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.

5 Time-Saving Tidbits When Researching Online Platform Providers

When our organization made the decision to take our in-person event and turn it into an online experience, we knew we needed a robust online platform provider. If we were going to completely replace the in-person event, the online event had to be spectacular. We had to reimagine the event without losing the DNA that made the event unique. I researched over 30 online platform providers before we decided on one to partner with. Here are five things I learned that might save you time in the vetting process.

  1. There is no perfect online platform provider. I felt like I was in the longest “Goldilocks” story ever read. This one doesn’t include enough viewers in the package and this one doesn’t include enough storage space. This one DOES allow for enough viewers but costs a fortune. This one is affordable but I have to do all of the setup work myself. This one comes with a project manager but they are not available for another 12 weeks. What I did discover through this process is that you need to sit with your team ahead of time and prioritize the needs of your event or organization. This way when you’re ready to meet and discuss the findings of your research, you can efficiently find the right platform provider for your needs.
  2. Online platform providers speak a completely different language. It was soon made clear to me that the “everyday lingo” we had been using to discuss what we needed did not work when meeting with online platform providers. Virtual, online, broadcast, streaming…these are very different from each other. As I had one conversation after another, I started collecting a dictionary of new words and definitions. The last representative I spoke with most definitely would have thought I was more knowledgeable than the first meeting I had! Be sure to listen to what is being said, how the terminology is being used, and don’t be afraid to ask questions for clarification.
  3. Pricing structures vary from provider to provider. One pricing aspect I want you to make very certain you understand the pricing structure for is “viewers.” Some online platform providers charge per “registrant” which refers to only the people registered for the event regardless of the number of times they view the content. Some platforms charge per “viewer” which could be any time a person views the content whether it’s during the broadcast/simulcast or during video on demand (VOD). Other platforms charge per “viewing hour” which means you pay for a lump number of hours and every time a person watches the content, whether they start watching it, stop for whatever reason and return to it, or re-watch it multiple times, you are being charged for every hour that is watched by any number of people until the hours are used up. There are several factors that are included in pricing an online platform, but this one is a little tricky.
  4. Schedule a demonstration. Believe me, scheduling 30+ demonstrations was a huge time commitment but online platforms and their features look one way online and a completely different way when you are able to poke around and ask questions. By viewing the platforms for myself, I was able to quickly work through the ones that looked really good “on paper” but turned out to have features or user-friendliness issues that we wouldn’t want to deal with. Some platform providers displayed the quality of their customer service by the nature of their follow up (or lack thereof).
  5. Ask to see some of their other sites. Online platform providers who cannot produce references or show examples of other sites they have done are probably not going to be right for you. The online platform provider we ultimately chose to partner with for our national online conference had hosted an event that we participated in, shared screenshots from another event they did, and they always returned emails and phone calls immediately. We knew in one zoom-minute the were the right providers for us.

Have you searched for an online provider? If so, I’d love to hear what you have experienced. Email me or comment below.

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3 Words of Advice When Planning an Online Event

As I helped our small, non-profit organization transition our large, in-person event to an online experience, I began reading industry articles, attending webinars, and speaking with those who I knew had already, or were in the process of, making the switch. These are the best three words of advice I gleaned, and have applied, as I worked with our team to create the new event experience.

  1. Flexibility. We’ve never done this before. Most of the industry has never done it this way before. Most of the audience has never attended online events before. You can cross all of the T’s and dot all of the I’s, plan for contingencies and perform technology rehearsals, but invariably, there will be something that needs troubleshooting on the fly. Events are inherently like that. Everybody, and I mean everybody, will need to be flexible.
  2. Imagination. We have a unique opportunity in history to use our imaginations in ways they’ve probably never been used before. The online audience is very different from an in-person one. They have various distractions around them. Their attention spans are short. They are most likely at home with children or pets or the refrigerator. Things that have worked in the past for your event will not work now. You have the freedom to use your imagination to rework and rethink the components of the event. Don’t let this change scare you. Capitalize on it.
  3. Simplify. So many things happen online. There is so much stimuli coming at us all the time; television commercials, movies, online events and meetings, you name it. Make it easy for the audience to say yes. Yes to attending, yes to watching, yes to participating, or yes to learning. Remove barriers of distraction as much as possible. Maybe you need to simplify the programming. Over the years it’s possible that things were added to provide variety for the in-person attendee that now may not be necessary for the online registrant. What is the ultimate goal of the online event? Can things be shorter and still deliver the same quality content? Do the colors or button styles or designs need to be changed? Simplicity can take many forms.

I have received a lot of advice and have learned a lot in the planning process. Keeping these three words in the back of my mind has helped me make better decisions and stay focused on what’s most important.

Have you had to transition an in-person event to online? I’d love to hear
what you’ve learned. Email me or comment below!

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Realizations I had When Moving an In-Person Event Online

Planning for the in-person event we were organizing for roughly 2000 people was going along just fine. The 3-day event with general and breakout sessions, networking, and a full tradeshow, not to mention volunteers, speakers, hotel rooms, and travel arrangements, keeps us pretty busy. This event has been around for 40+ years and I personally have been part of planning it for the last five. It became apparent mid-way through 2020 that an in-person event was not going to be in our audience’s best interest, so we made the move to a fully on-line replacement experience instead, with just over four months to make the shift. Here are some tidbits of information I picked up from that transition.

  1. Online events are still costly. I knew there would be expenses, but there were some along the way that I would not have thought come with an online event. Yes, I expected a large amount of production support, a technology infrastructure overhaul, and a change in the attendee’s experience. But, to continue to pay for travel expenses, meals, hotel rooms, venue rental fees, and stage design were a surprise. Then, the incredible expenditure for hours and hours of video editing and web design, and the cost to add staff with new skills to the team was beyond what we could have imagined.
  2. People don’t understand that online events cost the HOST money. I work for a non-profit organization who relies on the income from the event to sustain operations throughout the year. A lot non-profits do. Without the same income, coupled with the expenses of the online event, it is necessary to charge for the online event similarly as if we were meeting in person. Trying to help people understand that there was still a cost to attend the event even though it was moved to an online format was time consuming.
  3. Online events are just as much work as in-person events. Some of the tasks are different but the amount of details don’t really change. Event planning is event planning any way you slice it.
  4. I don’t understand what a developer does. Clearly these are very smart people who take a vision and make a functional website with lots of pages and buttons and things. I wish I knew more about how websites were built and functioned before starting this process. I had a steep learning curve to be able to even get across to the genius on the other end of the phone what I needed the platform to do. I spent a lot of time on Google, watching Youtube videos, and asking trusted friends to help translate for me.
  5. Online events take just as much time to plan. We did have a head start with basic components and content from the in-person event, but each part had to be reimagined for an online experience. One simply cannot take an in-person event and move it online. It has to be specifically tailored to a different type of audience. Speakers still need to be prepped for their sessions, it just looks different. There are still production decisions to make, stage sets to design, and soundchecks to run (we hosted the event live in between recorded sessions for a more personal touch). Registration still needs to be done, turning a networking event into a chat room requires some creative thinking, and training volunteers to do their role differently takes time.
  6. Project managing an online event looks very different. I knew that. It makes sense, but when I got my event planning documents out to run through the checklists, I discovered I needed new checklists. There were no more BEOs, room diagrams, or physical projectors and screens to setup. I now needed lists that included webpage images, slides, videos, and scripts.

Believe me, these were not the only realizations I had during this process, I definitely learned a lot. I can now speak a little “online platform lingo” and know a little about how the back end of a web page is designed. I was never more grateful for the fact that I am a volunteer producer at my church than during this experience. At least I was more comfortable with the broadcast production side of the event.

Did you have to re-create your event planning processes? Comment below or
send me an email, I’d love to hear about it.

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