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 ha...
Does GTW have a feature that allows attendees to chat among each other? To share ideas, enable discussion, etc.?
Yep, G2W only has chat for staff, not attendees.
Not a great work-around, but we do sometimes use Q&A for open-ended comments when I have a presenter who really wants the audience to share (e.g. "chat"). You usually need at least a couple of admins managing it, especially if at all high volume.
On my last one, we explained to attendees (repeatedly) the instructor at time would request feedback and to type answers in the question pane. Hosts would "reply" with a single character, usually a period, to "publish" to everyone OR hosts would skim and verbally share responses. Since the Q&A pane would be full of comments, if they had a true question, start it with Q: or Q-.
On that last one, I had 400+ attendees and a presenter who asked for comments about 5 times plus lots of real questions. It took 3 of us to keep the question pane cleared.
It's not perfect by any means, but is a way to add more interactivity similar to chat.
Note - one thing that can get confusing is that a STAFF member (Organizer/Panelist) can send a message directly to an individual attendee. And the attendee can respond. If this happens:
- Response shows up in Chat Window on staff side
- Attendee's Q&A pane gets re-labeled Q&A/Chat (or something like that; the word "chat" appears . At least it used to.)
However, attendees don't have true chat capability; this is private messaging from a webinar staff member to/from a specific attendee.
People in my building are beginning to use a different virtual meeting tool, because it does have the attendee chat feature. This other meeting tool lacks many of the GoToWebinar features that make for a great webinar, but my colleagues are willing to sacrifice meeting quality to get the chat feature they desire.