
Ask HN: How is there not a good online conference company? - chrisBob
With the current virus outbreak I am seeing a lot of conferences canceled. Why isn&#x27;t there a good system for putting these online? I am planning to skip WWDC this year, and I feel like they could replicate most of the conference online.<p>I think a popular system would include:<p>- Live streaming of sessions with feeds of both slides and the presenter<p>- Group discussion and panel sessions where a series of people present<p>- A way to chat in questions, or have participants speak their questions with followups.<p>- An overall site with the schedule and links to all of the components.<p>- A logistics service that mails out conference packets<p>- ? A chat-roulette type service to let you connect with other conference members. Some conferences already provide a live-stream, but you lose out on the 1:1 connections that you get from these events. There should be a way to replicate that.<p>- A conference-specific store<p>- A way to wait in line for special 1:1 services<p>This is a bigger project than I can handle, but seems feasible. Limiting the conference to the 100-10k people that register would make all of the technical challenges much easier, but it could also be scaled up to include people who wouldn&#x27;t normally attend. <i>Someone</i> should be all over this right now. Is there a good service for this that I couldn&#x27;t find?
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chrisBob
\- poster sessions with a way for people to see the available posters and
discuss them with the poster presenter

I completely forgot poster sessions which are a large part of most scientific
conferences

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mhdhn
OMG, how do classes run with such sh*t SW? I've been taking classes that are
considered "state of the art" and using Adobe Connect. What an absolute
backwater of neglect!

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VieEnCode
There's an early-stage company called hopin working in this space:

[https://hopin.to](https://hopin.to)

Even beyond the coronavirus, events and conferences may be increasingly
looking into this option as an element in carbon footprint reduction.

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chrisBob
hopin looks like a decent product and is at least trying to get into this
space. Has anyone attended an event they hosted?

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VieEnCode
Not personally, but I'd also be interested to hear from any posters who have
tested it out.

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helen842000
There is! HeySummit is really nice.

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kull
As much as I am pro remote at work, things I enjoy about in person conferences
are visiting a new city and attending sessions and presentations I would
probably skip if available online (I can watch it later, but it’s never gonna
happen).

