Welcome to our Year in Review: we share memorable highlights from 2020, including what you wanted to learn and how much time you spent doing it.

2020 has been a big year for us. But it didn’t start out that way.

In the early months of 2020, as the pandemic spread across the globe, we watched in horror as our clients cancelled their events, one after the other, our revenue dropping to zero within a span of just a few weeks. We weren’t the only ones and we don’t need to tell you about the ways in which Covid-19 devastated the events industry.

In a show of great agility and resilience, our brave partners in the events industry quickly pivoted to virtual, and we followed suit. In just two weeks we launched Virtual Braindate and the rest is, as they say, history…

Therefore, as we wrap up the year, the lesson we’re choosing to take from 2020 is not one of loss, but one of resilience, creativity, and great courage. We’re overjoyed to share with you that we’re ending 2020, having brought Braindate to more events than ever before (112 events!) and with a team that is bigger, stronger, and more agile. It’s all thanks to you.

“The lesson we’re choosing to take from 2020 is not one of loss, but one of resilience, creativity, and great courage.”

Caught in action: New friendship forming at the NAA Apartmentalize Braindate Lounge

In 2019, we celebrated the Braindate-led peer learning movement, where you went on 14,000 braindates, formed 50,000 connections, and spent 8000 hours learning from each other’s experiences.

This year, we are celebrating you—for adapting with us, for your desire to connect authentically with your peers, and for you showing up for each other—despite the distance. So, stay with us, as we take you through some of the greatest hits of 2020.

Launching Virtual Braindate: Applying Best Practices Gathered over a Decade to Create Human Virtual Experiences

When we launched Virtual Braindate, we asked ourselves the question:

“How can we translate the care our Braindate team and technology bring to live events into a virtual experience unlike any other—one that doesn’t feel isolating, but radiates a sense of belonging and community?”

Keeping that guiding question in mind, we built a solution that gathered close to a decade of best practices for creating profound connection experiences at events. What makes Virtual Braindate unique, especially in the virtual context, is the solution’s emphasis on human facilitation and hospitality.

Since launching in March of 2020, participants have used Virtual Braindate to connect with and learn from each other over meaningful and authentic conversations. Further, they have been able to do this under the care of virtual learning concierges, a team of humans (not bots!) who are on call to support participants actively in making the most of their experience.

The best part: with Virtual Braindate, our clients now have the ability to gather their communities, multiple times over the year for Braindate-only events, without the need to host an entire event full of streamed content. An example of this is our long time collaborator PCMA: They used Virtual Braindate to help their community connect and support each other multiple times over 2020.

“The best part: Our clients now have the ability to gather their communities, multiple times over the year for Braindate-only events, without the need to host an entire event full of streamed content.”

In the infographic below, we share the overall impact Virtual Braindate has had in 2020, and insightful data we gathered on the number of conversations you had this year, the lasting connections you made, and the subjects you were most excited to learn about.

Impact of Virtual Braindate in 2020

While we love data, it certainly can’t capture the magic of connecting with someone…

These are just some of the #Braindate stories you shared with us. To see more, click here.

We launched new Braindate offers!

Braindate three new levels of service: produced, coached, DIY

Over the course of 2020, we asked you: How can we evolve our services to better meet your needs?

Based on your valuable feedback, we launched three new levels of service suited for any event context (be it virtual, hybrid, or in-person) or budget, so that you could help your community connect with each other—no matter what.

These new offers represent a new era for Braindate: it is a way for us to make our solution more widely available and accessible to any organizer who wants to help members of their community grow with each other.

We had the privilege of being written about in the following publications:

Marie Claire: Is Braindating’ The New Way To Network?
BizBash: 6 Smart Engagement Strategies From C2 Montréal’s Virtual Conference featuring Braindate
Meetings.Net: Peer-to-Peer Learning Goes Virtual
Event Marketer: Three Virtual Collaboration Platforms to Use in the Era of Social Distancing
Le Devoir: Surviving the Distresses of Remote Work

Finally, 2020 was also the year when our team grew!

e180 team first virtual holiday party — A snapshot from our very first virtual holiday party, wishing you and your loved ones a wonderful new year!

Thanks to your enthusiastic embrace of our platform and the support from the Canadian Government, we were able to grow our team giving us the ability to work harder, better, faster, stronger to make your Braindate experience better than ever before.

Going into 2021 with gratitude, hope, and you

As we wrap up the year and this piece, we want to thank you once again. During these unprecedented times, you showed us that with the support of our community, we can get through anything.

We’ve got big plans for 2021 and we’ve already begun working hard on creating even better, more satisfying peer learning experiences for you and your communities. Stay with us, because this adventure has just begun.

See you in the new year.