Monday 31 December 2012

No Time to Waste for Your Hybrid Event Success

Keeping to time is essential when it comes to the making or breaking of hybrid events. After all you have on-site and on-line  participants to look after.

With an event that isn’t hybrid it could be argued that as you have just one audience in the same room it doesn’t matter as much if the timings slip. But I think that is just a way out of not making some brave decisions e.g. moving the CEO or speakers on if they start to over-run.

I have been at events where planners have waited and waited until more people finally turned up. How does that help anyone?  If some people are not there, just start the event with the people that have arrived. No excuses please.  It’s basically unfair to those people that made the effort and were on time. Plus you can guarantee that once you start late the rest of the programme will carry on late as well.

If you don’t start on time it sends a very clear message to the participants that you don’t care and I would suspect that would be the furthest thought from your mind.  

If you are late for a train it goes without you. The timetable doesn’t change because a number of people haven’t made it to the platform.

Speakers would never want to be seen as ‘time thieves’ and so if they start to exceed their agreed time slot then you will need to have a way of politely moving them on. A good emcee or host will be able to facilitate this for you.

The whole issue of time and punctuality becomes even more pronounced at hybrid events. The on-line participants may just be interested in one aspect of the programme and if your event is not on time then that wouldn’t be good.   

Run your event according to schedule and you can be sure that everyone (on-site and on-line participants) will be happy.  After all time is the one item that can never be replaced. 

Related Posts and Resources 

Tuesday 11 December 2012

Sounding Brilliant

When it comes to speaking at any type of event (but especially hybrid events), one of the key factors for the benefit of the audience is sound. How does the speaker(s) sound? Can they be heard? Are the microphones working perfectly? How is the sound in general?

If the sound isn’t good then the audience will suffer, they will lose the essence of the message and either they will start working on their mobile device or they will probably just leave. And none of that is good for the event planner that has gone to the effort of producing a dazzling line up of speakers in the first place.

Testing the sound with speakers (humans not the kit) before they make their entrance is to my mind a non-negotiable activity. Concerts and productions will be going through numerous sound checks prior to the opening performance because sound is so crucial to their success. You may think that maybe it’s not as crucial for a conference but I would argue that, (especially over a long pint of beer) it is just as crucial to the success of an event.

Over the last few years I have spoken at a number of conferences and what has surprised me is the variety in care when it comes to sound. 

There are some brilliant audio visual people that will help to ensure that the speaker is very comfortable and they answer all sorts of questions to make sure the speaker feels at ease before taking the stage. Then there are other audio visual people who actually leave the room at the very moment when they are needed. It happens. Thankfully not often but it does.

Before speaking I want to know, what kind of microphone will I be using? Is it a hand held or will it be attached to my clothing? Can I move around the stage or do I need to stand still because of the proximity of other microphones that may be on the stage? When I am involved in a panel discussion on stage should I be using the hand held mic or can I continue to use my attached mic?  My list is my own personal checklist so that I know the sound will be good.

I never want my sound to be choppy, I certainly don’t want to pierce the ear drums of my audience and that is why I ask (always) many questions of the audio visual people to make sure that I know how the sound is before I then get on with the task in hand of delivering some thought provoking content to the audience that have come to hear me.

Related Posts and Resources

Hybrid Event Centre 

Event Planning on Planet Planit