Why I'm Building a Better Way to Manage Webinar Attendees

After 14 years in the virtual events trenches, I've seen enough attendee management headaches to fill a digital medicine cabinet. Here's the thing about webinar platforms – they're fantastic at many things, but their attendee management feels like it was designed by someone who's never actually run a large-scale event.

Let me paint you a picture: You're organizing a high-stakes webinar (I've run some of the biggest in the industry in the earlier days of live streaming, though NDAs keep me from name-dropping). Your attendee list is as complex as a chess game. You've got VIPs who need special access, team members who should have behind-the-scenes views, and regular attendees who need just the right amount of information. And let's not forget about those last-minute changes that always seem to happen five minutes before going live.

Current platforms handle this about as gracefully as a elephant on roller skates.

Here's what I've learned matters most:

1. Speed Matters: When you're updating access levels for 2,000 attendees moments before an event, every second counts. Most platforms make this feel like you're swimming through molasses.

2. Flexibility is Non-Negotiable: Different events need different attendee structures. Having to bend your event to fit the platform's rigid system is backwards thinking.

3. Integration Shouldn't Be a Luxury: Your attendee management should play nice with your existing tech stack, not force you to become a part-time data entry specialist.

4. Real-World Workflows: You need features built for actual event scenarios, not theoretical ones. Like being able to quickly switch someone from attendee to presenter when your main speaker's internet dies (yes, this happens more than you'd think).

This isn't just about making a better mousetrap. It's about fundamentally rethinking how we manage the human side of virtual events. I've spent countless hours debugging attendee issues when I should have been focusing on content and engagement. Every minute spent wrestling with attendee management is a minute not spent making the event better.

So I'm rebuilding what I had all these years prior to the webinar platforms building thier own attendee list. Something that understands that attendee management isn't just a feature – it's a critical component of event success. Something that knows the difference between managing 50 people and 5,000. Something that actually makes sense to people who run real events.

Because here's the truth: The best virtual events I've ever run weren't great because of fancy features or flashy graphics. They were great because everything behind the scenes worked seamlessly, letting us focus on what really matters – creating meaningful connections and sharing valuable content.

That's what I'm building. Not just another tool, but a solution born from thousands of hours of real-world experience, countless midnight configuration sessions, and more than a few gray hairs earned the hard way.

Stay tuned. This is just the beginning.

Want to be part of the beta? forward this to a friend, I promise to treat it with more care than your current webinar platform does.