≡ Menu

Webcasting for Events

My last blog covered webcasting for collaboration and training. Now, I’m addressing an entirely different sort of webcast..

Your company or association probably has a need for both types.

Let’s address the webcasting of a live event. As an example, let’s use the Opening Plenary of your annual conference.

Generally, about 650 attend and this year, another 100 wish to attend virtually.

As your primary project has been the face to face live staged event, much of your battle is taken care of, but not all.

Of course, you’ve worked with a producer or technical director to design an appealing stage setup, that is comfortable for your speakers and appealing to your audience. You have assured that the right stage lighting is to be in place and of course you want your audience to hear comfortably, you have provided a good sound system appropriate for the session.

Your timeline is being checked and rechecked.

Now I’ll cover to aspects, the technical part of webcasting and the other important part is engaging your virtual audience as well as your live audience. Neither should be the orphaned child.

Hopefully you considered webcasting from the get go so you were able to select a venue with the right amount of upload capability. If that isn’t the case, your professional webcasting partner will bring that in, but of course at an additional cost.

The webcast should not interfere with the audience line of sight or get in their way at all.

Your webcasting folks may use their own video cameras or possibly use what you have in place plus some additional for their own particular shots.

They may also ask for your lighting folks to make some tweaks and will ask your sound company for a direct feed.

Sticking to your timeline is very important, so your virtual audience isn’t waiting. If you find that there may be lag time, a really good idea is to have on air host who can chat about what is coming up or interview a speaker or attendees.

Engaging your audience and making this a hybrid meeting, does take planning, but you’ll find it very rewarding in the end. You’ll have two sets of very happy attendees.

Pre event, you can work with your webcast partner to develop some pre event chat on places like Facebook or Twitter. This can include topics that will be part of the conference, or it could be  like a focus group developing one or more sessions enabling your attendees to have sessions that are meaningful and helpful to them. Of course, these chats are facilitated and don’t need to be limited to just the virtual attendees. Why not let those who are interested and attending live participate in this!

Some planners use gamification to engage virtual attendees as well as face to face attendees.

You can have a lot of fun as well as some challenges of course, involving your attendees pre conference and then again, post conference.

Using the pre and post chat and webcasting the conference builds your audience, both live and virtual. In addition a bigger payoff is that you are meeting the needs of most rather than some and you have the opportunity to grow your conference and your association.

Your company or association probably has a need for both types.

Let’s address the webcasting of a live event. As an example, let’s use the Opening Plenary of your annual conference.

Generally, about 650 attend and this year, another 100 wish to attend virtually.

As your primary project has been the face to face live staged event, much of your battle is taken care of, but not all.

Of course, you’ve worked with a producer or technical director to design an appealing stage setup, that is comfortable for your speakers and appealing to your audience. You have assured that the right stage lighting is to be in place and of course you want your audience to hear comfortably, you have provided a good sound system appropriate for the session.

Your timeline is being checked and rechecked.

Now I’ll cover to aspects, the technical part of webcasting and the other important part is engaging your virtual audience as well as your live audience. Neither should be the orphaned child.

Hopefully you considered webcasting from the get go so you were able to select a venue with the right amount of upload capability. If that isn’t the case, your professional webcasting partner will bring that in, but of course at an additional cost.

The webcast should not interfere with the audience line of sight or get in their way at all.

Your webcasting folks may use their own video cameras or possibly use what you have in place plus some additional for their own particular shots.

They may also ask for your lighting folks to make some tweaks and will ask your sound company for a direct feed.

Sticking to your timeline is very important, so your virtual audience isn’t waiting. If you find that there may be lag time, a really good idea is to have on air host who can chat about what is coming up or interview a speaker or attendees. Engaging your audience and making this a hybrid meeting, does take planning, but you’ll find it very rewarding in the end. You’ll have two sets of very happy attendees

Pre event, you can work with your webcast partner to develop some pre event chat on places like Facebook or Twitter. This can include topics that will be part of the conference, or it could be  like a focus group developing one or more sessions enabling your attendees to have sessions that are meaningful and helpful to them. Of course, these chats are facilitated and don’t need to be limited to just the virtual attendees. Why not let those who are interested and attending live participate in this!

Some planners use gamification to engage virtual attendees as well as face to face attendees.

You can have a lot of fun as well as some challenges of course, involving your attendees pre conference and then again, post conference.

Using the pre and post chat and webcasting the conference builds your audience, both live and virtual. In addition a bigger payoff is that you are meeting the needs of most rather than some and you have the opportunity to grow your conference and your association.

 

 

 

.