How We Continued to Enable a “Collective Awakening” in 2017
Every week, I read the comments people leave for us after they’ve participated in an event on our platform. Albeit a good use of time, this exercise has proven to be a rollercoaster of emotion as I get to read the great, good, not so good, and on occasion, vicious comments left by participants (notes to self: “people are mean…sticks and stones…every little thing is gonna be alright…”)
And then from time to time, I get a nugget of inspiration/motivation/reassurance that we’re on the right path, like this review:
“MaestroConference is also a service that supports our collective benefit at this crucial time. I remember being ecstatic 7 or 8 years ago when I caught on to what MaestroConference was enabling, both for me personally and for our collective awakening, for the first time in human history: a supremely user-friendly, reliable platform that allows like-minded people from all over the world to come together around important shared objectives. And since then its worth has been proven over and over. “ ~ Kristin N.
As you may have read on our blog, we’re on a mission to light up the world with the power of purposeful conversations that can change the world through dialogue and action, conversations like the one Kristin N. describes that support “our collective benefit at this crucial time.”
And so, as we begin to embark on a new year with feverish anticipation/excitement, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on the ways our platform has helped “like-minded people from all over the world to come together around important shared objectives” last year.
With that in mind, here is a list of some of our proud accomplishments from 2017:
Short on time? Here’s the TL; DR (too long; didn’t read) version:
- Added new features to the MaestroConference platform – e.g. Custom Audio, Visual Polls, Opt-in Offers – and hosted 1000’s of inspiring events featuring amazing speakers, including some of the world’s most influential brands and thought leaders- Oprah, ACLU, Women’s March, FWD.us, Joe Biden, Stand Up America, The Atlantic, to name a few.
- Announced our brand new platform: VoiceVoice, technology for conversations. Extending well beyond traditional conferencing, our new technology is currently in very private beta testing with a handful of select customers. We plan to launch VoiceVoice to the general public in early 2018. Stay tuned.
- In support of the new VoiceVoice platform, we launched a new equity crowdfunding campaign so that our community of supporters, fans, customers and friends has the opportunity to join us in building a successful, positive global impact organization while also sharing in the potential financial returns of investing in an early stage, purpose-driven technology company.
1.) New Features on the MaestroConference platform:
Premium Custom Audio
Add YOUR audio to your events with the new Custom Hold Music & Audio Cues.
Premium Custom Audio lets you brand your conference by playing any custom audio file you want during your event. Choose from our audio library or record and upload your own audio files to customize your sounds to fit your brand. Read more about Premium Custom Audio here.
Visual Polls
We’ve redesigned the Visual Polls in Social Webinar to help you more effectively take the pulse of your audience.
With a more dynamic Visual Poll feature, our clients can ask thought-provoking questions, give their participants poll choices that really get to the heart of the matter, and let the audience answer by “raising their hands” virtually. And then share the results in real-time or after the poll has ended, with a detailed breakdown of the % for each poll choice. Read more about Visual Polls here.
Zapier Integration + Opt-in Offers
Zapier gives you the power to integrate MaestroConference with hundreds of other apps and services to automate your work, including MailChimp, Google Docs and many more.
We made the Zapier Integration feature even more robust by introducing “Opt-in Offers.” With the few clicks of a button, Opt-in Offers give you the ability to sync your MaestroConference account so that all of your Event Attendees AND Non-Attendees can be auto-magically added to your favorite CRM system, such as Infusionsoft, Hubspot, Zoho and Salesforce. Read more here.
Snapshot in the Conductor Interface (CI)
Take Snapshots of your event in the Conductor Interface so that you can do things like capture optins, get a record of your event, recreate breakout groups, go back after your event ends to view which participants “raised their hands”, among other things. Read more about Snapshot in the CI here.
Other Features, Changes & Improvements
- To provide our customers with even better support, we revamped our Customer Success from GROUP training 3x weekly to 1-on-1 PRIVATE training 12x weekly (3 times/day, 4 days/week). Sign for a free training dedicated to you and your team here http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/support/clinics.
- Created over 30 short video tutorials demonstrating how to use our most powerful features to engage your audience in highly interactive virtual events. Learn more here.
- Introduced the newly redesigned Virtual Events blog to share some of the insights, strategies and best practices we’ve learned from the millions of events hosted on our platform. Check out the blog and subscribe here.
2.) Important Events & Purposeful Conversations That Happened On Our Platform:
We’re proud to have supported the many influential brands and organizations that hosted amazing, purposeful conversations about topics that matter on our platform in 2017.
From Disinformation/Fake News to Net Neutrality, Racial Justice to Grassroots Mobilization, DACA to President Trump’s Ban on Refugees, our customers were doing and continue to do the heavy lifting in tackling some of society’s most pressing issues. We’re grateful/fortunate to play a small role in big, important causes.
ICYMI: when Oprah Winfrey presented on MaestroConference in the Spring, it sent the hashtag #HenriettaLacks trending on Twitter.
3.) Online Community for Conversation Visionaries
To encourage and facilitate more of these amazing conversations, we reached out to our networks of fans, supporters, friends and customers and launched an online community of people who share in our mission to light up the world with purposeful conversations.
If you haven’t joined our Conversation Visionaries group of Facebook, you can learn more about this community and join here.
This group is for people who see the potential for conversations to touch & change the world.
The focus of the group is those special, purposeful conversations where lots of people each have the chance to speak and be heard in small groups within a larger conversation that has an overall goal, format and structure. These conversations can be in-person or virtual, and on a technology platform that enables it. One of our members described it as:
“This is like Tedtalks and Facebook had a baby!!!”
We’d love for you to join, share your insights, invite your networks, help the community decide which conversation(s) we should be having now.
4.) Announcing the Launch of the Brand New VoiceVoice Platform
Since inception, the company behind MaestroConference has stood for something bigger than just the technology. We exist to support those purposeful conversations our customers want to have with their global stakeholders. In particular, we specialize in conversations like those Kristin N. described up top wherein everyone can participate fully and feel involved and included, with lots of small groups “from all over the world to come together around important shared objectives.”
To that end, the single biggest accomplishment/highlight/thing we love to talk about is the launch of the new VoiceVoice platform, technology for conversations.
VoiceVoice is a software platform for purposeful conversations that are both intimate and guided for each participant, yet totally scalable to thousands or millions of people.
VoiceVoice has all the tools necessary for a small group of people to have a meaningful, powerful conversation: ground rules, intro material, inspirational content, instructions or questions for conversation topics, etc.
And the technology is designed so that those conversations can be viral, enabling host organizations to create real community and foster powerful connections among their supporters.
In other words, the new VoiceVoice platform will extend well beyond traditional conferencing software.
You can preview a simulated demo of the new platform here.
I can’t express how excited we are to start getting feedback on the real product!
5.) Global Impact + Potential Profits + You
In support of the launch of the new VoiceVoice platform, we’ve opened an equity crowdfunding campaign to give our friends, fans and customers the opportunity to join our team as an investor and participate in this mission for social impact and potential profits. http://www.startengine.com/voicevoice
Via this equity crowdfunding campaign, you can be a part of building a successful, positive global impact organization- and support the reality of amazing, purposeful conversations when they truly scale- while also sharing in the potential financial returns of investing in an early stage technology company.
We want to “win the internet” with VoiceVoice in 2018, meaning to explode on the scene of people’s thoughts, the way other great innovations like Facebook, Slack, Airbnb, Twitter, YouTube have caught on quickly in the past. One of the central ingredients for scaling this is capital, and so we appreciate you considering this.
Here’s what one independent research firm said about our crowdfunding campaign:
“They’re creating a communication revolution, and if you’re an employee, a B2B network, a student, or just someone wanting to genuinely connect with others, then VoiceVoice is the investment for you. From its innovative platform, to its ability to spark discussion, VoiceVoice has found its voice in today’s world — and will help you find your voice, and profit, too.” (Full review)
Whether or not the crowdfunding option is right for you, I think you’d find it interesting to learn more about us: our vision, our finances and the team behind the technology. So please take a look, share this, consider if it’s right for you. https://www.startengine.com/voicevoice
We look forward to a new year brimming with promise and potential for old ways, new ways, never-before-seen ways of bringing like-minded people from across the world together in amazing, purposeful conversations about topics that matter. Here’s to a prosperous, productive, impactful 2018!
