How we moved our IWD conference online in 2 days

On Sunday, March 15th, in Kaliningrad (Russia), we held International Women’s Day Conference 2020, a global initiative by the Women Techmakers community. We expected 100+ attendees specialized in IT and did all preparations but everything changed on Friday and we moved into online with the hope that the attendees would support us.

Teaser: everything worked out in the best way, but I began to receive questions about how we managed to organize everything, so I promised that I would quickly sketch out my thoughts and actions and here they are.

I hope, that this article will help those GDG leads who are now in the same difficult situation with quarantine and think about how to involve people online.

Intro

On Friday morning we had about 60 attendees (the outflow had already begun and people started to return tickets), 10 speakers, seven of them were supposed to arrive at us from different parts of Russia and Belarus on Saturday, two prepaid spaces for the conference, catering, which had already purchased products, swag, sound, lights, and well-prepared volunteers.

We didn’t have any strict order from the regional government about canceling the event but we understood that all people were in stress and we shouldn’t make worse.

Stage one. Format change

First of all, we considered all the pros and cons of canceling / delaying / changing the format:

• We categorically did not want to cancel — it would be three months of preparation down to drain and very disappointing for the speakers who had put so much effort into their talks.
• Delay. I did not like this idea because of complete uncertainty. I will be glad if everything works out by mid-April, but I can’t be sure of that. While everyone is healthy and full of energy, I did not want to deprive the opportunity to receive knowledge.
• Format change. Yes, many of us are skeptical about online events: too difficult to focus and low level of networking. On the other hand, when you have ready-to-go speakers, it’s strange not to use the opportunity.

Stage two. Negotiation and notification.

First, we wrote to the speakers to notify about the format change, asked about their readiness to participate in the online (not a single one refused).

IMPORTANT: we promised them to hold separate Saturday online training to get used to the broadcast tool.

Then we warned the partners — we had already told them about the difficulties with preparation and the possibilities of cancellation, so this decision was not a big surprise for them. Everybody understood us and we promised that those companies will be partners at the next offline event, whenever it took place.

And finally, we began to write to the participants. We sent a newsletter about the format change, wrote the same info in our channels in Telegram and social networks. Participants were invited to either stay with us + automatically receive a ticket for the next offline event, or to hand over a ticket — only 3 people did this.

Stage three. Technical research and stage preparation

Recently, all GDG/WTM leads received the letter from GDG team with recommendations to conduct online events and use Youtube and Zoom for broadcasting.

We did not have much time to think, we had already encountered Zoom with speakers, so we settled on it.

We took a subscription, which allowed an unlimited broadcast time per 100 people, and set up a broadcast link with the following characteristics:

• administration of the process in our hands;
• all participants firstly get into the room where we check their name, surname with a list of registered ones (those who named themselves as “butterfly” and “Vasya223” were sent to rename themselves);
• all participants are automatically muted, but can turn on the camera;
• there are two rooms — the main one with talks and the second one — speaker zone, where there is no restriction on sound and you can ask a question out loud.

We taught the speakers to use the platform: each tried the screen demonstration process, saw what was inside, discussed the difficulties of interaction.

Part of our guideline where we explain that there is a possibility to change the background if you don’t like a mess on your shelves

After that, we wrote a small guide for participants and speakers on the main Zoom functionality, tested the broadcast and stream on youtube (not everything was taken into account in the end) and then sent everyone a broadcast link.

As a bonus, we opened new tickets exclusively for participation online and we got more attendees and some of them were not from our region!

What about the stage/sound/internet?

We did not have much time, so we discarded unnecessary stress. We did not look for a professional microphone, use the original Mac webcam and made the backstage with the conference rollups.

We also did not demand this from the speakers. On the contrary, we asked them to chill, stay in their pajamas and drink coffee/tea during their performance.

Oh yes. We also found a volunteer, CTO of the partner company, who agreed to stand at the offline point where the conference was supposed to be held, on Sunday morning. There was no certainty that everyone had read the letters about the format changing. Teaser — nobody came, phew.

Stage four. It’s time to lead the conference

That’s right: home, pajamas, and coffee — a great combo for online conference

I woke up on Sunday with the thought “what if no one comes and it’s all in vain” and at 8:30 I was in our home backstage with coffee and pajamas. At 9:30 we turned on the broadcast, switched on the music and countdown and … the attendees began to come)))

I will not describe the whole process. Here are some tips on what we had done:

• asked everyone to turn on the webcam whenever possible in order to see faces and receive feedback — it was cool to see real people (yes, there were a minority of them — some had children running around, some had no webcam on their computers, someone was just shy);
• asked to write questions in the chat and we announced them to speakers after the talk;
• after each talk, we reminded about the speaker zone;
• reminded that warming up is useful and made a full-fledged lunch break (we also managed to order food and eat — a great luxury for event organizers);
• made a contest for the best photos in social networks of how people watch the conference.

Snapshots from Instagram stories of our attendees

Stage five. Summary

As a result, it was 8.5 hours of non-stop broadcasting, about 95 viewers who changed during the day, 9 talks and a bunch of positive reviews.

What we did not take into account or did not have time to do?

• technique — yes, it can mess up — everything was fine with us. We broadcasted from two laptops, but it would be better to do it from three;
• the Internet — again, we were ok, but it’s necessary to expect some problems with connection and speed;
• breaks — we had small breaks between reports. It was very difficult for our speakers to follow the timing and all the talks were longer than they were on the training. As a result, attendees wanted to talk to the speaker, but also did not want to miss the next talk;
• networking — yeah, there is so much you can do by Zoom: involve people in polls, turn sound on and give them the chance to express themselves;
• broadcast recording and stream. In our case, we record the broadcast from the admin laptop and occasionally looked into the speaker room, and as a result, it was recorded in the broadcast.

In conclusion, I want to advise everybody not to refuse the chance to help your community to receive knowledge online. Yes, it’s difficult but we got a lot of great feedback from speakers and attendees and this is the main point to continue.