Convene Studio
I led Convene Studio, a virtual event site created to retain more than $350,000 a month when customers were canceling events due to COVID-19.
Example main stage layout with a speaker and presentation.
Design mockup of the full event site.
Creating the Studio Experience
When I joined the Studio team, I quickly advocated for competitor analysis to best understand how other virtual event platforms function. How do they promote engagement both during and after the livestream? How do they encourage attendee exploration and to take specific actions?
The Studio POC had all the pieces, but they didn't work well together. I shared my competitor insights, pointing to what I believed we needed to explore. Most products had simple navigation, drawing attendees into the livestream or breakouts, depending on what was live. And the overall UI fully considered engagement tools — you can easily find chat and Q&A next to the video.
Studio had chat and Q&A but leveraged different integrations with disconnected UX. Studio's chat feature was similar to LinkedIn or Intercom, displaying as a small window that opens over the video and Q&A. I worked with Engineering and Design on our integration strategy to strike a balance, so we didn't have to build chat from scratch, but we had enough control over how it integrated into the UI.
Screenshots of Studio chat overlapping page content vs docked to the right of the page.
Chat is a core experience for virtual events for networking. It allows attendees to share their perspectives on a topic and connect with like-minded attendees. For most events, chat was a critical component for all sessions, including the main stage.
I argued that we needed to rethink chat to find a solution that was:
Integrated into the UI without obscuring video;
Provided a forum for group engagement, in addition to DM chat; and
Limited chat groups based on the context. For example, main stage group chat is only available while viewing the main stage.
We developed what became known as "contextual chat," replacing our previous low-level chat integration via Ably with a higher-level solution via Stream. Stream's SDK was much easier to customize to our needs without building all the UX from scratch. This solution granted us more time to update the site with a video drawer housing DM chat, session chat, and Q&A with better responsiveness on all major device formats.
Gif of the responsive drawer.
Interactive Breakouts
After exploring alternates to Zoom for breakout sessions, Engineering presented the Amazon Chime SDK as a solution for a highly interactive experience we could one day bring to the main stage live stream. On paper, it checked a lot of our boxes:
It's designed for the web, so there's no need to download software — good for attendees 🙌.
The SDK handled the complex comms, granting us control over the presentation — interesting for Design and Engineering 🚀.
We already used AWS, so we had an existing relationship with Amazon folks — great for IT 🛠️.
It promised a feature set that supported our early ideas for moderation, more interesting presentation styles, and engagement — great for PMs 🎯.
Interactive prototype exploring the session player responsive video grid.
While Engineering was working on a session player POC, I met with Sales and Operations to identify which customers are leveraging breakouts and understand what features are needed to host breakouts successfully. The Chime SDK only supported some of the features customers expected from using Zoom. To own the session experience, we had to supplement Chime with additional features or severely limit the addressable audience.
Recording was a must but wasn't available then via the Chime SDK. We built a server-side solution leveraging AWS and ffmpeg.
We knew we could simplify the session join flow, including video + mic checks and troubleshooting, so I collaborated with Design and Engineering to understand and validate browser-specific challenges, and together, we mapped an ideal flow for Design to build upon.
Session moderation is essential — you'll know this if you've ever been on a conference call where no one had permission to record or mute someone. We built Studio's first real-time configuration and permissions, allowing moderators to control the level of engagement, for example, inviting specific viewers to use their mic and camera and ask questions.
Session player moderator controls to promote a participant.
Challenges & takeaways
In mid-2021, we were over one year into development and closing in on the session player beta for Studio. Studio sales for virtual events were strong, and Convene was considering a future resuming physical and hybridized events. Two new challenges were impacting Studio:
Engineering was burning out; and
We were losing any advantage in owning the software since customers were returned to physical events.
Team burnout
I suspected Engineering was burning out when they voiced concerns about tech debt, but they weren't suggesting any actionable solutions. Since the issues appeared to be related to earlier architectural decisions, I proposed they leverage epic planning, meeting independently after the kickoff to explicitly discuss architecture and inform the epic scope. This helped to reinforce that everyone has a voice and that engineering team input is critical for building sustainable solutions.
This led to more extensive process discussions for active engagement and fun workshops to renew our scrum education. Thanks Chris!
Output from the session player moderation story mapping workshop with Engineering and Design.
Virtual event bubble
Convene's expertise was always physical events, and by early 2022, more and more customers were exploring a return to physical or hybrid events.
While exploring potential events for the session player bets, I discovered a trending decline in breakouts and virtual-only events. It was clear that we missed our window for this feature. Our software wasn't competitive, and our AV and Operations teams were our true differentiation. Shortly after, I flagged this trend to leadership, we reprioritized resources, and I collaborated with Sales to evaluate potential partner software solutions.
In hindsight, common sense says we would always be biased by what we know and were destined to return to physical events. I'm bummed that we never fully explored Studio's software potential but we ultimately did what was right for the business and Convene's customers.
I know we could have been more responsive if analytics were more accessible and we met at least once a year to critically assess, "How has the addressable market changed since we started building this product/feature"? In the future, I will be more bullish on measuring KPIs and encourage more critical prioritization discussions. (I really enjoyed exploring Cost of Delay with the product team ❤️)
Early ideas for the session player roadmap targeting an integration with our main stage broadcast.