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
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