Some lessons learned from producing a virtual conference
We—Abby Covert, Natalie Hanson, Steve Portigal, me (I wrote this article) and the Rosenfeld Media team—produced the Advancing Research conference last week. We’d initially planned it as a traditional in-person event, then pivoted to a hybrid in-person/virtual event, and then pivoted again to all-virtual.
Sigh. These days are all about the pivots.
We had about two weeks to fully virtualize the event. OMG, it was a moon shot; Rosenfeld Media has put on many virtual conferences before, but this was far more ambitious. We wanted to make sure attendees could enjoy something like a full conference experience, with opportunities to network and socialize. We wanted to help our sponsors virtualize their booths and other forms of presence. And we wanted speakers to be prepared for a completely different presentation context.
While I think it’s safe to say that it was a success, there are certainly things we’ll do differently next time, and a shit ton of lessons learned. What follows is an initial set of thoughts (in no particular order) as I process what went down last week—and these are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll likely add more down the road.
Consider both place and arc
Sometimes it helps to be a publisher.
We’ve always carefully considered the roles of narrative arc and flow when designing our conference experiences. When should attendees’ energy peak? When should they recharge? One of our books, Donna Lichaw’s The User’s Journey, has been invaluable for helping us consider the impact of the narrative arc on the flow of a conference program.
But when designing a virtual experience, I found myself leaning just as heavily on the metaphor of digital “place” put forward in Jorge Arango’s Living In Information (another Rosenfeld Media book). For example, we worked with sponsors to create a series of activity “lounges,” based primarily in Zoom, to house the 40+ activities we made available to Advancing Research attendees (and the broader Advancing Research community). “Rooms” would have worked too. But terms like “meetings,” “activities,” and “spaces” would have confused participants and hosts alike. After all, you don’t really go to an “activity”. I’ve cautioned people to not be overly committed to a metaphor, but for at least this brief moment, the “place” metaphor was quite useful.
Be prepared for a flattened hierarchy
Attendees noted that virtualization increased accessibility in many ways. Some are obvious, like the reduced price tag and the elimination of travel requirements. Some aren’t so obvious, like reducing the power dynamic between audience member and speaker. All audience questions were submitted via Slack, anonymously if requested, and were asked of each presenter (out loud) by one of the conference curators. Junior people, introverts, and others (like me) who might not normally be comfortable or able to raise their hands in an auditorium with hundreds of people felt less anxious doing so virtually.
This change in the power dynamic likely applies to other social aspects of virtual conference participation. I’ve not given this much thought yet, but it’s an interesting question to consider: what new social opportunities does virtualization offer for all types of participants?
Dress “remote casual”
How should the people on camera dress for a virtual conference? Aside from the basics—avoid white or black/navy tops, and stripes at all costs—what’s appropriate?
In our case, the speakers weren’t on a stage, or in a studio. All were at home. A presentation’s setting is on camera too, and is, in a sense, as much an actor as the presenter is. My best advice is for presenters to dress comfortably for their own setting, rather than the attendee’s (and hey, they might be in their own living rooms too). And that usually means dressing down a bit.
Let’s face it: presenting remotely is already an awkward experience, so a speaker’s comfort should most definitely trump the image they may want to project to the audience.
Check and double-check those stages
Back to that home setting—we tech checked our speakers twice: once a few days prior to the conference, and once shortly before they presented. In both cases, we tested their staging as much as their technology. Little things like camera angle, lighting, and background can be as important as audio quality and connectivity. We crushed so many of these bugs during tech checks, and speakers had a chance to ask us questions and get comfortable with the idea of presenting remotely.
We also, of course, did our best to make sure our speakers had wired connections and decent mics, offering them a credit toward any technology they might need to purchase. (Lesson: during a pandemic, even Amazon is slow to ship, so don’t wait until the last week to do this!) And we made absolutely sure that speakers could share their screens and do all the other obvious stuff with Zoom that’s not so obvious when your nerves are jangly and you’ve just gone live.
Let the critters humanize us humans
You can’t talk about the home studio without mentioning kids and pets. To my own disappointment, no pets sauntered onto camera, but a small human critter did show up for her mom’s talk. She didn’t distract her mom who, to her credit, was unflappable. Nor did she keep the audience from engaging with the presentation. She did make many of us smile. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Attending a conference is a human experience; a presenter inviting you into her home, with all of its surprises, is more compelling and relatable than witnessing a highly polished but stiff presentation that might just as well have been recorded. A conference is a live event; anything can happen. Take that spontaneity away and, well, is it really a conference any longer? (More on this below.)
Luck out with your emcee
We were incredibly fortunate: in addition to being a brilliant designer and upcoming author, our emcee, Cheryl Platz, is an actress and improv guru with deep experience presenting live via Twitch. So she was more than ready to pivot to the virtual format. She even brought her buddies Mo and Sprinkles along to help emcee the event. (Disclaimer: I despise puppets, because they’re at the top of a slippery slope that leads directly to clowns. And we all fear clowns. But Cheryl’s puppets were delightful.)
Aside from serving as both the connective tissue and voice for the program, Cheryl also filled a critical technical role: during transitions between talks, she stayed on “stage,” offering the next speaker a helping hand and, if necessary, killing time until they were ready to present. Most definitely have your emcee do that.
The tech stack
In a nutshell:
- Zoom Webinar for speakers/emcee/stage managers, livestreamed to…
- Vimeo to host the livestream for attendees and, later, provide access to session recordings, embedded on a…
- Login page on our web site
- Plus Slack for all discussion, customer service, and staff communications
That’s basically it. Technical problems was my biggest nightmare, but it all worked surprisingly well. Not surprisingly, the Slack channels were far more alive than at our in-person events.
Naturally, there were some technical issues, mostly in setting up logins and helping people troubleshoot technical problems (99% of which had to do with poor local bandwidth or using a bum browser, or simply required reloading the livestream or clearing cache). Next time, we’ll offer attendees their own tech check session in advance of the conference so they’re ready to hit the ground running.
Have contingencies for your contingencies
You owe it to attendees to cover as many of these gnarly bases as you can. We only had two weeks, but we made sure we were ready for:
- A speaker not having enough time to answer attendee questions
- A speaker’s Internet getting slow or going down altogether
- Vimeo or our own web site going down and interfering with the livestream
- Zoom or the entire Internet going down altogether
Fortunately none of these were problems.
That said, we were not prepared for Nazis. Some of our sponsor lounges were Zoombombed (a very ugly word that most of us had never heard until a few days ago). Be sure to take precautions if you’re relying on Zoom.
Unleash your sponsors
Speaking of sponsors: we asked them to pivot as well. We offered them the opportunity to participate in developing and delivering a series of Zoom-based mixers, round tables, and presentations during breaks and before and after the conference. After all, sponsors have great stories to tell and great people to tell them.
We made sure to promote these opportunities widely. It was amazingly successful: attendees enjoyed over 40 additional optional activities and sessions, most of which were developed by our sponsors (hats off to them!). And some sponsors reported levels of engagement comparable to that of an in-person event.
Time is never your friend
While this was likely the most on-time conference we’ve ever run, the program ran on its original New York City (EDT/GMT-4) schedule. Not ideal for the rest of the planet. While we’re providing ticket-holders with recordings of each presentation, that’s not the same as live.
So we’ll need to come up with ways to engage people in other time zones with some kind of live experience. We’ll be studying what global gatherings, like the ResearchOps community and WorldIA Day, have done to support virtual discussions and other activities that span multiple time zones.
Cadence and timing for virtual are incredibly hard
Here’s the biggest challenge to producing a virtual conference: how long should it run and over how many days?
For a variety of reasons, we stuck with our original “in-person” program schedule, centered on two roughly nine-hour days of twenty-minute presentations, each followed by a few minutes of Q&A. While the presentation length seemed to work well (it’s close to TED’s 18 minute gold standard), the schedule included as many as three consecutive talks, and only a minute or two to break while we transitioned from one speaker to the next. Ooof.
Starting from scratch, I’d definitely go with longer breaks in between sessions. At least five minutes. Even in times of crisis, people still need to pee.
But more breaks means overloading an already crammed schedule. After all, you’ll still want to offer longer breaks for meal times and, in our case, sponsored activities. Worse, you’re under the added pressure of reaching an audience that far more distracted than an in-person event’s captive audience.
With a two full-day conference program as a baseline, I just ran a quick and completely unscientific Twitter poll, wondering how best to parcel that time out over two, three, or four days. Over half of the nearly 400 respondents preferred more shorter days.
Many who chose to reply to my tweet want even less content (e.g., two days of four hours each). Or they want to sip a little bit (less than an hour) over many more days or even weeks.
Which begs the question: is that even a conference anymore?
Maybe that’s the wrong question to ask. Maybe the term “conference” is just another moment prison. (Heh; had to slip that in here.) Maybe we should seize this current moment and reconceive what it means to convene a community to learn and socialize together. But that’s a discussion for another day.
So let’s stick with the present for a moment. Virtual conferences are likely the new normal for the rest of 2020. While we had a good experience, there is MUCH more for all of us—as organizers, speakers, sponsors, and even attendees—to learn. We’re not going to solve all of these problems quickly or easily, because we don’t even have a sense of what our shared expectations of virtual conferences are just yet. And some of the obvious challenges get at the very root of human nature—like how we communicate and learn in groups—while others require us to bend time itself.
That said, I predict we’ll be struggling with an even tougher new normal in 2021: hybrid conferences that take place both in-person and remotely. We’ve started working on this challenge at Rosenfeld Media, and I can already tell you that it’s not as simple as double the work. Producing an event that take place concurrently in physical and virtual spaces absolutely compounds your staffing, staging, and production requirements, while complicating your conference’s business model dramatically.
So say a little prayer for your friendly conference organizers as they navigate the rocky shoals ahead. And thanks for reading.
