Applicable packages

Applicable to all Symposium packages

This article is for event organizers. If you are an event participant, please see our Resources for Participants section.

Participants can view your event by locating it under Symposium's Discover Events page or directly via the event link that you as the organizer may distribute to prospective participants. Once they have located your event on the Symposium site, accessing and engaging requires a couple of small steps, depending on the settings you've configured for your event.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Getting into an event
  
• Browsing and commenting on presentations
• Accessing Live Sessions
• Making a donation

Getting into an event

How an attendee initially gets into your event will depend on your Access Settings and how you have configured your event Registration.

In order to view and participate in a Private event, attendees must first create an account on Symposium, and then register for the event via the Register button in the bottom right hand corner of your event thumbnail. If they aren't already logged into their Symposium account, they will first be prompted to sign up or log in, which is a quick and simple process (further detailed below). 

NOTE: To meet COPPA guidelines, if a user is less than 13 years old upon account signup, we require the parent or guardian to verify their identity via credit card and provide consent to use the Symposium platform. If the parent verification is not completed, the user will be deleted from our platform after 30 days. For more information about COPPA, please refer to this article. 

If your event is Public, attendees will be able to view all event content without needing to sign up or register, but they will not be able to access particular aspects of your event or comment under presentations unless they first register for your event. Live Sessions by default are only available to registered participants, to prevent any instances of 'Zoombombing' from unauthorized external participants, but you may opt to make your Live Sessions public as well using a toggle on your Access Settings page. Commenting is restricted to registered participants only.

The steps to sign up and register for an event are as follows:

1. New users must create an account on Symposium at https://symposium.foragerone.com/signup using a pre-authorized email for your event.

   • A verification link will be generated upon completing sign up, which will be sent to the email associated with the new account. Users must open the verification email from Symposium and click the link to verify their account. 

2. Log in to user's Symposium account at https://symposium.foragerone.com/login.

3. After logging in, participants will be prompted to register for the event when they navigate to the event from our Discover Events page or via the distributed event access link. 

Note:

• While participants may access a launched event without registering if the event is Public, they will be prompted to register if they try to leave a comment underneath a presentation and, depending on your event settings, if they try to access your Live Sessions. If you have customized a registration period on your public event that begins before the event launches, participants will be able to register for your event before it launches.
• If the event is Private, attendees will be prompted to confirm registration for the event before they are able to enter the event.

If you have not created a customized registration form, registration is a simple process that requires one click of a button. All participants are required to go through this registration process in order to comment or access private Live Sessions for security purposes, so that our system can verify that the user is authorized to participate in the event per your Access Settings. This ensures that unauthorized users don’t disrupt Live Sessions (Zoombombing) or leave inappropriate comments under presentations. There is no way for anonymous comments to be posted under presentations.

NOTE: Whether your event is Public or Private, attendees must first sign up for an account on Symposium and then Register for the event in order to leave a comment. This ensures that unauthorized users don’t leave inappropriate comments under presentations.

For PUBLIC events:
When a viewer tries to comment and they are not signed in to a Symposium account, they will see the following message:
When a viewer tries to comment and they are signed in to their Symposium account but not registered for the event, they will see the following message:

Once a viewer has signed up for an account on Symposium, verified their email, and logged in to their new account, they will be able to register for their event in one click.

Welcome page

When attendees first enter your event, they will be taken to the event Welcome Page, where they can familiarize themselves with the event via any provided content, such as a welcome video/image and the welcome message. 

NOTE: The Welcome Page is not included on the Single Lite or Single Plus package. Attendees will land directly on the Presentations page when they enter an event hosted on a Single Lite or Single Plus package.

From the Welcome Page, attendees may click over to two other event pages: Presentations and Live Sessions.

Browsing and commenting on presentations

Under the Presentations tab, viewers can browse a repository of all the presentations uploaded by presenters by scrolling through the pages, searching keywords and authors, or narrowing down their search with specific filters that can be created and tailored by you as the organizer. (Search filters and other aspects of your event can be customized with specific Symposium packages.) Please note that we recently added a new feature where to better cater to live events, if there is no asynchronous content submitted, then the Presentations page automatically remains hidden. 

The order of presentations is automatically randomized specifically for each viewer, so that each presentation receives about equal visibility. The order won’t change for the viewer each time they leave and return to your event site; the order of presentations will only be randomized on their first visit. 

Once a viewer finds a presentation that piques their interest, they can select “Preview” in the upper right hand corner to take a closer look at the presentation media without leaving the browsing page.

From here, viewers can either close the preview and go back to browsing, or click View Full Presentation to take a deeper dive. 

Once on the specific presentation page, the viewer can interact with the content in a number of ways. Viewers can click around, zoom in, scroll through multi-page documents like slide decks, or if it is a video presentation, they can browse the video. Additionally, viewers can peruse any supplementary text or watch a video uploaded by the presenter, which may serve as a way for the presenter to provide a quick introduction or explanation to the work that they’ve done. 

Once a viewer has had the opportunity to digest all of this content, they can leave a comment below the presentation to share feedback with the presenter or spark a conversation with an interesting insight. 

During high periods of activity, there may be multiple comments going back and forth per presentation, with some interactions extending and continuing throughout the following days or weeks. 

When a comment is posted under a presentation, an automatic email notification is sent to all listed presenters. In the case that someone responds to a comment, a notification is also sent to the original commenter. This allows presenters and participants to keep track of the ongoing conversation and return to the platform to continuously engage.

For more information on how to customize your presentation submission form and collect and manage submissions, please see our support resources on Presentations. 

Accessing Live Sessions

Under the Live Sessions tab, organizers can create a program of the synchronous activities (plenary or concurrent) they are hosting, including welcome keynotes, seminars, Q&A sessions, panel discussions, or even rewards ceremonies. Viewers can see a schedule of all live sessions, including descriptions, information, and an access link provided by organizers via the platform of their choice (Zoom, WebEx, Google Meets, etc). 

Under Live Sessions > Tables, you can easily facilitate synchronous activities such as networking, small group discussions, and more using inbuilt video conferencing capabilities hosted directly on Symposium. As part of your live sessions, you can create virtual tables, each ‘seating’ 2-8 participants. Participants can easily join and move between open tables during an ongoing session. For more information on Tables, please see our dedicated guide to Tables functionality and set up.

For more information on hosting live sessions and table sessions on Symposium, please see our support resources on Live Sessions.

Making a donation

Organizers can configure a donations widget that will float in the bottom left hand corner of each page of their event, allowing viewers to effortlessly contribute gifts to their program, office, and/or organization. Participants can easily click on the widget to pop up a quick form and fill it out to donate. 

For more information on configuring your Donations widget and collecting funds through your Symposium event, please see our support resources on Donations.