If You Build It, Will They Come?

You have the most amazing website. It’s dazzling. It’s simple. It was expensive to achieve. Your event contains innovative and inspiring content by some of the industry’s leading speakers who were also a premium to get. Your schedule is well-timed and not over crowded. Done. Now sit back and wait for the masses to pour in, right? Wrong!

Any one of these things can certainly make or break your event. If any portion of the event isn’t functioning properly or is visually unappealing, it will show in your viewing retention rates. What did you miss during planning? Your people. Your attendees. Did you even think about them while you were building the event?

You must know your audience. What demographic do you serve? What do they do? What challenges do they face? What solutions can you provide? Not only that, but when do they work? Are they on the night shift and will be sleeping during the hours you have planned your event? Are they predominantly men, women, or a combination of both? Is your audience tech-savvy? Do you need to provide tutorials or ensure tech support is available to them before and during the event?  

The attendees will know when you have thought about them. The final product will reflect it. Considering your attendees should drive how you think about each aspect of the event planning process. It should be a major contributing factor to your decision-making. When you continue to put your attendees first, they will return to your future events because they trust that you have their best interests and outcomes in mind.

I’d love to hear how you get attendees to your online events! Let me know below or
send me an email.

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Take It to The Next Level

If you haven’t read my blog post “Watch What You’re Watching” you may want to go back and read it first. This post gives you a peek into next level thinking when it comes to continuity of the visuals for an online event.

I recently project managed a 3-day online event. Some of the content was pre-recorded two months in advance and some was live-broadcasted using an Emcee as a host. The pre-recorded content included a band providing music that was played in between pre-recorded speakers. We also pre-recorded some of the transitions by the host introducing either the band, speakers, or other scheduled content.

Because of the availability of some of the band members, not all of the content could be recorded in order. We had everyone select outfits for each day, took pictures of them, and made sure that any time we recorded content for a specific day, that outfit, hairstyle, and makeup was worn. We tracked what each person looked like for each day of the event to maintain visual consistency. Then, when broadcasting the actual event, the Emcee had to bring the same clothing and even got a haircut before the event to match the look from the recordings. This way, as the program transitioned between live and pre-recorded content, the host looked consistent each day.

Not only clothing, but we also tracked what the environment looked like. The Production Director took high quality pictures of the room we recorded in (which was a really cool old shoe factory with brick walls). We used colored lighting and changed positions throughout the 15+ songs that were recorded. Then, the Production Director projected the same background onto an LED wall and matched location and color of the lights from the pre-recorded portion to the live broadcast as we transitioned between live and recorded content. This continuity helped the audience feel as if each day was all performed at once. Had we not thought through this level of detail the audience would have seen multiple backgrounds, different colored lighting options, a mix of clothing and hair changes on multiple people for three days.

The audience may never know the level to which the team thought through their experience, but I am certain if we didn’t, the chaos of the alternative would have been a distraction we would have heard about in the post-event survey.

I would love to hear about any next level details that your audience may never know about! Please share them below or email them to me.

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Put on Your Thick Skin

Event planning is not for the faint of heart. It takes someone with a thick skin to work on the front lines of meetings and conferences. The Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) is the go-to person for every question that comes up on game-day. You have to be able to field (and answer) several questions at once, type an email on your cell phone, listen to the chatter on your radio earpiece, monitor the event schedule, and watch where you are going all at the same time!

Everyone with a problem wants the meeting professional to solve it. Everyone with a complaint wants the meeting professional to hear it. Everyone with a question wants the meeting professional to answer it. It’s also your responsibility to know the schedule, room setups, menu, what the performers need, who’s who, who’s staying in which hotel, and which person is responsible for what.

The meeting professional will be blamed for things that go wrong whether it’s your fault or not (hence the thick skin). Find the right person to help resolve the issue and move on. Disgruntled attendees feel the need to yell at you; they want their grievances heard. They’re not mad at you, per se, but again, you’re the meeting professional (don your thick skin). You may be called upon to make some of the craziest last minute decisions like what to do as a tornado is barreling down on your event (actually happened) or the building you have 2000 people in has completely run out of water mid-event (also happened).

The thick-skinned meeting professional cannot come unglued. You can’t show on your face how you are really feeling on the inside. You certainly cannot wear your heart on your sleeve. Flying verbal bullets need to plink off your thick-skinned armor and fall to the floor. By you keeping a level head and calm demeanor, most situations can be defused. Quick-thinking problem solving amid the chaos is a skill every planner must have.

If you can’t handle being on the frontlines of event planning, may I recommend something a little less stressful, like being a rodeo clown or a skydiving instructor.

Tell me about some of your thick-skinned moments in event planning!
Email them to me.

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Visit tracybaer.com.

Watch What You’re Watching

Digital meetings are here to stay. Even when we go back to work, they have become part of our routine. Some people have nailed the “look.” You know these people. They look good in an online meeting. They are framed well within the screen, have the perfect background, and their lighting is just right. More of us should be these people. It’s important. It represents you. It doesn’t take much time to accomplish and speaks to a level of professionalism. This is especially true with speakers for an online event or webinar.

No matter the length of the meeting or event or how many speakers, to engage the audience and keep them engaged, the visual needs to be captivating. It’s subconscious. People won’t necessarily know what they like about what they’re watching, but they will definitely know what they DON’T like about it. You have to be intentional about how you set yourself up to be viewed in an online scenario. Here are a couple of suggestions I have picked up while working with multiple online meetings, events, and speakers.

DO
*Place the computer or camera on a surface so the height is the same as your face.
*Sit up straight, don’t stand. Standing gives you the opportunity to sway or wander out
of frame.
*Be sure to have a good source of light in FRONT of you, not behind.
*Review your background and declutter or remove anything that is distracting.
*Sit close enough to frame your head and shoulders within the screen.
*Look into the camera and not at yourself on the screen.

DON’T
*Wear a striped or tight plaid shirt. The pattern can create a distracting visual effect.
*Sit in front of a window that casts light from behind you. You will look dark on the
screen.
*Be constantly distracted by things or people around you (kids, pets, phone, etc.).
*Constantly be looking down. Place your notes or bullet points up near the camera.
*Put your photo up on the screen. Turn the camera on and interact with others.

When speaking in a meeting or an online event, being visually aware of your presence can be a determining factor in its success. People will tune in and stay if they are not only engaged with the content, but are also unknowingly attracted to what they are watching.

Be sure to check out the sequel to this blog “Take it to the Next Level” and see if you need to take your online presence there!

Do you want more information? Send me an email and let’s set up a time to talk!

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It’s OK Not to Understand, But Don’t Stay There

I turned 50 at my last birthday. Yep. I said it. I say that to give you context for my technology savvy (or absence of it). I am a genius with a spreadsheet and a list of details. I can scan a contract and an event BEO (banquet event order) with my eyes closed. I can email, troubleshoot basic computer stuff, work my iPhone, and am on Facebook. I volunteer as a weekend service producer at my church so I can hold my own in a production, but I can barely handle Instagram and still can’t figure out how Twitter works.

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you know I work with a team of people who had to transition a large, annual, in-person conference to an online experience. Normally we have a year to plan an in-person event. It’s annual. It happens every January. By the time we made the decision to transition to online, we had just over four months to plan. Needless to say, things had to move quickly.

The first decision that had to be made quickly was which online provider to work with. There are many, many, many providers to choose from. I half joke about my research experience in my blog “5 Time-Saving Tidbits When Researching Online Platform Providers.” You should check it out. What I quickly discovered is that the online platform world speaks a language all of their own.

As a seasoned Certified Meeting Professional (CMP), I am used to being around technology. Stage and production technology. It’s different. At the beginning of the online transition, I did a little internet searching so I had a basic understanding of what I was looking for in an online platform provider. What I realized in the first few conversations is that I was a technology foreigner. I was living and working in a country COMPLETELY unknown to me. I had my work cut out for me.

One thing I have learned over time is that it’s ok not to understand things at first. But shame on you if you whine about it and do nothing. I took copious notes. I asked the providers to explain terminology to me. I asked them to explain what the differences were between the various features and options they were showing me. I sought out friends who knew more about this than I did and asked them to clarify for me why one direction would be better for our event than another. I created a “glossary” for myself and a spreadsheet so I could see the different platforms side-by-side to compare them as equally as possible. For those platforms I had met with early on, I even rescheduled demos once my knowledge had expanded and I realized I had not asked the right questions or missed the opportunity to gain the information needed to make an informed decision.

Don’t let pride or embarrassment hinder your opportunity to learn something new. It is ok to ask questions. I personally think in questions, I always have. Be sure you take the time to gain a full understanding of something especially if it is related to a large financial responsibility like choosing the online platform provider for your non-profit organization’s event.

Have you had to learn a new subject matter during these post-2020 months? I’d love to hear what you did to gain understanding. Email me or comment below.

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ps…..Quick afterthought to this post….One of the terminology issues that I struggled with was around how content was delivered to the registrant. It’s not as straightforward as you may think. Let me share with you what I learned.

A live broadcast is a combination of live-hosting (with a host or emcee) and recorded video content combined into one experience. However, the entire thing can be recorded and “seemingly” broadcasted live. This would be a simulated live experience. Live streaming, however, is an almost real-time stream of content from one location to the audience. Pre-recorded video content is a library where the registrant can watch a video at their leisure by accessing the content anytime. This is also called video-on-demand but can also be pay-per-view.

I hope this clears things up.