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We used this for an annual industry conference this year due to COVID. Many participants experienced audio and visual difficulties. We were able to work through this using the Whova chat function and logging in to the meetings directly on Zoom. Be very careful not to click on any chat “pop ups” that appear on your screen when you are in a session. If you do, you will be removed from your session to view the chat box. When you reenter the session, you will be put into the session “waiting room” and the session facilitator will need to readmit you. I do hope that we can begin to have our conferences in person again soon. This conferencing platform is a great idea, and I’m sure Whova will work through the bugs in their software over time. However, there are so many software bugs and usability issues that an app like this will never be able to take the place of in person learning.

Whova tech support does not exist. They implemented an update that wiped out our speakers and vendors uploaded information the day before our conference. They are West coast based. We are East coast. Tech support is only available when they open. With every issue that came up they immediately blame the issue on something we did or were doing. After the first day of our three day event they did a security update that wiped out the compatibility between Whova and Zoom. Our second day is 1/2 over and no resolution to the chat issue. They are very cavalier with their support. When their update wiped out the data for vendors and presenters they suggested we just reload the information less than 8 hours before our conference. I would not recommend Whova to anyone searching for a platform to use for a virtual conference. Terrible, terrible tech support.

I recently attended the first all-online version of the Pacific Seabird Group’s Annual Meeting. It was held on the Whova app, and the features supported on the app were great. Some improvements from the in-person meetings I’ve attended in the past are the ability to access the pre-recorded or live-recorded talks and posters, which you can access again if your notes aren’t perfect. The chat options in the live talks are great, and the speaker can focus on answering questions, rather than the room being held captive while one person has a “more of a comment” moment. The “agenda” interface was great, and the ability to set up a “my agenda” to compare to the whole conference was great. Getting in and out of “rooms” was simple, and I didn’t experience any lag or glitching when they opened. All in all, I hope we use the platform to augment any in-person future meetings, especially since being able to access the other talks means you don’t have to miss anything during concurrent sessions. If we do future online or virtual conferences I think this would be a great app to organize it on.