For a couple of hours, we’re going to focus on the role of a producer in delivering great virtual events. You may already be performing the role, you may deeply appreciate the value of it but not tried it out yet, or, like many students on our virtual facilitation courses, you’re not sure where to start in developing producing skills in yourself and others.
This brief session allows us to consider some of the producing tasks in more detail, focusing on Zoom but considering more general implications for producing on other platforms. In particular, we’ll look at how to create and manage complex breakout sessions, using real case studies as an example.
This session will enable you to build your confidence, and explore what can go wrong and how to either fix it or minimise the disruption.
We will first of all demo a straightforward breakout exercise.
We will then make you all co-hosts and play Breakout Tag so that you can practice moving smoothly between breakouts as a producer, troubleshooter or floor walker
We will then walk through the host perspective on breakouts, step by step, to explain some of the decisions and options available
Other producing challenges we will explore:.
- How to provide basic technical support to participants, before and during the meeting, including basic adaptations to optimise bandwidth and stability
- ‘Tweaks’ which can be made to the event design to make the producer’s role easier and to ‘de-risk’ the event
- Key features of the Zoom dashboard which have producer implications
- Distributing the producer role across a team during a large event.
- Screen sharing
By the end of this 2.5 hours you will have
- Considered the information which should be provided in pre-event briefings
- Understood the importance of a script
- Developed a repertoire of troubleshooting tips and practices including renaming
- Experienced and discussed breakout rooms from a participant and producer point of view, and finessed the way in which you set them up
- Considered ways of briefing tasks and downloading responses, especially in relation to breakouts
