Welcome to the new Room

Gatheround’s new and improved Room is where meeting magic happens. Highlight topics and speakers with stackable activities, “pinned” videos, and a one-tap toggle for switching layouts. 

We’re not big fans of the average video meeting. The typical Zoom or Google Meet is not much more than an old-school conference call with a few bells and whistles. Not to be too negative, but:

• These meetings are not engaging and they’re not inclusive.
• They don’t empower audiences to tailor the experience to their own needs.
• They don’t give hosts the tools they need to easily put together a captivating agenda (and improvise and iterate on it in the moment.)

Gatheround is different: it provides everything you need to make meetings fun and a good use of everyone’s time. And, now, with the latest updates, it does even more.

Here’s how the new features work: 

Stack Activities
Your activities won’t disappear after you play them; they’ll stack up like a deck of cards. That gives you the ability to flip back to completed activities and review Poll results, re-read Flash Cards, and more. 

Pin Speakers
Want to direct attention to one or more speakers? Hover over the video feed you want to highlight, then tap the thumbtack icon in the top-right corner to pin it to the Main Room. It will stay up until it’s unpinned or that person turns off their camera.

Pin Activities
Run two activities at once. Just press play on one activity and hit “pin,” then press play on a second activity. For example, you can now start a YouTube video and keep it playing in the background while your participants read through a set of Flash Cards or complete individual work in a timed Reflection.

Toggle the Layout
Participants can now easily switch from our default horizontal layout to a new vertical layout that moves chat to the right side. This empowers the audience to engage with different elements of the meeting agenda according to their own preferences — for example, if a speaker is screensharing, participants may prefer to use the vertical layout, which provides more real estate to view the presenter’s screen.

Why is this such a big deal to us? 

Because it’s all about empowering you, our users — hosts and participants alike — to have the most engaging and meaningful meeting experience you can.

Interested in seeing the new features in action? Check out this 2 minute video. For even more insights, check out our Quick Guide to Gatheround or attend one of our live host trainings. 

We hope you’re as excited as we are and we can’t wait to see the creative ways you use them to make your Gatheround meetings even more interactive.