Preventing Virtual Events Production Nightmares

So how do you ensure your virtual event runs smoothly? The key ingredient is preparation. Murphy’s Law states that anything can go wrong, will go wrong. Be prepared for anything. Talk to seasoned professionals and find out what their experiences have been. How did they resolve any issues? Learning from their mistakes is a lot less painful than learning from your own. When preparing, include time for a dry run. Dry runs can often prevent almost any potential nightmare. Grab your team and go through all the steps you will be taking during the actual event. Is the room you plan on recording in going to be quiet enough? Does the video in your slideshow play correctly? Have your team members simulate the attendee experience. Can they log in to the event easily? How is the video and audio quality? Are the attendees automatically muted when they join the webinar? Having this dry run will allow your team to troubleshoot any problems before the actual event.

Once you have made all of your preparations and completed your dry run you should turn your attention to all the things that are out of your control. Have a guest speaker? Well, what if they don’t show? Or what if your computer crashes? Or the internet goes down? Unfortunately these disasters have occurred to real companies during their live virtual events. Often times these things are out of your control, however, how you handle these disasters will say a lot about your company. Having a contingency plan for these types of problems can cut your downtime significantly. This means having a back-up speaker, or be prepared to handle their part of the presentation yourself. Designate a back-up computer to use in case your computer crashes. Make sure all the necessary programs and documents are loaded onto this computer so they are ready to go in the event of a crash. Test out your phone’s hotspot as a potential back-up source of internet.