Check Out the Taxonomy of Virtual Event Formats

Which types of events have been moving to virtual environments?

As soon as COVID forced the world to socially distance, every live event format that was previously being done in person pivoted (or at least attempted) to being fully virtual. Facilitators, event planners, field marketers, trainers, grassroots mobilizers and activists, educators- every role, industry, profession, community- had two choices: i.) postpone indefinitely/cancel their in-person event; OR, ii.) quickly adjust/adapt/pivot the event to online.

To help understand the main types of virtual event formats that companies, organizations, brands are hosting, we looked at the broad event types that we’ve seen and organized them by features, both core and specialized.

Below, we classify the major types of online events, with examples of each, and touch on some of the features more critical based on the type of event.

Our company is focused on those virtual event formats featuring many parallel breakout groups, each in active, purposeful, engaging discussions, whereas other platforms might focus on replicating a large conference environment (with parallel presentations and/or branded vendor areas) and/or general purpose conferencing more broadly.

What event types do you host? Which feature areas are most important for those events? What distinctions did we miss?

We’d love to hear your comments below.

By the way, we want to give credit to Helen Bevan with NHS Horizons for inspiring this post as we definitely used her analysis as input for this post as well.

Type of Event	Examples	Core Features	Specialized Features
General Business Meetings	Daily standup One-on-ones Weekly team meeting	Audio and/or video for participants; easy join access from mobile	Collaboration tools; note taking
Presentation or Panel	Typical recorded webinar Livestream event Keynote speech	Streaming audio and/or video for presenters	Streaming to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and/or Twitter; event recording and distribution
Presentation with Q&A (Or training with no breakouts)	Typical webinar Conference call Press conference Virtual classroom	Streaming audio and/or video for presenters; ability for participants to ask questions; ability for speakers/assistants to take and review questions in private	ABOVE + host-participant chat; private green room; assistant or co-host roles
Presentation with Q&A Formal Business Meeting with Voting	Board meetings	ABOVE + voting/polling features; secure, accurate vote tallying and saving	ABOVE + csv exports of voting results; data collection and security
Limited Virtual Conference Multiple Presentations/Panels to choose from (no or limited side sessions)	Conference limited to several, concurrent presentations for participants to choose from	Streaming audio and/or video for presenters; ability for participants to select and move between rooms	Streaming to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and/or Twitter; event recording and distribution; simultaneous translations; host-participant chat; audience chat
Full Virtual Conference With vendor booths, side sessions, casual spaces to meet others	Online Summit Annual Conference Exhibits/showrooms	Streaming audio and/or video for presenters; ability for participants to select and move between rooms; peer to peer webcam within casual groups and/or with vendors	ABOVE + custom registration options with full agenda details; vendor-area branding; contact sharing; 1-1 video breakouts for networking or other opportunities for side sessions
Open Space / Unconference	Unconference Birds of a Feather Hackathon	ABOVE + participants can choose to host and lead sessions; anyone can present (share screen); crowdsourced agenda; voting/polling features	System to test the waters for session interest; features for helping to organize scheduling across time zones; audience chat
Virtual Roundtables	Industry-specific roundtables Professional meetups	Peer to peer webcam within professional groups; moderation features; some facilitation, recorded and/or live	Contact sharing; group chat; features for helping to organize scheduling across time zone; collaboration tools; note taking
Networking Mixers; Cocktail Parties No-Host, Autonomous Breakouts (Casual)	Casual roundtables Virtual watercoolers Speed dating Knowledge/world cafes	Automatically create random pairings and dynamically re-mix them; data-based pair creations; ability for participants to select and move between groups; peer to peer webcam within groups	ABOVE + ability to host regularly, with or without a host; can run with minimal to no monitoring by facilitator
Interactive Trainings with Breakouts No-Host, Autonomous Breakouts (Professional)	Academic classes with discussion Corporate trainings Sales training with interactive roleplay exercises	Features that allow host or facilitator to be able to: create breakouts flexibly and quickly send messages, instructions to groups easily monitor groups provide clear guidance to groups allow groups to share/edit documents provide crowdsourced input	ABOVE + ability to pre-record guidance for breakout groups; feature to allow groups to schedule, join and participate any time; options for groups to self-select and self-organize based on a role, department, interest, or other characteristics
Guided, Hosted, or Facilitator-led Conversations	World Cafe Interactive offsites Instructor-led training	ABOVE + Peer to peer webcam within groups; moderation features; options for pre-recorded and/or live facilitation	Ability to pre-record guidance for breakout groups; collaboration tools; note taking; screenshare; host-participant chat; group chat; contact sharing