This is a bit of a touchy subject, but what occasionally happens with new users of Connect Events and Connect Meetings or Seminars is that they confuse understand technology with understanding how to manage and run a large event.
If this does not apply to you then you can look away now and I have not offended you!
Traditional vs. Virtual
In the traditional lifecycle of a physical event, there are a lot of people involved with some very specific skills:
- Marketing/Communications – These folks would typically send out the invitations to potential attendees either in physical form or electronically.
- Web Team – If there was an online component to the registration in publicizing the event or in allowing people to register online there would be a team in place to create these pages.
- Event Management Preparation – These people would typically book the physical room, arrange the audio and visual setup, confirm infrastructure such as network speed and of course order the cookies!
- Event Execution – Possibly the same people as above, but in a different role as they would be onsite to ensure the room is prepared, check the A/V and then during the event they would sit behind the nice white table and give attendees badges and instructions when they arrive. These folks also keep things running during the event, point people to the washroom and answer any questions.
- Producers – In this context, these folks are the timekeepers, they line up the presenters for the stage, handle the microphones when there s a Q&A session etc.
- Leads and Follow-up – After the event, this team would send out follow-up e-mails and maybe phone calls and decide on higher quality leads and ensure the leads are distributed.
What is missing is the experience of carrying out all of these roles in a traditional environment.
From a technology perspective, it is completely reasonable for a single person to take every role in the traditional process and manage the virtual event from end-to-end. The technology is deep and there is a learning curve, but it is well within the grasp of most people.
The domain knowledge required to run an event from end-to-end, however, is a completely different proposition. The roles I have outlined above do not typically reside in a single person, some of these roles might even be considered as mutually exclusive, meaning that the type of person who might be able to structure the registration, invitations etc. is not the same skill-set required to produce and roll with the changes of a live event.
By definition the organization is typically trying to save money and they will want to collapse all of these roles in a virtual event scenario.
This might be where you are right now?!
Running before Walking
In many cases I see new users of Connect jump straight into the product without taking the time to train on the tools, but maybe more importantly without taking the time to plan the actual event itself.
In a traditional scenario there is a lot of planning for an event, you would not typically start by sending out invitations and then think about the room or the presenters. In Connect this is not uncommon, in fact for the first events it is almost the norm.
There are a couple of reasons why this approach is challenging:
- I don’t know what I don’t know – Until you have walked through the whole process in a virtual scenario, you do not know how one decision can affect another. A good example is the number of times I see users build an event and send out the invitations to 500 people, then ask if they can use a Seminar room for the event instead of the meeting room they are using now? The answer, you cannot change from a Meeting Room to a Seminar Room once the event has been created. Start again. There are many ‘gotcha’s’ that will not be seen until you run through the scenario in full in a risk-free environment.
- Mistakes are *really* visible – In a Connect Meeting room with 5 people, if you completely screw up then at worst 4 people will still be on the phone to chat. If you have invited 500 people to a room that can take 1 person (meaning you built it in the ‘Meetings’ tab by accident) then at best 499 people will be refused entry and they will likely be rather miffed at you. Also, chances are that this event was to launch a product, gain leads or speak to the organization, which means sales, marketing, product management and maybe the CEO are pretty miffed at you as well.
- Little things become big challenges – Your web team can build a page and they know the correct logo, they have it on their desktop, you do not. the communications team knows the wording of their e-mail messages, you do not. The event folks have introduced presenters many times, you have not. Things which many traditional roles take for granted can take forever for a person learning everything at once.
- Virtual is not taken as seriously as traditional – It is very unlikely that a person presenting to an auditorium of 500 people would turn up and walk onto the stage without testing microphones, ensuring PPT files are loaded for the projection and walking though the presentation in a dry-run. In a virtual scenario to 500 people we often see presenters arrive last minute and without any dry-run, things will go wrong in these scenarios, that is why we have dry-runs. This is also symptomatic of the lack of domain experience of the virtual event leader in that the managers of physical events are unrelenting in their demand for dry-runs and preparation.
In the ideal world, you would be given formal training, lots of lead-in time, some help from the traditional owners of the roles above and a chance to start small. In the real world it is likely that you bought the product on Monday for a session next Thursday with 500 attendees and a whole lot riding on it’s success.
See if you can get any of the following into your plans:
- Take Some Training – If there is a lot riding on an event then taking paid, formal training in the product is the second best way to ensure your success. Why ‘second best’? The best way to ensure your success is to have training that extends into hand-holding support for your first event(s). This would allow you to both be trained in a real scenario and to have some guarantee of the success of the first event with an experienced producer.
- Prepare – Understand what you will need for your event before starting to build it. A checklist with the text you require for bios and descriptions, the logos required and their size, the expected audience, is video involved, where are the presenters located etc. Without these things in place you should not really even begin to build the event.
- Set Expectations – Ensure that your colleagues understand the consequences of a lack of preparation or training and that they are on the hook too for the success of the project too. You will need people to be responsive to your requests for information and support, ideally they will want to ensure success and support doing this right vs. doing it fast.
- Start with a Whiteboard – Not a Connect whiteboard! Find a pen and paper or a whiteboard and plan the event without Connect, apply the same diligence you would to a traditional event to the virtual event. When you know what you are going to do, make it happen in Connect.
- Carry out Dry-Runs – Even now I do not run a larger event without a dry-run, even if the people are all experts and invariably we find something that we did not consider. Practice with the final slides and the final camera and microphone. Anything you can do to take pressure off of the final event is worth your time.
GetConnect Training Suite – If you are a GetConnect client you have access to the 10 or more hours of detailed recorded training on all aspects of Connect including Connect Events, Connect Training and the Administration side. Speak to your GetConnect contact for access.
Ian Justin – If you are a GetConnect client and if you need to know how to apply Connect to a specific challenge, use Ian Justin (me!) as a resource. Chance are I have done it before and I can tell you how to approach your challenge, or maybe more importantly, what not to do.
Training Sessions and Event Support – We have options for paid training onsite or virtually and support for your session from end-to-end. peak to your GetConnect contact for details.
In Summary
Remember, it is not always about the challenge of learning the products and the technology, it is often more about learning a completely new set of roles.
It’s one thing to learn how to drive a car, it’s another to know how to get across New York City on a wet Friday afternoon in a hurry!