Google Slides Now Available in Expo Booths AND YouTube Videos Now Play in Sessions!

Hello!

This week's product updates are packed with high-value impact for your events. We're excited to share them with you.

1. Google Slides are now available in Expo Booths

In your expo booths, you can now display an interactive Google Slides presentation. You can set this to loop on a timer or you can let attendees navigate the deck on their own.

Watch this tutorial video to see how it works:

Google Slides in Hopin Expo Booths Demo

Why this matters: With Google Slides in your Expo Booths, it opens up a whole new world of attendee interaction, sponsor opportunities, and branding inside your booths.

For example, you can leverage storytelling inside the booth, where each slide is a page in a story that the attendee turns. It could be a whitepaper, a tutorial, a game, or a slideshow. These can be as interactive as you want them to be.

Sneak peek: We'll be releasing a blog post on using gamification to increase engagement at events hosted on Hopin later this week!

Also, don't forget — in Expos, when you update the content provider of a booth (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Session, or Google Slides), it updates instantly and automatically in the live event — so no user-side page refresh is required. Meaning, you provide a seamless experience for your attendees.

2. YouTube videos can be played inside Sessions

Have you ever been in a session and wanted to share a YouTube video so that you can watch it together? Now you can!

Before, Sessions were limited to either livestreaming or screensharing content. But now you can play YouTube videos directly from YouTube, meaning it's now possible to stream any pre-recorded content you want in a session.

Here's how it works.

• Anybody can share YouTube videos by clicking the YouTube icon in the control bar (see screenshot above).

• Paste the whole YouTube video URL in the box and click Share Video.

• The YouTube video loads on each person's machine and syncs the timestamps so the video plays at the same time for everyone. This means video quality doesn't depend on the sharer's connection.

• Only the sharer will have video playback controls.

• There's no limitation on the length of the video.

• Note: the session does NOT record (if you've enabled that setting) the YouTube video in your event dashboard.

• Moderators can remove the YouTube video by removing the participant sharing it.

Use cases for YouTube videos in Sessions:

• Watch a video together and react/chat in real-time with others to enjoy or learn simultaneously. It's great for workshops, classes, and group collaboration.

• Add another dimension of multi-media presentation to your interactive roundtable.

• Play a YouTube video for attendees to watch while you take a break with your camera and mic off 😀

• Those are just a few examples — there are plenty more!

Discussion question:

Based on these two new features—Google Slides in Expo Booths and YouTube Videos in Sessions—what are creative ways to use them at your next Hopin event? Leave a comment below 👇 .