by 
Dr Rachael Livermore is Co-Chair of The Ineffable Con, a fan convention that went online for the first time in 2020 with a total of over 650 participants from around the world. She has chaired six science fiction and fantasy conventions, and had staff positions on dozens more. Her background is in Astrophysics, and she has also organised dozens of public outreach events for astronomers both in person and virtually.
About the presentation:
The Ineffable Con is a convention for fans of the book/ TV series Good Omens, which, like many events, had to work out how to become virtual in 2020.
Our forays into the world of virtual events started with a series of three Zoom parties for up to 500 people in May. We’ll share what we learned about managing huge Zoom calls, and what kinds of activities we ran to make the events interactive while keeping almost everyone muted for our sanity.
– Features and pricing of virtual events platforms
– Full candid review of the Accelevents platform
– How to maintain social interaction at virtual events
– What we learned about the challenges of going online
For our main annual convention, we took to one of the new, affordable players in the virtual event platforms market, Accelevents. We’ll share what we’ve learned in the planning stages about the specific demands of virtual events (particularly in the realms of accessibility and scheduling for multiple time zones). The convention takes place on October 16-18 so by the 25th we’ll have lots to say about how it went and be able to give an honest review of the Accelevents platform.
Discuss this in the group for this presentation or in the topic group “Trials and Tribulations”.