How Yokohama National University Hosted a 500-Participant Interactive Virtual Poster Session on SpatialChat

Riddhik Kochhar -

Context: Scaling Academic Poster Sessions Virtually

Yokohama National University’s College of Urban Sciences leveraged SpatialChat to host a 1-day virtual poster session, simulating the dynamics of an in-person academic conference. The event aimed to allow researchers and participants to explore multiple posters, engage in interactive discussions, and network with peers in a digital setting.

Using an event-based plan equivalent to a Day Pass, organizers created multiple poster areas within the virtual space. Participants joined via a shared link, moving freely between rooms to engage with different presentations. This setup allowed the university to recreate the open, self-directed experience of a traditional poster session, where attendees can wander, choose topics of interest, and interact with presenters at their own pace.

The platform also facilitated a mix of structured presentations and informal Q&A sessions, giving participants the flexibility to engage deeply with research content while maintaining the social aspect of a conference environment.

The Challenge: Reproducing Large-Scale In-Person Dynamics Online

Hosting a 500-person poster session in a traditional webinar or conference platform poses significant challenges. Typical tools struggle to replicate the natural flow of movement between posters, spontaneous peer-to-peer networking, and parallel discussion threads.

For Yokohama National University, the core objectives were:

  • Allowing hundreds of participants to explore multiple posters without bottlenecks
  • Supporting simultaneous discussions at multiple locations within the virtual space
  • Maintaining active engagement and interactivity across a large-scale session
  • Capturing engagement patterns to inform future academic events

The goal was a digital environment that mirrors the interactivity and social learning of a live poster session, while scaling to hundreds of participants.

Implementation: SpatialChat for Large-Scale Academic Interaction

Organizers set up a dedicated SpatialChat environment with multiple poster zones. Each zone represented a different research topic or presentation, allowing participants to navigate freely between discussions.

Presenters engaged with small groups in each zone, providing explanations, answering questions, and facilitating conversation. The environment supported real-time movement, enabling attendees to join, leave, or switch between discussions seamlessly.

Post-event follow-up captured participant feedback on engagement, technical experience, and usability, providing quantitative and qualitative data on how the session performed. Observations during the event confirmed that participants remained active throughout, with continuous movement and interaction across poster spaces.

Results: Attendance, Movement, and Discussion Clusters

Event outcomes and observed data indicate the following engagement patterns:

  • High attendance: ~500 participants actively joined the event
  • Distributed interaction: Multiple simultaneous discussions occurred across poster areas
  • Active exploration: Attendees frequently moved between posters, engaging in 3–6 discussion clusters per session
  • Peer-to-peer networking: Researchers and participants engaged in small-group discussions, fostering knowledge exchange
  • Sustained participation: Average dwell time per poster area exceeded 15–20 minutes, suggesting deep engagement

These results demonstrate that SpatialChat can scale effectively for large academic events, supporting multi-threaded interaction, real-time collaboration, and active networking that replicates in-person dynamics.

What the Engagement Demonstrated

Yokohama National University’s virtual poster session highlights how large-scale academic events can achieve high engagement and meaningful interaction in an online environment. SpatialChat enabled attendees to move fluidly between multiple presentation areas, interact with presenters in real time, and engage in peer-to-peer discussions, delivering a rich, conference-like experience.

The case illustrates that even 500 participants can experience structured yet flexible academic interaction online. By capturing post-event feedback and monitoring engagement patterns, organizers can refine session design, optimize virtual workflows, and better support future academic events.

Overall, this deployment validates SpatialChat as a platform capable of handling high-scale academic sessions with multi-threaded engagement, dynamic networking, and interactive learning, making it a practical solution for universities and research institutions hosting large virtual conferences.