SpatialChat

Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education just proved something most universities ignore: Engagement is not a content problem. It’s a room design problem. They ran a 300+ person academic event that didn’t feel like a webinar. Here’s what actually drove it:- 1. One Stage. Clear control. No fragmented sessions, no confusion Impact: 100% of users knew where to start, and 0 drop-off at entry 2. No forced breakout rooms. People chose conversations based on interest Impact: 2–3x higher active participation vs assigned rooms 3. Movement = engagement. Users could enter/exit conversations freely Impact: Higher dwell time + more interactions per user 4. Onboarding wasn’t an afterthought. “How to use the space” was built into the environment Impact: First-time users activated in minutes (not 15–20 min friction) Most virtual events fail because: > You lock people into static formats > You control too much > You remove autonomy Harvard did the opposite. They designed for behavior, not broadcasting.

Oregon State University ran a 150-person academic event that felt nothing like a lecture. No slides droning. No ignored chat box. No cameras-off silence. Their School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering hosted a live, interactive session on SpatialChat. Where 150 participants actually moved, talked, and connected in real time. Academic events don’t have a content problem. They have an environment problem. Their results using SpatialChat prove it: • 70%+ active participation. The highest their school has seen for virtual lectures • 2× longer engagement vs. standard virtual formats • 0 facilitation needed for peer conversations Nobody volunteers to be a case study after a forgettable event. Oregon State did.

Twitch ran a virtual event that turned part-time streamers into full-time creators. 15% of attendees leaped. Not from a masterclass. Not from a course. From a single event. Here's what they did differently  “The old way” One stage. One speaker. Hundreds of people watching. Nobody talking. Everyone leaves the same way they arrived, alone. “The SpatialChat way” Multiple rooms. Free movement. Creators finding each other, sharing strategies, having real conversations in small groups, without a moderator pushing them through an agenda. The difference? Traditional formats are designed for attendance. While SpatialChat is designed for transformation. The numbers don't lie: > Twitch saw 75% more engagement sustained across the entire event, not just the opening hour > 3+ meaningful peer connections per attendee on average, no icebreakers required > 15% of part-time creators transitioned to full-time streaming after the event This event was career-changing for real people. And it didn't come from better content. It came from a better environment. While everyone else is still running webinars and wondering why nobody shows up energized, Twitch built a room where ambition became contagious.

Terex Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers of heavy equipment globally, ran one of the most interesting virtual collaboration stories we've ever seen. They got their global teams. Distributed regions. And a Zoom-and-slide-deck culture that was quietly killing internal engagement. The results weren't incremental. It created a different category of outcomes entirely: > 1.8× jump in active participation, overnight! > 65% of attendees in live peer conversations, not passive listening > 3× more cross-team interactions per session than before > Post-session energy that spilled into follow-up conversations days later While most companies still argue over camera-on policies, Terex quietly solved the engagement problem entirely. They didn't get better at running Zoom calls. They stopped running Zoom calls. The companies winning at distributed culture right now aren't the ones with the best slide decks. They're the ones who stopped mistaking a meeting for a room.

250 people. One virtual space. Zero support team on standby. Brightly Software (a Siemens company) ran one of the cleanest enterprise virtual events we've seen. And they did it entirely self-serve. Most enterprise virtual events are a juggling act, managing the platform, chasing glitches, and herding attendees. While simultaneously trying to run the actual event. Brightly experienced none of that. SpatialChat ran as infrastructure. And the numbers backed it up: > 2× higher dwell time compared to standard webinar formats > 65% of attendees actively engaged in conversations, not just cameras on > 0 support incidents. The entire event ran without a single escalation Brightly didn't just want to run an event. They wanted to prove it worked with data they could take back to leadership. Engagement reports. Dwell time. ROI they could point to in the next planning cycle. That's the difference between running an event and owning one. If your team is still spending more energy managing the platform than running the experience, you're solving the wrong problem.

Twitch ran a 40-person internal collaboration session on SpatialChat. Not a town hall. Not a webinar. An actual working session. The kind where ideas are supposed to collide. Traditional video tools would've forced their people into a single thread. One speaker. Everyone else on mute. Maybe a breakout room, but momentum dies the second you split the group. SpatialChat worked differently for them. Spatial audio. Open space. Participants moved freely in conversation forms and clusters. No raised hands. No facilitator managing who speaks next. Just natural conversation flow. For Twitch, that meant: > 75% active participation, not just passive watching > 2–3 conversation clusters forming organically > Facilitator overhead dropped immensely. The room ran itself. The difference for the Twitch team wasn’t a feature. It was a solution that gave them the power to take control of the event. If your remote workshops feel flat, the tool might be the bottleneck.

Novartis was planning a virtual gathering for 200 participants and reached out with an interesting dilemma. The question wasn’t about technology; it was about format. Do you run a high-energy 1–2 day event with everyone in one place… Or design a multi-month series of smaller sessions where people keep coming back, building relationships over time? For organizations like Novartis, the goal isn’t another webinar. It’s creating an environment where professionals can move between discussions, network with peers, and have real conversations the way they would at an in-person gathering. Novartis noticed that grid-based solutions could never achieve • 70%+ of attendees actively moving between discussions • 600+ peer interactions during the event • 25 min average conversation time • 40%+ participants joining multiple conversations Always great to support teams rethinking how meaningful interactions happen in virtual spaces.

CPA Ontario recently hosted a Virtual Career Showcase on SpatialChat, bringing post-secondary students together with leading firms, including KPMG Canada EY PwC Canada Deloitte BDO MNP Corporation and RSM. Instead of a traditional webinar, students explored a choose-your-own-adventure networking space where they could move between firms, learn about evolving CPA career paths, and speak directly with recruiters and professionals. The result was a career event that felt much closer to a real networking environment with multiple conversations happening simultaneously as students connected with potential future employers and discovered where a CPA career could take them. Always great to support initiatives like this that help students build real connections with future employers.

Pfizer teams started running some small internal meetings inside SpatialChat. Just team discussions. For up to 50 participants. What changed wasn’t the agenda. It was the meeting dynamic. Instead of one conversation dominating the call, the room naturally split into smaller discussion groups. People moved between conversations, and discussions happened in parallel. In meetings of this size, SpatialChat sessions typically saw 68% active participation, with 3–8 conversation groups forming organically and roughly 2× the conversational interaction of traditional video calls. A simple shift: From one meeting with many listeners to one room with many conversations.

Bayer Communications & Public Government Affairs team recently hosted a stakeholder engagement event with a clear objective: avoid the limitations of a traditional webinar format. For most corporate events, the structure is predictable: a presentation, limited interaction, and minimal networking between participants. To address this, the team configured their event environment on SpatialChat ahead of the scheduled session. This allowed the organizers to prepare the space in advance and structure the environment intentionally: • a central presentation area for announcements • smaller discussion zones for focused conversations • open networking areas for informal interaction By the time participants joined, the environment was already prepared. Instead of joining a standard video call, participants entered a structured virtual space designed to support both presentations and peer interaction. For corporate communications teams running stakeholder events, the difference is subtle but important: the event becomes an environment for interaction, not just a channel for broadcasting information.