Take a Zoom break
Run The World instead
College is supposed to be one of the best times of our lives — it definitely was for me. But this fall, with COVID-19, life on many U.S. campuses has gotten strange and even depressing: remote classes, sports and social events cancelled, and clubs and groups unable to meet in person. Many students are feeling increasingly isolated.
This is probably not the college experience you had in mind. What's missing is the community. Humans need to connect with other humans, even if we can't see them face-to-face. So no, you're not crazy for desperately wanting to interact with others, or have a great conversation, maybe even laugh — you're normal.
Unfortunately, video-conference tools aren't very good at being social. Zoom may be fine for streaming your 9 a.m. Organic Chem lecture, but it wasn't really designed to foster human connection or to bring people together around shared interests and activities.
But that is exactly what Run The World was created for. And we want to help you and your stir-crazy classmates shake off the boredom, and get people together for an event that's as lively and engaging as anything IRL.
So today we're making Run The World free for students. All you need is an .edu email address and you can organize and host a virtual event that is nothing like your standard boring AF video-conference. In the past 2 months, we have seen educators and students from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, U Waterloo, Carnegie Mellon, U Minnesota, Pomona College and more all start to adopt Run The World as the solution to run student social and engagement events that help students socialize with each other and build community to keep the remote campus alive. For example, Stanford and Pomona both ran regular mixers with students and alumni. Yale is running academic workshops and conferences where students get to interact with professors and scholars face to face. U Waterloo is running events to help women in computer science get mentors.
It's your world. Run it.
Run The World is not video-conferencing, it's a platform that was expressly designed to make online events social, intimate, fun. Anything but boring. So if you're a club president, RA, team captain, social chair, or anyone else who wants to host a dynamic event, here's a taste of what we can help you do:
In just minutes, create a free event for up to 500 people. You can easily share invitations, even sell tickets.
Host rich virtual meetups of any kind: weekly gatherings, info sessions, recruiting events, speaker series. The always popular Cocktail Party feature is an especially good way to help people who've never met get to know each other.
Seamlessly integrate group and one-on-one conversations
Use features like interactive polls and group selfies to make your events more immersive and fun.
It's a crazy, uncertain time we're living through and we're all making sacrifices to keep each other safe. But community has never been as critical in our lives. So, even as you're heads down on studying, please remember to take a break and connect with others.
Xiaoyin Qu
Founder and CEO, Run The World