Chat Ability for All Attendees

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Chat Ability for All Attendees

Chat Ability for All Attendees

Can you have attendees in GoToWebinar talk or text "chat" to each other during a live 500 attendee event??

If you can't - PLEASE - change it so they can. It is terrible that there is no way to have the attendees interact with each other -

We have a weekly webinar on the same day, and same time EVERY week. Our clients like to be able to come to the event and interact with each other - and with the GoToMeeting there is no way to do that.

Only the organizer can see the "Questions" from attendees.

Let us know if there are plans to FIX this, thanks!

168 Comments
carehart
Active Contributor

Yes, GTW folks: How do we do enable chat in smaller GTW sessions?

AshC had said above, "We do have Chat available for up to 200 attendees however, with GoToTraining, and 100 attendees with GoToWebinar if you feel that you need this function for your broadcasts to smaller audiences."

Sharon had asked here how we could do that, almost a year ago but no one has replied. I, too, would like to know. And it seems Carla, the next commenter, would as well. We hear the concerns you have for disabling it by default, but we would love to be able enable it by our choice as Ash was indicating.

GlennD
GoTo Manager
Sorry @carehart, that was a typo by AshC, which I have now corrected. He meant GoToMeeting Plus which allows for up to 100 attendees has chat. At this time open chat is not supported in GoToWebinar.
carehart
Active Contributor
OK, thanks for the clarification. Do comments here make it back to consideration by the GTW team? or must we take some additional step to get this considered (or would you say "really, don't bother. it's pretty much never gonna change in GTW"?)
Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

carehart - Glenn is good about taking suggstions from these dicusssions back to the design team. 

 

The big issue here is that GoToWebinar was never designed to be a tool where the attendees chatted, and in the 10 years I have been a GoTo user, I have never needed that feature.

carehart
Active Contributor
Glenn, I don't the correction of Ash's post Did you meant to but forgot?
carehart
Active Contributor
Chris, thanks, but just to be clear, the goal is not so much that they can "chat with each other", if by that you may mean "to each other privately". This is about them being able to "chat publicly", among themselves and to (and in clear view of) the presenter.

As others have said, it is indeed a feature of other webinar tools, including variants of GTW, as he kindly noted. It's also typical of other social media these days. Sure, some eschew it (as too much to keep up with), while others cherish the additional engagement it affords.

And I can say that, as a presenter and organizer of hundreds of webinars, it's been valuable and workable far more often than not.

So I get that it's not a use case you see. I'm sure there may be features you/others use, or wish for, that some others would never use. And I get especially that lots of people need to request something before it may be considered.

I'm just saying this request is not so outlandish as it seems you may be positioning it. 🙂
Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

carehart - I agree this would be a good feature for many GTW users.

 

I remember one time last year when we did need the audience to chat during a webinar and we used Padlet.  This worked well for the live audience in the auditorium as well as the folks attending via GTW.

Adrian_I
Retired GoTo Contributor

Hi @carehart -  we do hear you!  I too agree that what you are suggesting would be a useful feature to have available for organizers to utilize if they wish.  I have tagged your recent post as an idea and it will be passed along to engineers for consideration.  Thank you for the feedback!

carehart
Active Contributor
Thanks, very much.
Ken4
Frequent Contributor

I could see some wanting this option but our group wouldn't so as long as it was a feature we could turn on or off, that's great. For our CE activities we don't see the need for attendees to communicate with eachother.

Thanks