Hi,
I just ran a 2-hour event on the new Zoom Events platform, one main panel followed by two simultaneous breakouts, all in webinar format. I tested everything couple of times with assigning alternative hosts to the breakouts so I can jump back and forth from one breakout session to the other and keep the breakouts running.
However, during the event, when the time came to launch the breakouts simultaneously, both alt hosts started their session on time, however attendees were able to join only one of them. The other session started, speakers began talking but attendees were not able to see the join the breakout session through the "Join" button in the Lobby.
There was nothing I could do to restart the session or anything else.
Here are couple of hypotheses of why that happened:
1. We kept the main panel running while we opened simultaneously both breakouts which means we ran 3 sessions at the same time. However, all sessions were running with the speakers assigned to them, only attendees were not able to join one of them.
2. I let both breakouts to be launched after the practice session by the alternative hosts, and not by me, the main host
3. Technical glitch. Although this format was tried and tested and it worked
How we tried to mitigate it and what we did before the event to prepare:
1. We did multiple dry runs testing all the functions we wanted to use prior to the event, including with mock up attendees, and real hosts and panelists
2. We tried to create a new session and get everyone from the faulty breakout to join it, however we abandoned this idea and we went back to the main panel session and continued there
3. We tried looking for real time support channels, but such are non-existent, therefore we were not able to access problem-solver instantly
Please share your thoughts, as I have not experienced such a thing before, thank you in advance!