HeySummit gives you a few ways to help attendees meet each other, ask questions, and continue conversations around your event. The best setup depends on whether you want ongoing networking across the whole event, time-bound networking sessions, or one-to-one conversations with speakers and sponsors.

If your plan includes the Event Lobby, go to Event Setup > Settings > Event Lobby & Directory. From there, you can enable the lobby, direct messages, and the attendee directory.

The attendee directory gives attendees a searchable place to find other people at the event. If you enable Require Directory Permission?, attendees are asked during registration whether they are happy to be added to the directory. Attendees who do not give permission are not shown in the directory and cannot be messaged privately.

Attendees can also update their profile information, including their photo, title, bio, and relevant profile details, from their attendee account area.

For time-bound networking, add a dedicated networking session to your schedule and run it like any other talk. This works well for welcome sessions, speed networking, hosted roundtables, or short group conversations between content sessions.

If you want breakout rooms or a highly structured networking format, choose a webinar or meeting provider that supports that experience and connect it to the scheduled session.

For networking during live sessions, use HeySummit's interactive features. Live chat lets attendees participate in the session conversation, while Q&A and polls give them structured ways to interact with hosts and speakers.

You can turn these features on from Event Setup > Settings > Talk & Replay Experience, and adjust them for individual talks from the talk's advanced settings.

If you want attendees to start private conversations with speakers, enable the Chat Inbox for speakers.

Sponsors can also receive attendee messages through the Sponsor Booth, when you have enabled sponsor booth features and your sponsors are ready to respond.

If you want networking to continue outside the event site, invite attendees and speakers into a community space such as a Slack workspace, Facebook group, Circle, Mighty Networks, or another community platform you already use.

Many organisers use a mix of these options: the Event Lobby and directory for event-wide discovery, scheduled sessions for focused networking, and chat or Q&A for interaction during individual talks.