Hosting a Zoom Graduation Party During a Pandemic

We were so excited for our daughter's college graduation. We learned that hotel rooms in Madison book out more than a year ahead of graduation weekend, so we booked our room in April of 2019 in anticipation of the graduation ceremony that was to happen May 9. Then the pandemic and lock-down hit, the in-person graduation ceremony at Camp Randall was cancelled, and we had to give up the weekend in Madison. While we're looking forward to celebrating in person together in the future, we wanted to mark the day with a little virtual celebration, so I planned a virtual event. A few observations:

• We used my academic Zoom account, as Zoom is fairly universal and easy to use, and since I had more than a free account our event could go longer than 30 minutes, so we weren't limited by time or number of attendees
• I scheduled the party in Zoom a couple weeks ahead and used Evite to get the link out to all of the guests, but still had to do a reminder so they could easily find the link again
• I verified with guests at least a week early that they had Zoom downloaded on their mobile devices. I did a couple of practice Zoom meetings with the graduate and a few guests, including the grandparents who were new to Zoom
• I pulled together a slide deck to structure the event. I probably worked on the slides for a total of 4-5 hours:



• A few trivia questions about the graduate to warm up the group and allow people to join in the first few minutes
• A retrospective section with pictures of her over her 4-year college career
• Pictures of the graduation we had hoped to have, including her face pasted over stock graduation pictures
• Information about her new job, future apartment, etc.
• A little gift section during which her brother unwrapped her gifts for her
• Toasts and congratulations from family and friends




• I coordinated hosting duties with her dad and brother, all three of us on different laptops. As I was showing the slides and kicking off, dad was admitting guests to the Zoom and her brother was playing comic relief with a goofy picture of the graduate as his virtual background
• The three of us practiced the event setup, and discovered a couple of important things with this practice, including the video I embedded into a slide didn't play the audio as I'd hoped (I ditched that slide), and the whole slide show lagged quite a bit (I went back and compressed the pictures in it and performance improved). I also saw it was better if I was hardwired into the router for best speed. This practice helped create a smoother event

We all had a fun time, and we kept it moving so it wasn't overly long (it lasted about 35 minutes). It wasn't the graduation we'd planned for, but we were able to recognize the event in a fun way that included more people than would have gone to the graduation anyhow. We're still looking forward to a great dinner out to celebrate when the time comes.

Art submission 2021 State Fair that resonated for me