What do video production pros StreamGeeks use for virtual experiences? Zoom Events

StreamGeeks is dedicated to helping businesses unleash the power of online communications. Founded in 2017, StreamGeeks is an online platform where video production professionals can connect and share information. Made up of a group of video production experts, they are dedicated to sharing their industry knowledge via vlogs, blogs, and podcasts. 

The need for a collaborative, virtual environment

In November 2019, the first StreamGeeks Summit was hosted in-person at the Dream Downtown Hotel in New York City. In 2020, an in-person event was not an option due to COVID-19, so StreamGeeks hosted its second summit via a livestream on YouTube and Facebook, along with a simultaneous Zoom Meeting.

Paul Richards, Chief Streaming Officer for the StreamGeeks and author of The Virtual Ticket, quickly realized that “it was challenging to engage a livestream audience and Zoom Meeting attendees. On YouTube and Facebook, viewers tuned in, but the retention rate was lower because the engagement tools did not go far beyond a chat box.” 

The livestreaming and video production industry is comprised of a technical audience, who often have very specific questions. With a one-way broadcast, presenters did their best to save time for a Q&A session at the end of their presentation, but answering these questions was a challenge without being able to hear directly from the audience. 

Richards recognized that moving forward they needed to incorporate more collaboration opportunities, as well as the ability for attendees to “choose their own journey” with multiple tracks of content.

Powering virtual experiences through Zoom Events

StreamGeeks decided to use Zoom Events to host its third annual StreamGeeks Summit. Zoom Meetings and its features such as Breakout Rooms were so well known amongst employees that it didn’t take long to train team members to be comfortable on Zoom Events. Plus, the setup process was seamless. 

The registration page setup process saved the StreamGeeks web developer at least one week’s worth of work, and also reduced the scheduling, planning, and technology troubleshooting time.

“Zoom Events’ all-in-one platform made it simple for us to build out the registration and event pages for the summit, and we estimate that we saved nearly three weeks worth of time for our team,” Richards said. “Zoom Events also helped make it easier for speakers to submit their own information, such as their social media profiles and updated headshots. In years past, our web team had to manage all the speaker bios on a WordPress page, but this year we were able to invite speakers to manage their own bios and networking pages. This saved us at least 40 hours worth of work.”

StreamGeeks also experienced a cost savings. In previous years the platform had to pay presenters and compensate them for their travel expenses. By hosting the summit on Zoom Events, many speakers were happy to join via Zoom free of charge. 

Attendees were also able to quickly register and familiarize themselves with the structure of the event. “We opened the event lobby 30 days prior so that attendees could visit collaboration areas before the event officially kicked off,” Richards said. “This was a great way for them to become familiarized with Zoom Events.” 

Proving the impact of virtual events

With a full day of livestreaming education, complete with interactive sessions with subject matter experts, Zoom Events empowered StreamGeeks to host a seamless, sold-out virtual summit with 400 attendees, nearly doubled attendance from the previous year, and three speaker tracks.

“Zoom Events helped attendees experience educational moments, collaborate with others, and enjoy networking opportunities on one simple-to-use platform,” Richards said. “Also keeping everything inside an event platform Hub made the experience easier to manage.”

StreamGeeks was able to leverage Zoom Events to continue to build their community, network, and generate leads. Moving forward, Richard says, “we are excited to see our team use Zoom Events for a variety of new use cases. The process to set up and manage an event on the platform is so seamless that we are able to plan out more events in the year.”