Stage channels are a special type of voice channel that allows you to host large scale events on your server with thousands of attendees at once. This makes stage channels an excellent way to engage your community and bring everyone closer together. What makes stage channels unique is that it allows audience members to indicate an interest in speaking while allowing moderators to easily move people between the speakers group and the audience group.

In addition, with Stage Discovery you can use these events to not only engage with your existing community, but also use them to help find and invite in new members by setting your Stage Channel to “public.” Before you set your channel to public keep a few things in mind:

1. When you set your Stage public, it also opens your server to be viewable and joinable by anyone who is listening in to your Stage. However, it does not place you into Server Discovery.
2. By default, listeners to the Stage do not join the server. However, they will have the option to view and join it during the event, just as if they have an invite link.
3. They will still have to respect any screening or verification process you have in place.
4. Once your Stage has ended, your server will no longer be accessible by non-members.
5. At this time, you cannot make a public Stage without also making your server joinable during the event.

Some helpful tips to remember when you set your stage to public so that new members have a great experience when joining:

1. Set up a “Welcome Screen” if you haven’t already. This lets new members know all the cool things to do in your server when joining. To learn more about how to set up a Welcome Screen check out our Help Center article here.
2. If you want to set up some rules that members must agree to follow before joining your server you should consider setting up Membership Screening. You can find more about how to set that up in our Help Center article here.

We’ve put together a list of types of events that lend themselves especially well to the stage channel format:

Ask Me Anything (AMA)

One of the most intuitive uses for a stage channel is for hosting an “ask me anything” (AMA) session with your community members. As the name implies, this type of event allows people to ask presenters questions about, well, anything. Your AMA event could feature the mod team or a popular guest in your community such as a content creator or voice actor. Moderators can call on people who have raised their hands to ask a question and then move them back to the audience once their question has been answered.

If you’re interested check out our article on “How to run an AMA/Townhall via a Stage Channel”

Trivia Party

Stage channels can also make a great platform for hosting a trivia party. There can be a host that comes prepared with a list of trivia questions, potentially themed around your community’s topic, and then that host can call on people or teams who have raised their hand to provide an answer. At the end of the party, the person or team with the most correct answers is recognized as the winner!

These are just a few ways that you can utilize the unique characteristics of the stage channels to engage your community. The fact that stage channels allow you to easily manage who is speaking and who is listening in an environment that people can comfortably join and leave at will means that there are a variety of ways to grab people’s interest and get them participating in your community.

Interviews

Want to know how your favorite creator, musician or community leader got their start? What are things people should be aware of while learning a new language? How should you build your own aquarium? And just how much wood could a woodchuck chuck of a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Bring up knowledgeable guests, community members or industry leaders to let your community learn about whatever you’d like.

Panels

Panels are similar to Interviews, but they typically have more than 1 person on the panel and end with a Q&A segment, allowing the audience to raise their hands and ask to be brought up to the stage to ask their question directly. Panels work best when you have a diverse range of experience included to create a lively discussion around a chosen topic. They’re generally a lot less rigid and more free form, and some can even lead into submissions for contests, giveaways, topics from the community or even some singing!

Panels usually require a moderator or two to help the conversation flow and to ask questions and keep the participants on their toes.

Hobby Discussion

Want to talk about the latest book you bought? How about what to do if your house plant is dying? Or maybe you just want to meditate with a group of friends.

Collecting together in a group and talking with the community allows you to more freely share your experiences and passions. Don’t want to talk? You can simply listen along to this freeform conversation that doesn’t have agendas or even questions.

Education

Educational events are structured to not only pass on knowledge, but allow you to pick a specific topic and really dive into it. Want to learn more about how you can support your local communities? How about how you can help protect the environment? Maybe you want to learn more about stocks or how to properly invest. If you have the know-how, it’s a great idea to share your knowledge and experiences with your community.

You can either allow questions, or simply hold it as a workshop, either way you are letting people listen along to learn!

Patch Updates / Announcements

Got an important hotfix that will change the balance of your game? Did you onboard a new server moderator or employee you’d like to introduce to the community? Making changes to how your server operates?

Events that typically fall into this category allows the community to be directly involved or hear the most important updates from the source. Sometimes the updates will be exciting, other times it won’t be the best news, but no matter the announcement, you’re creating a direct channel to the people who work hard and help you foster a welcoming environment in your server.You’re also giving them space to ask questions directly and share any feedback in the moment, building trust with your community.

You can also use this internally, within a Stage channel only accessible by the moderation team.

Story Time / Comedy Hours

Want to read a story and act out all the characters? Run a comedy show or group reading session with your community and tell jokes, share stories or even lament how you’re all unable to talk to other humans again after being cooped up all year.

Act out characters you never thought you could and let your creative side go wild.

Live Commentary / Podcasts

Hosting a coding challenge? Finish watching a movie or latest TV show and want some initial reactions? How about if you just heard the latest news and need to get your feelings out there, but don’t want to spend all that time editing a video or setting up for a stream?

Typically live commentary or reactions are in video format, but sometimes news just popped up on your feed, or the latest album dropped from your favorite artists, now you don’t have to wait to talk about it!

If you’re interested check our article on “How to Use Stage Channels for your Podcast”

Special thanks to NaviKing#3820 for their help in writing this article.