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- Cvent Product News Team
SPOTLIGHT: Turn Common Interests into Meaningful Connections with Community Meetings
INTRODUCTION
Networking is one of the biggest reasons people show up to an event in person. It's also the hardest part for planners to get right. You spend weeks guessing which roundtable topics will land, booking rooms, and lining up moderators, only to watch half the tables sit empty because the conversations on offer weren't the ones people actually wanted.
Community Meetings takes that guesswork off your plate. It lets attendees create their own small-group conversations, on the topics they genuinely care about, right inside the Event App. So your team spends less time guessing topics and more time seeing real relationships form. Best of all, it runs on the Appointments Premium setup your team already knows.
AT A GLANCE
Persona | Traditional Obstacle | The Community Meetings Solution | Key Benefits |
For attendees | Cold outreach feels awkward, and standard 1:1 appointments feel too formal. | Create small-group, topic-based community meetings or join existing ones in a tap. | Agency: organic networking on their own terms. |
For planners | Guessing roundtable topics is manual and often leaves tables empty. | Attendees self-organize community meetings in planner-defined spaces and times. | Scale: near-zero coordination on autopilot. |
HOW IT WORKS IN REAL LIFE
Part 1: How Sarah (attendee) built real connections
The obstacle. Sarah walked out of an event technology keynote with a mind full of questions. She wanted to brainstorm registration workflows with other mid-sized teams, but finding others who were interested in chatting about this topic was next to impossible and asking total strangers felt awkward.
The solution. Sarah asked at the info desk if there were any sessions about this topic. Since there were none, they recommended that Sarah create her own Community Meeting to chat with other attendees who were also interested in talking about registration workflows.
Sarah opened the Attendee Hub event App , tapped Community Meetings, and took control:
AI assist: She typed a simple topic, "Registration scaling for mid-sized teams," and used the built-in AI Writing Assistant to polish it into a compelling description.
Frictionless booking: She picked an available time slot, reserved a table in the Networking Lounge, and published it.
Easy discovery: As David browsed Community Meetings in the app across the venue, Sarah's meeting appeared under his Discover More tab. With no schedule conflicts, he tapped Join and it synced straight to his agenda.
The outcome. On Tuesday at noon, Sarah, David, and four other attendees who were also interested in joining the discussion met at Table 3 and spent an hour trading real-world solutions. Afterward, Sarah used the app's messaging to send David a follow-up note, turning a quick community meeting into a lasting professional contact.
Part 2: How Marcus (the event organizer) orchestrated networking at scale
The obstacle. Last year, Marcus spent weeks planning roundtable topics, reserving rooms, and assigning moderators. It was an administrative headache, and many tables sat empty because the topics didn't interest attendees.
The solution. This year, Marcus turned on Community Meetings using his existing Appointments Premium rules:
Set the guardrails:
In Appointments Premium, he setup three one-hour time slots and setup 10 tables in the lounge, capping each at 8 seats for Community Meetings.
Marcus wanted to ensure that these meetings were authentic and purposeful, so he set them up so that exhibitors could not set up Community Meetings, but he did allow them to join attendee-created meetings.
Drive engagement: He promoted the feature with a quick link on the Event App home page and awarded 50 game points for hosting or joining a community meeting.
Autopilot: Attendees did the rest, proposing topics, reserving tables, and managing their own schedules. The system automatically blocks anyone with a conflicting appointment or a full table.
The outcome. The lounge buzzed with attendee-led discussions all week, with zero moderator overhead. Afterward, Marcus pulled his standard Appointment event reports to see the most popular topics, then used those insights to shape future events’ session conten[KP8] t and identify potential speakers.
BUILT FOR HOW ATTENDEES MOVE THROUGH AN EVENT
My Community Meetings shows everything they're hosting or have joined.
Discover More surfaces new conversations worth joining.
History keeps past meetings handy, so networking doesn't stop when the meeting ends.
Attendees can also search by title, description, or location, join or leave within the capacity rules, and open their meetings in offline read-only mode when the Wi-Fi gets shaky. Every meeting shows up on My Schedule with its own Community Meetings tag, so they don’t miss anything on their agenda.
THE VALUE KEEPS GOING AFTER THE EVENT
Because it all runs on Appointments Premium, engagement data flows straight into your standard Appointment reports with no extra setup. Community meetings are tracked separate from appointments, so the data stays clean. Once the event wraps, you can:
See which topics your audience were most interested in.
Shape future events’ content around topics that created interest but were not part of the agenda.
Spot potential speakers who proved they can draw a crowd.
Help audiences continue the conversation when the session is just too short. Speakers can create their own Community Meetings to extend the conversation with interested audience members.
Ready to give your attendees the freedom to make the connections they came for? Explore Community Meetings in your Appointments Premium setup, or reach out to your Cvent team to learn more.