How to Create a Digital & Interactive Event Recap

By Dionna Dash

Planning, fundraising, hosting – there are so many steps your organization takes to create an event from start to finish. And if you’ve already worked so hard to produce a meaningful program, wouldn’t you want to show it off a bit?

That’s where Storyraise Reports comes in. Reports aren’t only for showcasing annual impact, they can help you recap your biggest events of the season. And you can make them dynamic and interactive, just like your event.

Why do you need to recap your events? Putting together highlights and impactful photos after the fact serves a number of purposes.

The six benefits of creating a digital event recap — and how Storyraise can help you achieve them

 Provides a detailed overview 

By recapping your event’s objectives, key takeaways, and important discussions, you give your readers a chance to revisit what they learned and discover what they might have missed during the event. With Storyraise Reports, your audience can truly relive the excitement through video, interactive elements, and other digital components you include. Nothing is static or stale.

 Re-engages attendees 

Out of sight but not out of mind. You can keep up the momentum of your event even after it ends, fostering an extended sense of connection between your organization and the attendees. Statistically, there is a 48-hour window after an event within which contacting attendees and wider audiences is most effective. Be on time with your post-event marketing by harnessing the speed of Storyraise’s report builder.

 Serves as a resource for others 

For those who couldn’t make it, give them a chance to “be there” by including details about your event, photos of attendees, and recordings of the sessions. These elements are easier than ever to add in Storyraise, where all the digital bells and whistles are at your fingertips. This is not your mother’s event recap.

 Extends the event’s impact 

You can go beyond the actual session and create a digital space in which all the highlights of your event can live on. And whatever content you include in your digital recap can easily be repurposed for other channels, like email and social media.

 Boosts brand awareness 

Having an event recap that you can post online or send to stakeholders helps to get your organization’s name out there and strengthens your brand image and credibility.

 Acts as a memento 

Forget party favors! A digital recap is a long-lasting way to remind attendees of their event experience and get them excited for future happenings.

Before you begin recapping your own events, check out these three examples created with Storyraise Reports.

Three examples of event recaps that engage readers digitally (no boredom here)

1. COP28 Conference

This climate change conference recap walks through the program from beginning to end, introducing the delegates, summarizing each day’s sessions, and ending with final reflections from the participants. If readers feel so inclined, they can click on a button that hyperlinks to a longer summary of discussions and findings. 

The event recap features lots of photo collages and videos, offering readers a direct look into the conference. Bold headers make for easy navigation while enlarged pop-out text highlights key points from the sessions and quotes from attendees. Filled with buttons that link out to bios and blogs, this event recap excels at providing a deeper dive into this two-week conference.

2. Clonlara School Commencement

This international school celebrated the class of 2023 with a creative event recap , a moving way for graduates to remember this moment for years to come. It captures attention and sets the inspiring tone of the recap by starting with a video of the executive director congratulating the graduates..

Clonlara includes eye-catching stats about student achievements, a worldwide  map showing where students are from and quotes at the beginning and end of each section. All together, these elements demonstrate the school’s global impact and nurturing atmosphere.

There’s also a shoutouts section, formatted neatly and cleanly in multiple languages, for families to congratulate graduates and for graduates to express their gratitude to the school. And the end is sweet, too. The report wraps up with videos of staff from all different countries offering their best wishes to the students. 

3. Leven Leadership Institute

This college leadership program’s recap begins and ends with photo collages, offering a glimpse into its participants and events. This report includes a letter from the program’s leadership, summaries of curriculum updates over the past year, quotes from participants, findings from post-program surveys, a congratulatory message to past and current cohorts, and a list of names of this year’s participants.

Despite including lots of lists, this report doesn’t feel lengthy or crowded. All the lists are presented in clean, clear charts. Colored sections separate key elements of the report and headers are big and bold, making navigation easy.