Lessons we learned hosting a virtual conference this week, some of which will also improve face-to-face meetings (f2f), with the goal to create community, closeness, interaction, and collective creativity:

1. Closed captioning is an affordable service that is easy to add (f2f)

2. A shared-document (GDoc) to use as a Question Roster helps capture ideas and continues discussion later asynchronously. (f2f)

3. And also, encouraging live, verbal questions makes the experience more ‘live.’

4. Use Zoom’s Breakout rooms for Meet-and-Greet before and between sessions.

Randomly putting 5-10 people in a room let them introduce each other and network!

And finally, three @Zoom feature requests. We need:
1-Reactions and threads in the Chat window.
2-An ability for each guest to wander between breakout rooms.
3-An ability to open and close breakout rooms, even as existing rooms are in progress.