{"id":461,"date":"2020-06-12T12:09:13","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T12:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/?p=461"},"modified":"2020-06-12T12:09:13","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T12:09:13","slug":"practical-tips-for-webinars-and-online-conferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/2020\/06\/12\/practical-tips-for-webinars-and-online-conferences\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical tips for webinars and online conferences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"525\" height=\"183\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidbailey.consulting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Big-conference-image-zoom.jpg?resize=525%2C183\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-468\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidbailey.consulting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Big-conference-image-zoom.jpg?resize=1024%2C356 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidbailey.consulting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Big-conference-image-zoom.jpg?resize=300%2C104 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidbailey.consulting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Big-conference-image-zoom.jpg?resize=768%2C267 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidbailey.consulting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Big-conference-image-zoom.jpg?resize=1536%2C534 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidbailey.consulting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Big-conference-image-zoom.jpg?w=1600 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve attended a variety of online meetings over the past three months from mid-March \u2013 these meetings have ranged from small groups for an hour or so through to multi-company conferences lasting for the best part of a day.  Some have been excellent, with the organisers fully understanding how best to use the technology and how to keep attendees engaged.  More than half, however, have ranged from &#8220;OK&#8221; down to &#8220;woeful&#8221;.  As a result, I&#8217;m departing from my normal style of blog post in order to provide what readers may find as a useful set of practical tips &#8211; if this can help in any way to lift the quality of webinar experience then I&#8217;ll have succeeded in my aim!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" type=\"A\" start=\"1\"><li>In advance \/ set up<ul><li>Invitations should make clear which video tool is being used.\u00a0 Many firms are using Zoom or Microsoft Teams but there are many other tools and downloading the software or updating a previously downloaded version may prove necessary for a number of attendees \u2013 I lost the first 15 minutes of one webinar that I attended when my software demanded that it be updated before use<\/li><li>If people have to register in advance, please make it clear that they need to go through the registration process.\u00a0 Without this, a calendar invite can go in the diary and then the attendee clicks on a link at the time of the webinar only to find that they\u2019ve sent through a registration request and haven\u2019t yet entered the webinar itself<\/li><li>Ensure that all your speakers and other key attendees are using the right software and they know how to use the functionality.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to test this by setting up a briefing session in advance on the same software and explaining the process of the event and the functionality that will be used (e.g. chat function, Q&amp;A, breakouts, whiteboards)<\/li><li>Agree any rules that you want to adopt for speakers and your own firm\u2019s attendees (e.g. dress code, backgrounds, use of company logos)<br><br><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Dialling in<ul><li>For the event itself, have all your speakers and other key attendees dial in early to check that no one has network issues (e.g. some properties have more than one Wi-Fi network and if someone has been moving around with a laptop or tablet they could be on a network that doesn\u2019t work so well in the room they\u2019re choosing to use for the event itself)<\/li><li>Some software has people dialling straight in \u2013 others hold people in a virtual lobby and you have to admit them.\u00a0 Be ready for this and ensure that you\u2019re in \u201cprofessional mode\u201d as soon as the first guest arrives<\/li><li>Have a welcome screen (e.g. an opening slide) or the person acting as the host being \u201cfront and centre\u201d ready for when guests join<\/li><li>Admit people at exactly the start time and spend 2-3 minutes welcoming them in order to allow stragglers to get their software sorted, grab a drink after their last session or whatever and dial in<\/li><li>Plan to actually start the content around 3-4 minutes in<br><br><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Format<ul><li>The best webinars, short or long, seem to be those that have a clear host person who welcomes people, explains the methods being used for submitting questions or comments, facilitates Q&amp;A, introduces speakers etc<\/li><li>Where quite a bit of functionality is being used, it helps to have a person other than the host being dedicated to this<\/li><li>Speaking slots of 15-25 minutes, followed by immediate 5-10 minutes of Q&amp;A with that speaker, work well<\/li><li>A wider Q&amp;A at the end is good for questions outside the direct focus of the webinar, to mop up questions that couldn\u2019t be answered previously and as a flexible piece of the agenda to either fill in time or, more often, act as contingency for speakers who have overrun<\/li><li>Events lasting over an hour benefit from not purely being one long plenary session of presentations and Q&amp;A.\u00a0 Insert instant polling, videos and\/or breakout groups<\/li><li>Events lasting over two hours should have a ten minute break for urgent calls etc<\/li><li>Longer \u201cconferences\u201d should have a proper lunch break, maybe even for an hour<br><br><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Presentation materials<ul><li>You must have some!\u00a0 I\u2019ve attended a number of webinars now where a speaker is simply speaking to camera and I\u2019ve yet to witness one that has worked well \u2013 in fact, I\u2019ve seen people who\u2019ve left their cameras turned on clearly zoning out and getting on with other stuff, and I\u2019ve witnessed many attendees simply dropping out of the webinar entirely<\/li><li>The only exception to this is events clearly labelled as panel discussions \u2013 these need strong facilitation and still need some material to lead into the discussion, as a minimum<\/li><li>Presentation slides should be few and have simple content.\u00a0 Busy slides with detailed diagrams and small type can be difficult to see for some people<\/li><li>Short video clips can work well to keep attendees interested<\/li><li>Instant polling grabs the attention back of minds that have been wandering and can be good to get some interactivity in discussion<br><br><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Etiquette<ul><li>The host and anyone else considered key must keep their cameras turned on and they must look engaged throughout<\/li><li>If you can mute attendees microphones remotely to allow an uninterrupted flow, do so and tell everyone that you\u2019re doing it.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t, then ask them to do it.\u00a0 They can always unmute if they really want to speak<\/li><li>Questions are best submitted through a dedicated Q&amp;A function, if it exists, or through the wider comments function if not.\u00a0 The host can always choose to ask someone to unmute to ask their question, or a follow up, directly, if that\u2019s what he\/she chooses<\/li><li>If you have \u201cresident experts\u201d attending, maybe because they\u2019re facilitating a breakout, it helps with the overall feel of the event to ask them to answer a question in a plenary session, or add to a point that\u2019s been made<\/li><li>You must finish on time, or even 1-2 minutes early.\u00a0 You cannot overrun \u2013 people drop off the event to attend their next call and the whole thing falls into disarray<\/li><li>Don\u2019t be \u201csalesy\u201d \u2013 if many attendees don\u2019t know you then it\u2019s OK to do a (maximum) one minute introduction to the firm \u2013 otherwise, stick to the topic<\/li><li>Confirm with any external speakers that it is OK to share their materials, and a recording of their session, after the event \u2013 this may be to attendees only, or all the way to a recording on your website that could get a link to it sent out via social media, so be clear what you want their permission for<br><br><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Breakouts<ul><li>I haven\u2019t yet seen software where attendees can elect which breakout to join and achieve it themselves.\u00a0 You have to allocate people to breakout groups so it\u2019s best to work out in advance who goes into which one<\/li><li>It\u2019s unlikely that breakouts will be used for further presentations \u2013 they\u2019re more likely to be discussion fora<\/li><li>Discussion breakouts work well with a facilitator and 3-6 guests.\u00a0 Your planning should allow for dropouts \u2013 I facilitated a breakout session recently that should have had three other attendees, from different firms that operated in the same market \u2013 it could have been powerful but, in fact, only one attended the webinar so it made a discussion forum quite difficult!<\/li><li>Have someone managing the technology, to put people into the breakout \u201crooms\u201d, allocate unexpected\/late entrant webinar attendees into groups and end the breakout sessions, moving everyone back into the plenary \u201croom\u201d<\/li><li>Some software tools require people to press a button to enter the breakout room \u2013 others don\u2019t.\u00a0 If yours does, tell people as you\u2019re about to send them into the breakout \u201croom\u201d<\/li><li>Most video tools have a simple whiteboard facility.\u00a0 This can work well in breakout groups, especially when controlled by the facilitator.\u00a0 Some whiteboard tools allow free-format drawing etc \u2013 in my experience this only works well when all attendees have touch screens, which is unlikely.\u00a0 Most of the time, the whiteboard will be used for recording comments, thoughts, agreed actions and the like, so they can be typed by the facilitator.\u00a0 It\u2019s important that the whiteboard is saved (there will be functionality for this) before the breakout ends or else the content will be lost.\u00a0 Saved whiteboards will most likely be placed on the facilitator\u2019s computer hard drive and can then be pulled up in the plenary session by screen sharing, or can be emailed to someone central behind the scenes<\/li><li>The technology should have functionality to allow for a message to flash up a minute (say) before the end of the breakout and count down to zero \u2013 use it!<br><br><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Overcoming technical issues<ul><li>The most likely technical issue is broadband speed which can vary for all of us<\/li><li>For this reason, more than one person should have a copy of all presentation materials \u2013 if the host has broadband problems, the whole event could fail.\u00a0 Ideally, a second person with a copy of the materials would be able to step in as a replacement host in this eventuality<\/li><li>Passing control of a presentation deck to others can work if all involved are both used to doing this and enjoying good broadband speed (i.e. it is fraught with risk!).\u00a0 It\u2019s probably better to either have one person moving slides on the request of a speaker or for the first person to stop sharing their screen\/presentation and the second one to start sharing theirs, and vice versa later<br><br><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Follow up<ul><li>Send a copy of any slides or other materials to attendees (or a link to them), as well as a link to any recording made (Note: which you may need to edit rather than sharing the whole thing)<\/li><li>Ask for feedback, unless you already know how it went from comments left via the chat facility<\/li><li>Choose whether or not to send materials presented, or a link to the recorded webinar, to registrants who didn\u2019t attend<\/li><li>After this mechanical follow up, move into a sales process in the same way that you would normally.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope that some of these tips prove helpful to readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good luck with your webinars and online conferences &#8211; they&#8217;re here to stay so it&#8217;s worth getting them right!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve attended a variety of online meetings over the past three months from mid-March \u2013 these meetings have ranged from small groups for an hour or so through to multi-company conferences lasting for the best part of a day. Some have been excellent, with the organisers fully understanding how best to use the technology and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/2020\/06\/12\/practical-tips-for-webinars-and-online-conferences\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Practical tips for webinars and online conferences&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[50,49],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-operations-and-infrastructure","category-sales-and-marketing","tag-conference","tag-webinar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8uSW5-7r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidbailey.consulting\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}