, and asking for emoji responses if attendees agree with a point shared.
Now that your event is planned, what is left to be done? Interaction, interaction, and more interaction. As event marketers, we know that one success factor is keeping attendees’ attention. This could not be truer in virtual events — we must fight our biggest competitor in this space: the monster of multitasking.
The good news is that we have virtual event platforms as our tools to create an inclusive event through interaction. Additionally, interaction with attendees generates valuable data for event stakeholders.
7 | Annotation is the virtual event’s version of calling out responses to facilitators. Create inclusion by enabling participants to enter text throughout a presentation. They want to see their voices being heard and participate in group learning.
Put this into practice
Encourage idea sharing. Create a blank slide (if using Zoom) or a whiteboard (if using WebEx or Adobe), and ask participants to share their ideas, solutions, and feelings anonymously.
8 | Plan for early dialogue. Events are a place for connection, and for as long as we can remember, our primary form of connection was through dialogue. Let’s not kid ourselves: We mostly went to events for the networking, right? We need to integrate this core component of events early in the agenda. If you only make time for dialogue at the end, you run the risk of attendees disconnecting, because they no longer feel included, heard, or part of the discussion.
Put this into practice
Use breakout rooms. This functionality provides your attendees with an opportunity to speak up and share their thoughts in a small-group dynamic. This is also a great way to separate managers from team members, allowing for more psychological safety and vulnerability in the group’s sharing.
9 | Support real-time Q&A. I have been part of numerous virtual events in which event marketers will ask self-submitted questions. Embrace live question submissions as an important form of listening to attendee needs and creating dialogue.
Put this into practice
Enable a visible Q&A box. Display live questions to promote information sharing among attendees. Ask your speakers to build in periodic pauses to check the submissions and/or ask attendees to add questions.
As I write this, I am suffering from Zoom fatigue. It's so bad that I would rather receive a phone call (and that’s saying something we can all relate to). Our adoption of virtual events will take time, but it’s not going anywhere in the near future. We must approach our virtual events — as we did our in-person events — as a source of satisfaction, inclusion, and learning points.
Begin by implementing two of the best practices above and notice the difference in the dynamic of your attendees. Then, decide if you keep them or switch them for others. There is no single fit for every event, but there is a shared goal of inclusion. We all want to feel that we can bring our whole self and feel part of the bigger picture. That, my friends, is when the magic happens.
Xochitl is a Director at Catalyst, a leading Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) nonprofit, where she supports F500 companies with integrating D&I best practices. Prior to her current role, she worked as a cybersecurity consultant and international event professional, always advocating for inclusion. Nowadays, you can find Xochitl reading or daydreaming in Washington Square Park in New York City about her next travel adventure to practice Muay Thai.
