A New Virtual Reality: 5 Steps to Reimagine Your Event Experience
We’re living in strange times, with events being canceled left and right, it’s hard sometimes to reimagine your event as a virtual experience. But if you put in the work, we promise you, it’s worth it. Sure we’d rather be there in person, but virtual experiences are the next best thing and we have a few tips and tricks that will help you keep perspective and do it well!
Our In-person Event is Cancelled - Now What?
Scream into the void. Cry a little. Listen to a sad song. Then take a deep breath. You’ve worked so hard to put together this event and you have the skills you need to reimagine your event as a virtual experience. You likely have a willing and waiting audience that needs your content, connection, and a moment of respite more than ever before. You have a team and experts available to you (hey! hey!). These are the only tools you’ll need to reimagine your event, plus strong WiFi.
Depending on where you are in the planning process, you might already have everything you need to pull off an incredible virtual experience. On March 9, six days prior to the first day of their Annual Convention, the National AfterSchool Association made the difficult decision to move virtually in less than a week. They knew they had to deliver a highly engaging experience. This was certainly a challenge, but quickly became proof that this not only can be done; it can be done well.
Once you have the right mindset, put on a pump-up jam and assemble your team.
Strategy and Scale - What is Doable?
In an all-hands meeting with key team members and stakeholders you trust, you can discuss candidly how to move forward. For us, it meant taking a 2,000 person event with more than 150 breakout sessions and distilling it down to something we could scale. We focused on daily keynotes and 20 breakout sessions, live streamed, with a focus on participant engagement and Q&A.
Focus on your goals: what does success look like? What will translate virtually, or be enhanced by the virtual experience? Keynotes and breakout sessions can do this well. Networking and the exhibit hall...well, that may not translate via webinar. Focus on what your goals for moving virtual truly are - and what your audience is most hungry for, and what will work best in a virtual environment.
Scale it back to the essentials. Don’t overextend yourself. Develop a new schedule and content goals that are reasonable and pack the biggest punch (aka what your audience is most interested in). It could be you move from a networking reception to a Facebook group with a virtual happy hour, where participants can go live. It may mean moving your exhibit hall to more of a website or just delivering your general sessions.
Assign clear roles and let people stick with their expertise. This is the time to ask your team, and maybe even your partners and stakeholders for help. It’s incredible what’s out there when you ask. But no, this is not the time to learn how to run a webinar - rely on the expertise you have, and seek to add to your capacity with consultants, and vendors, to make this successful.
Who’s on Board? - Restructuring the Content Using What You Have
Narrow your content. Think highest impact, highest quality content. This means secure your keynotes if possible, and reach out to your top presenters.
Curate some content that is relevant to your audience right now - this might be best practices for going virtual, dealing with remote teams, keeping operations running during the COVID19 crisis, etc.
Pulling it Off - Executing Your Virtual Event
Pick a platform you or someone on your team is comfortable with - depending on your timeline, this might not be the time to learn a brand new platform, especially if you have people on your team who are still having a hard time figuring out the mute button on a Zoom call (you know who we’re talking about). Do your research, and use your network to find a great technical producer for the event. This person is key to a successful virtual event, and is someone you want fully dedicated to the successful technical execution of the event - and yes, we’re available.
Best practice indicates that you should prioritize audio quality over video quality. Always. People want both, but it’s always more important that they hear what your presenter or keynote is saying rather than have a perfect video quality. No one expects prime-time quality, and their internet most likely couldn’t support that anyway. Make sure they can hear first, then worry about aesthetics.
Record, record, record. The best part about digital events is that they live on in the ether forever! Use this as a perk for all those who attend and as a follow-up for those who couldn’t make it.
Gratitude.
Don’t forget to thank your team, thank your attendees, thank your speakers. Give thanks to yourself and your ability to pull this off. Treat yourself to a little socially distant dance party. Go ahead, do it. No one’s watching! Seriously, no one’s watching because you are in quarantine. This is the time to get weird.
Don’t forget that we’re living through a pandemic. Let’s party like it’s 1347! Ahh sorry... not a great time for a Black Plague joke. Every day you get out of bed and keep calm and carry on you should be throwing yourself a party. It’s amazing, you’re amazing, and we can’t wait to see you on the other side.
We’re here when you need us - today, tomorrow, next year. We’ll be here - and we can’t wait to work with you!