The Antenna Measurement Techniques Association Continues to Foster Their Community with vFairs

Founded in 1979, the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA) is a non-profit organization of antenna measurement engineers. Since it’s been founded, the organization has been arranging annual conferences for its niche network of professionals. 

These conferences span over five days. The agenda discusses around 100 research papers, offers learning courses, and provides vendors an opportunity to market their products. More importantly, it brings together old friends, letting them share new technology and newly learned nerd jokes. 

The Challenge

For their 42nd annual symposium, AMTA was unable to meet like they always had. And the AMTA family was deeply saddened by the news.

While AMTA knew that the answer to their problems was a virtual event, they weren’t very excited by the prospect. Here’s why using traditional virtual events platforms was not ideal for AMTA:

• Lack of interactivity: Most virtual event platforms were like any other Zoom meeting. They were boring, didn’t offer opportunities to socialize, and were simply too basic for a conference that wanted old friends to connect and have a memorable time. 
• Losing sponsorships: While virtual events do see a sizable attendance these days, they rarely get engagement or leads from the attendees. For this reason, AMTA was worried about losing sponsorships for their virtual symposium. 

The Solution

Michelle Taylor, President of AMTA, sat with vFairs to discuss how the organization didn’t give up and arranged a virtual event to survive the pandemic. Here’s how she helped AMTA keep the spirit of their conference alive and helped bring the AMTA family together again.

Michelle saw vFairs at an industry-related conference. Having had her fair share of draining virtual events, she recognized that the platform was different. It was far superior to any of the other solutions she had seen. There was hope for AMTA.

vFairs offered AMTA a way to completely change how their audience viewed virtual events. Here are the benefits that AMTA realized.

Improved Networking With Several Chat Features

Most virtual event attendees feel that virtual conferences are just like another Zoom meeting. And who remembers ever enjoying those? 

AMTA was looking for a platform that could help old friends socialize comfortably. They wanted the effect of a lounge where you could easily chat with friends you’ve known for 20 years. 

vFairs helped AMTA set up a number of networking avenues. The lounge provided attendees the option to send their questions to speakers, meet with fellow AMTA colleagues, offer their feedback, or meet with the host committee. 

In addition to this, the animated avatars in the lobby helped attendees feel like they were actually at the event. This was a central goal for AMTA – they wanted to replicate as many details from their live events as possible.

“The animated lobby was really the icing on the cake!”, Michelle Taylor. 

Easy-To-Attend Speaker Sessions 

The vFairs speaker sessions were a game-changer for AMTA. The AMTA virtual conference could now offer:

• clearer visuals and audio, something that only the best auditorium seats enjoy during in-person events,
• international speakers from all around the world to make the sessions more diverse and inclusive, and
• accessible sessions as AMTA opted for on-demand videos that could be watched whenever convenient. 

In addition to this flexibility, they opted for hybrid events. Each session was pre-recorded to avoid any technical hiccups, followed by a live 30-minute Q&A session to keep them interactive.

The papers were broken down by topics, with each topic roughly containing 20 papers. Once all papers had been discussed, there would be an additional two-hour Q&A session in the lounge with six to seven authors taking questions. And this formula was loved by the attendees. 

“It was a great discussion. I can’t tell you how active it was. It was very engaging!”

Event Time & Venue Flexibility 

In-person events tend to stick to a tight schedule where you have to be at a certain auditorium at a certain time. Attendees rush to different areas and often miss critical discussions. 

This was another advantage AMTA observed. Their virtual symposium was extremely flexible and offered an edge over their traditional events. People were also much more relaxed and could easily attend their sessions of choice. 

Moreover, AMTA felt that software offers a kind of functional flexibility that in-person events just can’t. There’s always an add-on for something you want to pull off, making your virtual event extremely versatile and dynamic. 

Enhanced Engagement with the Leaderboard