Virtual Event Refresher: From Simple Zooms to Complex Hybrid Experiences

1
00:00:00,400 --> 00:00:04,104
So you were just told you have to turn a live event into

2
00:00:04,192 --> 00:00:07,752
a virtual event and you can't quite remember what you

3
00:00:07,776 --> 00:00:11,384
did over Covid. Or maybe I've never done a

4
00:00:11,392 --> 00:00:15,112
virtual event before. Well, don't worry. I'm here to give you a virtual event

5
00:00:15,216 --> 00:00:18,920
refresher. Welcome to the Event Pro show,

6
00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:22,888
your ultimate guide to the world of corporate events. Whether you're a corporate event

7
00:00:22,944 --> 00:00:26,500
planner, experiential marketing pro, producer, technique technician, or

8
00:00:26,540 --> 00:00:30,100
anyone involved in creating exceptional events, this podcast is your go to

9
00:00:30,140 --> 00:00:33,892
resource for valuable insights, expert tips and inspiring stories from the

10
00:00:33,916 --> 00:00:35,640
industry's leading professionals.

11
00:00:41,820 --> 00:00:45,364
Welcome to the Event Pro Show. I'm your host, Seth Mackey

12
00:00:45,492 --> 00:00:48,900
and today we're going to be talking about virtual

13
00:00:48,980 --> 00:00:52,676
events. Now this might become a topic of conversation

14
00:00:52,788 --> 00:00:56,300
in uncertain economical times, but the truth is,

15
00:00:56,460 --> 00:01:00,252
is that virtual events should be a tool in your tool belt all the

16
00:01:00,276 --> 00:01:03,708
time because you can do some really fantastic things really

17
00:01:03,764 --> 00:01:07,612
economically and bring a lot of people together from all parts of the

18
00:01:07,636 --> 00:01:11,324
world. So I want to talk a little bit just about

19
00:01:11,412 --> 00:01:15,260
the basics. Zoom out. We're going to talk about the basics of

20
00:01:15,300 --> 00:01:19,084
virtual events and maybe just levels. Levels of

21
00:01:19,092 --> 00:01:22,812
virtual events. So it can help you start thinking about what is the

22
00:01:22,836 --> 00:01:26,498
right size solution for what I'm being

23
00:01:26,554 --> 00:01:30,082
asked to do. So with virtual events, you have to

24
00:01:30,106 --> 00:01:33,714
remember, first of all, there's kind of two components. There's the production

25
00:01:33,762 --> 00:01:36,430
side and there's the platform side.

26
00:01:37,610 --> 00:01:41,314
More on that in a minute. But let's talk about the production. The production side.

27
00:01:41,402 --> 00:01:44,802
So the most basic type of virtual event

28
00:01:44,906 --> 00:01:48,674
is what I call a zoom style event, just because

29
00:01:48,762 --> 00:01:52,242
zoom is so widely used. So you could talking about

30
00:01:52,426 --> 00:01:56,002
Google Meets or whatever, but in a

31
00:01:56,026 --> 00:01:59,842
zoom style event, typically it's quick to

32
00:01:59,866 --> 00:02:03,570
deploy, it's an internal meeting, there's zero fluff and no

33
00:02:03,610 --> 00:02:07,218
production. It's something that all of us do on a daily basis. I bet you

34
00:02:07,274 --> 00:02:10,818
right now you probably sat through at least two zoom meetings before

35
00:02:10,874 --> 00:02:14,210
listening to this. Everybody does it. It's happening all the

36
00:02:14,250 --> 00:02:17,554
time because of remote work or hybrid work or

37
00:02:17,642 --> 00:02:21,334
some. Some version. So everybody understands

38
00:02:21,382 --> 00:02:25,222
that you can communicate quickly to people all over the

39
00:02:25,246 --> 00:02:28,662
world, but there is zero production

40
00:02:28,726 --> 00:02:32,038
quality to it. And a lot of times that's just fine. That's

41
00:02:32,054 --> 00:02:35,770
great. You can take that zoom style

42
00:02:36,190 --> 00:02:39,878
virtual event, for lack of a better term, and you can present

43
00:02:39,934 --> 00:02:43,782
to a group. My son is actually

44
00:02:43,886 --> 00:02:47,558
a representative at a large corporation and he goes around and

45
00:02:47,614 --> 00:02:51,442
presents to sales teams, but he also sets up a

46
00:02:51,466 --> 00:02:55,314
zoom component to it so people can join and see what's going on. You

47
00:02:55,322 --> 00:02:59,026
can do that. You can set up a presentation and you can push

48
00:02:59,058 --> 00:03:02,802
that out to Zoom or something like Zoom so

49
00:03:02,826 --> 00:03:06,258
people can consume that info. But the

50
00:03:06,394 --> 00:03:10,230
downside to that is there's really minimal interaction.

51
00:03:10,730 --> 00:03:13,842
You can, you know, do the chat. You can have somebody kind of monitoring the

52
00:03:13,866 --> 00:03:17,570
chat and you can, you know, do. Oh, I see that. Yeah,

53
00:03:17,650 --> 00:03:21,448
yeah. Bob from Arizona, you, you're right,

54
00:03:21,504 --> 00:03:24,280
that could be a problem. Let me address that. You know, you can start getting

55
00:03:24,320 --> 00:03:27,912
into a little bit of interaction, but again you're, you're restricted a little bit

56
00:03:27,936 --> 00:03:31,384
by the constraints of Zoom or your common commercial

57
00:03:31,432 --> 00:03:35,080
platform. And this presentation,

58
00:03:35,240 --> 00:03:39,064
one to many could start to have production elements. So you

59
00:03:39,072 --> 00:03:42,840
could start adding multiple cameras, switching. You could have a video team there

60
00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:46,488
with some good lighting. You can start making the presentation look, look pretty

61
00:03:46,504 --> 00:03:50,068
nice so your production can start going up. The next

62
00:03:50,124 --> 00:03:53,236
level up from that of this Zoom style

63
00:03:53,348 --> 00:03:56,788
event would be multi location

64
00:03:56,964 --> 00:04:00,772
too many. So what I mean by that is in this environment

65
00:04:00,876 --> 00:04:04,292
you start having coordinated production. So you would have teams in

66
00:04:04,476 --> 00:04:07,492
maybe, you know, Scottsdale, Chicago and

67
00:04:07,516 --> 00:04:11,252
Orlando and you have a video set up

68
00:04:11,276 --> 00:04:15,108
at each one. These videos stream to one

69
00:04:15,164 --> 00:04:18,734
central control location. It could be one of the three locations or it can be

70
00:04:18,742 --> 00:04:22,574
a fourth production location. All of those sources

71
00:04:22,622 --> 00:04:25,870
are mixed together. Graphics are added and pushed out to

72
00:04:25,910 --> 00:04:29,710
many. So this starts getting into a little bit more complex

73
00:04:29,790 --> 00:04:33,502
production, but you still can push it out on a Zoom meeting. Or you

74
00:04:33,526 --> 00:04:37,022
could do something like YouTube or Facebook

75
00:04:37,126 --> 00:04:40,766
or these types of platforms where people can access them

76
00:04:40,838 --> 00:04:44,600
easily. But you can go pretty crazy with production at this point

77
00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:48,136
and make them look really nice. The problem

78
00:04:48,208 --> 00:04:51,960
is what if you want to start getting into, you

79
00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:55,848
know, ticketed events, experiences, something

80
00:04:55,904 --> 00:04:59,640
that more simulates a convention.

81
00:04:59,800 --> 00:05:03,480
Well, this is where the next component gets added on

82
00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:05,700
to the production elements I'm talking about.

83
00:05:07,680 --> 00:05:11,448
This is where you start looking at platforms and there's a lot of virtual

84
00:05:11,544 --> 00:05:14,772
event platforms and they provide wonderful

85
00:05:14,836 --> 00:05:18,548
tools from the beginning all the way to the end. So for example, great

86
00:05:18,604 --> 00:05:22,084
marketing, ticketing, access control,

87
00:05:22,172 --> 00:05:25,940
different levels. And then within the event you can have, you

88
00:05:25,980 --> 00:05:29,700
know, like a general session area where a live presentation is

89
00:05:29,740 --> 00:05:33,396
happening and people are joining. But then you have a lot of breakout sessions.

90
00:05:33,508 --> 00:05:35,800
You can get into expo

91
00:05:36,860 --> 00:05:39,956
setups where you can have maybe two way

92
00:05:40,028 --> 00:05:43,732
interactions so your vendors can set up virtual booths and people

93
00:05:43,756 --> 00:05:47,168
can interact and you can get into chat.

94
00:05:47,344 --> 00:05:50,512
You can do really cool things like pre recorded

95
00:05:50,576 --> 00:05:54,208
sessions. In addition to the live sessions going

96
00:05:54,264 --> 00:05:58,096
on, you could have things like this. The

97
00:05:58,168 --> 00:06:01,776
show is from the first to the Second in November,

98
00:06:01,968 --> 00:06:05,616
but for all of November, all of the pre recorded

99
00:06:05,648 --> 00:06:09,472
items are still available to attendees. So you have kind

100
00:06:09,496 --> 00:06:12,896
of an evergreen component to your pre records and you can kind of control it.

101
00:06:12,968 --> 00:06:16,144
And then on the back end you have all sorts of rich data and I

102
00:06:16,152 --> 00:06:19,852
know a lot of you really, really care about the data and you really need

103
00:06:19,876 --> 00:06:23,004
to know what your ROI is so you can kind of follow that through a

104
00:06:23,012 --> 00:06:26,492
lot of integrations with CRM, that kind of stuff. So

105
00:06:26,516 --> 00:06:30,044
platforms are very, very important with

106
00:06:30,132 --> 00:06:33,724
virtual events, it just depends on the scale, it depends on your budget.

107
00:06:33,852 --> 00:06:37,068
So in review, you have different levels of

108
00:06:37,124 --> 00:06:40,716
actual production that don't

109
00:06:40,748 --> 00:06:43,712
necessarily have to be placed within a virtual event

110
00:06:43,876 --> 00:06:47,608
platform. And then you add

111
00:06:47,744 --> 00:06:51,432
a platform component if you need that. But if you're going

112
00:06:51,456 --> 00:06:55,128
to do a virtual event platform, you, you will need some sort

113
00:06:55,224 --> 00:06:58,824
of production around your video and whether they're

114
00:06:58,872 --> 00:07:02,536
live, whether they're pre records. So

115
00:07:02,608 --> 00:07:06,340
my recommendation is this is a good

116
00:07:06,880 --> 00:07:10,536
30,000 foot view of the different types of virtual

117
00:07:10,568 --> 00:07:14,194
events that you might want to deploy. You might want to do

118
00:07:14,282 --> 00:07:17,470
versions of all of these at different points in the year.

119
00:07:17,850 --> 00:07:21,266
But having a production partner with you to help

120
00:07:21,338 --> 00:07:24,978
understand your objectives, figure out like what's your baseline needs

121
00:07:25,034 --> 00:07:28,754
of each event, and then deploying, developing and deploying

122
00:07:28,802 --> 00:07:32,594
solutions for each one really takes the frustration

123
00:07:32,722 --> 00:07:35,550
out of man. I hope this is going to work

124
00:07:35,850 --> 00:07:39,490
because I've seen a lot of people try to take on too

125
00:07:39,530 --> 00:07:42,938
much without adding a production partner and having

126
00:07:42,994 --> 00:07:46,746
events that do not fulfill the requirements

127
00:07:46,858 --> 00:07:50,058
or fail or all sorts of

128
00:07:50,114 --> 00:07:53,430
really fun things that can happen

129
00:07:53,810 --> 00:07:57,610
in live events. It's nice to have a production partner there that

130
00:07:57,650 --> 00:08:01,482
scales with your projects. The last thing

131
00:08:01,506 --> 00:08:05,242
to note, of course, is the term hybrid refers

132
00:08:05,306 --> 00:08:08,690
to we still have, you know, you have an event going

133
00:08:08,730 --> 00:08:12,338
on in a ballroom, for example, you can

134
00:08:12,394 --> 00:08:16,066
add any of this functionality to a live event that's

135
00:08:16,098 --> 00:08:19,586
actually happening and that becomes a hybrid event. And

136
00:08:19,738 --> 00:08:23,426
we never want to forget about, you know, you can sell more tickets

137
00:08:23,458 --> 00:08:27,074
or add more. You can be more inclusive to people that can't come to

138
00:08:27,162 --> 00:08:30,882
your geographical location but want to be involved in the event. You can add

139
00:08:30,906 --> 00:08:34,696
these components to a live event and make it a fully hybrid event to whatever

140
00:08:34,728 --> 00:08:38,280
degree you want. So that's my quick refresher on

141
00:08:38,320 --> 00:08:42,136
virtual events. This was not designed to be a technical explanation

142
00:08:42,168 --> 00:08:46,008
of how all of these things work, but just kind of an

143
00:08:46,064 --> 00:08:49,224
overview of how you can deploy virtual

144
00:08:49,272 --> 00:08:52,872
components either as a hybrid thing or as a standalone

145
00:08:52,936 --> 00:08:56,280
thing. As we're facing quite frankly uncertain

146
00:08:56,360 --> 00:09:00,202
economic times, we just don't know. And so if you're asked to

147
00:09:00,226 --> 00:09:03,962
deploy a virtual event, you're armed. Now you've got an idea of how you

148
00:09:03,986 --> 00:09:07,802
can get out there and start looking for production partners to help you. Of course

149
00:09:07,906 --> 00:09:11,098
we at LEMG would love to help you, but there are so many. I have

150
00:09:11,154 --> 00:09:14,266
so many friends all over the country that can do this, so we'd be glad

151
00:09:14,298 --> 00:09:17,706
to make recommendations too. Just look me up on LinkedIn, Seth

152
00:09:17,738 --> 00:09:21,402
Mackey on LinkedIn, and direct message me and I'll be glad to be a

153
00:09:21,426 --> 00:09:25,226
resource for you. Thank you for joining us on this episode

154
00:09:25,338 --> 00:09:29,050
of the Event Pro Show. I always look forward to sharing insights and

155
00:09:29,090 --> 00:09:32,870
tips on anything related to

156
00:09:32,910 --> 00:09:36,370
corporate events and we will see you on the next one.

157
00:09:37,390 --> 00:09:41,206
The Event Pro show is a production of LEMG video

158
00:09:41,278 --> 00:09:44,950
by Nick Barrett, audio and post production by Prince

159
00:09:45,030 --> 00:09:48,830
Thompson. You can learn more about us at LEMG Live.