The Hopin Attendee Experience
When you complete your registration, you will see the Reception area, a customizable page that includes:
- Organizer’s welcome message (event description, useful links to bring even more value to the Attendees)
- Sponsor logos (clickable logos that bring to Sponsors website)
- Event Schedule (what’s happening, when, and which segment to follow)
- Speakers list (who is speaking at the event)
You can think of the Reception area as the information hub and a venue’s lobby. The other regions (segments) in the site are on the left side panel. These can include Stage, Networking, Sessions, and Expo.
Which browsers work best?
The latest versions of Chrome or Firefox guarantee the best experience. Please avoid any Brave, Safari, and Microsoft IE or Edge since these browsers lack the modern web technologies support necessary for online events to run in a web browser.
Note: Sometimes, third-party extensions can affect the experience by blocking some of the Hopin interface elements. That’s why we also recommend opening the event in Incognito mode (command+Shift+N on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+N on Windows) on Chrome or Private tab (command+Shift+P for macOS or Ctrl+Shift+P for Windows) on Firefox.
The five areas of Hopin
There are five areas in a Hopin event. At any one time, you may be able to access all of them or one of them or two of them — it’s entirely up to what's happening on the schedule and the events that are planned. Each area is flexible and provides live interaction for you and the other attendees in different ways.
1. Reception
The Reception area is the welcome page or “lobby” of your event. Here you can quickly find out what’s happening at the event currently: the organizer's welcome message, sponsors, the schedule, and speakers. The Reception area is used for announcements, essential links, sponsor messages, and event updates.
2. Stage (Not Used With All Events)
It’s a one-to-many interaction area that supports up to 100,000 concurrent viewers. The Stage is excellent for your keynotes, presentations, panels, performances, and fireside chats.
3. Sessions
The Sessions segment of Hopin delivers the best experience for group discussions, multi-track conferences, training workshops, hackathons, breakout rooms, webinars, and teams. In Sessions, you will see virtual roundtables for speakers and attendees to interact. Up to 20 people can participate in a Session with their camera on, if it's not being recorded. Up to 9 people if it is. In either case, up to 500 people who can watch off-camera and communicate via the session chat. Which often is where attendees ask questions to the speakers on camera.
Imagine there are tens of Sessions during your multi-day event. Hopin made sure to declutter the Sessions segment, and in case the Sessions are tied to the Schedule, they will automatically appear five minutes before the time on Schedule and automatically hide once their time is up. Attendees can view the list of previous sessions by clicking Show past segments at the Reception area of the event.
4. Networking
The Networking segment on Hopin is pure engagement and is similar to one-on-one meetings on a FaceTime call. This segment is designed to recreate the “coffee-in-the-lobby” conversations or watercooler chats that are important at an in-person event. The Networking area automates the discovery of new connections. When an attendee participates in the Networking, they are matched with a random attendee and meet for a set time preset by the organizer.
Attendees can click the Connect button during a call to exchange contact information, and after the event, the newly made contacts will appear at https://hopin.to/account/connections page of their Profile.
Networking stays random, but may be set to a specific ticket type to segment the matchmaking between groups of ticket holders: whether it’s everyone meets everyone in a general networking experience, or targeted, such as at recruiting and job fairs, interviews, teachers and students, coaching, dating, pitching, and so on.
5. Expo
The Expo area is the virtual exhibitor hall with vendor booths in your event. It’s great for featuring a wide array of brands, products, or services, just like a trade fair, job fair, or sponsor showcase.
Every booth can have either a pre-recorded video in it such as a YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia clip, a live stream via YouTube, or a live video session with a vendor rep “manning” and moderating the booth. All embedded videos added to the Expo play on-demand, i.e. the attendee accessing the booth will have the ability to play/pause/skip the video.
Plus, every booth also has a customizable CTA button that can collect emails when it is set to Register interest or be a custom text linked to any valid external hyperlink.
Hopin allows there to be unlimited booths that can be created in the Expo area.
How do people get around at a Hopin event?
Similar to a physical event, the Hopin event experience is self-directed but with wayfinding tools and signs to help people quickly get around. Attendees ultimately choose where they want to go.
By default, all Hopin segments are open during the entire event. However, Organizers can direct Attendees to the most relevant section via signposting options:
- Event Schedule. A Schedule shows the attendees what’s happening, where they should be, when, and who’s speaking.
- Live and Now tags. When the Stage is live or Sessions, Networking and Expo happen now according to the Schedule, the red LIVE, and NOW tags will appear on the left side panel, conquering the attention span of the event attendees.
- What’s happening now banners. When attendees first land in the Reception area, there’s a sizeable clickable button that hints on What’s happening now for all attendees and will get to the specific event segment in one click.
- Highlighted chat messages sent by Organizers. Chat messages sent by the Organizer highlighted to get easily identified by the Attendees.
- Pinned chat messages. Any extra information or useful links to related content can be anchored by Organizers always to be visible to Attendees on top of any Stage, Session, or Expo chat.
- Shortened URLs. A powerful tool for giving attendees one-click entrance into any part of a Hopin event. If the URL of any area in Hopin (i.e., a particular Session, a vendor Booth, the Stage, etc.) is copied and pasted in any chat, Hopin automatically shortens the URL to a clickable hashtag.
Chats for everyone
There are multiple chat channels in a Hopin event. Each one serves a different purpose.
- Event chat — the global event chat where all participants can post messages.
- Stage chat — chat with a Stage-related discussion to all attendees.
- Session chat — each session in Sessions has dedicated chat rooms. Attendees who are off-camera can chat to interact with people on camera and vice-versa.
- Booth chat — like Sessions, each booth has its chat for group discussions and interaction.
- Meeting chat — in Networking, a private 1:1 chat channel is available to the participants.
- Backstage chat — the Backstage has its chat for speakers and staff to communicate privately. It is only accessible through the Backstage link.
- Direct messages and video chats — anyone can send messages or request a video chat to an individual at a Hopin event via DMs in the People tab. To post a DM, find the person you wish to chat within the People tab, click their profile photo, and send a direct message to them. Doing the same, you'll see the link for setting up a video chat.
Wrapping up
To help orient you to the event, here are six vital pointers:
- Keep an eye out for important email messages.
- Remember to check the Reception page. It can be helpful upon first entering the event.
- Look for "Your Virtual Guru." She/he is there to help you with technical issues and navigation, as well as answer general questions about the event or AIBD.
- Be on time. There are verbal instructions delivered on Stage and at the beginning of each Session.
- Monitor the Event chat. The Organizer will post messages to draw your attention to what’s happening around the event.
- We work as a team. AIBD staff is there to help moderate and direct attendees in each of the different areas of the event. Look for Steve Mickley, Garrett Mickley, Raven Epps, or Rusty Hudnet. In any of the Chatboxes, you can address one of them personally by beginning to type their name with the @ symbol. For example, type "@Steve" and all Steve's attending will appear in a dropdown menu. Choose whom you want to address and continue typing your message.
Great job! Now, you are the master of the AIBD/Hopin Attendee experience and can apply your knowledge to your events.
Feel free to reach out to us via Intercom or at support@hopin.to in case you have questions or need assistance.