7 Must-Have Skills for Virtual Event Managers

Event planners who are looking to add Virtual Event Management to their repertoire might find the following list worthy of consideration. Listed below are skills required of a good virtual event manager or coordinator.

Understand usability. The virtual event manager must understand and provide advice on the best use of the virtual venue's real-estate to provide an optimal experience for all participants. Example: The virtual event manager must determine if s/he wants virtual attendees to enter the event site from the same page or a different page, being fully aware of what the advantages or disadvantages are, OR know the pros and cons of having a single entry-point for all classes of participants. Why is this important? - because it eliminates a lot of support requests if the site real estate is well thought out and laid out.

Understand legalities. Users may make demands of the virtual event manager based on their business needs. However, the virtual event manager must understand where to involve the legal department to protect the event organizers' interests while keeping sponsors, exhibitors, attendees and conference speakers satisfied. This is very much like the face-to-face world, except that in a virtual venue, the Virtual Event Manager can avail of strategically placed disclaimers to set the right expectations for the users. Example: Would it be okay to part with a list of attendees to all sponsors, or would that be a violation of previously agreed terms or a violation of attendees' privacy? - is a question that might need to be addressed by the Virtual Event Manager.

Comfort with Technology. This means a comfort in the use of all the tools at one's disposal. This does not mean knowing programming. This means knowing when to seek help from the programmers, or when to refer a matter to level one support. The Virtual Event Manager may be called upon to execute on a series of tasks in rapid-fire succession or delicately synchronized. S/he must be fluent in a variety of technology tools to execute every task swiftly using the technology tools available. These may include tools such as an email campaign manager, content generation at short notice, well-timed emails, scheduling and releasing alerts, broadcasts during a live event with advisories and breaking news, or even jumping in to moderate a live panel should the moderator experience unexpected audio or video transmission troubles in the middle of a live web conference.

Grassroots support. Have friends on the technical team because without their support, enthusiasm and hard work you will not go far. Make sure that you give them due credit in your communication, internal and external, as well as in your webcasts when the moderator is closing the session. In real world events, speakers thank the technicians who help their voice be heard. The same applies in the virtual venue.

Virtual Poise. If you are on a webcam, be professionally dressed and keep the cats and other domestic animals out of the camera's range. If you are part of a virtual team working from a home office, have a professional backdrop. Since you are going to be managing an event with (a) remotely located participants, (b) many moving parts, and (c) a ticking clock, be poised in all your communication. As a virtual event manager, you are the captain of the ship once the event is revving up and after it goes live. Your reactions set the tone of the event for your support teams, your exhibitors, your attendees, your sponsors and the organizer. As you continue with your virtual event, you will come to realize that some of the matters that come your way can be distilled into a process, and dealt with by delegating it to another team member. Virtual poise comes not only from being resourceful and staying calm under pressure, but also being able to convey that across distances without having the advantage of all the senses such as visual or tactile.

Reading between the Emoticons. The communication skills required are slightly deeper because you have to rely more on non-visual cues to know what is going on, and react suitably.
What that also means is that the Virtual Event Manager must be able to seamlessly switch between various communication tools to get the job done. You may become aware of an issue from a virtual lounge through a chat session, and have to switch to a streamed voice communication to broadcast instructions to all users, or an email alert or an instant message to all users, or you may need to get on a conference call with your team to give instructions on changes to a certain piece of the venue because the event organizer decided that it was alienating some of the exhibitors. The Virtual Event Manager has to be nimble on her/his keyboard, mic and all other communication tools needed.

Sense of Humor. The successful Virtual Event Manager is one who takes all the bumps on the road in one's stride. Being quick to apologize for an honest mistake goes a long way in the transparent world of virtual events. Use the smiley emoticon where necessary and keep moving the event forward. There will always be a few participants who will need extra attention. Assign them to your best support personnel, which means not only the most competent ones, but also the ones who demonstrate the most empathy, in helping out a distressed virtual participant. A sense of humor will go a long way in strengthening your virtual event's brand.

As the virtual fair is in progress or as it is wrapping up, you will start hearing positive feedback about how your work helped bring their entire team to the virtual fair, or how you helped connect a supplier in Australia with a buyer in the U.S. - that's when you know that everything about being a Virtual Event Manager is real.

Acknowledgements: picture courtesy Sean Dreilinger on Flickr

5 Lessons for the Meetings Industry from Obama's Online Event

President Obama's experiment with the Online Town Hall Meeting provided several lessons for the meeting professional. Here are a few that come to mind.

Consider a Cocktail of Venues. The combination of relaying the town hall meeting through a webcast and television allowed for a larger participation. I did not read about the size of the TV audience that tuned in, but on the web alone there were 67,000 viewers as reported by the Mercury News. If all the 67,000 were showing up because they were part of the 12+ million that received the email alert, that makes for a 1/2 percent response rate, which is not bad for a debut event. However, what is important to note is that by including the television, the Online Town Hall Meeting was able to cater to an audience that just wanted to watch using their TV remote. A meeting planner must consider the lower common denominator of a target audience to be able to reach the largest audience, even if that entails combining multiple venues and channels to improve the return on investment.

Seek Speaker-Whisperers. Every speaker at a meeting deserves the ability to gather intelligence before, during and after the online event. Obama's online town hall used Google Moderator. We recommend to our clients who are in the face-to-face events business that a simple online email form that directly sends emails to the keynote speaker, or an online threaded-discussion board work just as well. Some webinar tools automatically track the audience behavior by telling if they are viewing a presentation or if they have something else on the top of their screen. I recall a fellow traveler on a business trip to a conference telling me, "I hope the keynote speaker covers topics of my interest". He wished he could whisper into the ears of the speaker. Tools to tap into the opinions and intelligence of the intended or actual audience abound.

Splinter-Events Don't Hurt. I have addressed the matter of the ideal size of a virtual fair before in this blog. In large-scale organization-wide virtual meetings, it would be ideal for the event organizer to consider creating branches of the larger meeting. Breaking it down by topics might make sense, allowing the speaker to delve deeper into a subject, aimed at an audience that shares a deep concern about a certain topic. Each of the micro-events can then become part of a larger online meeting. We are working with a client for a global online trade show. When we do a virtual trade show with more than 100 exhibitors it makes sense to dice and slice the virtual expo into pavilions and sub-sections based on the demographics of the audience. The event brand only gets stronger with splinter-events, if held under the umbrella of the larger event.

Crowd-source Conference Agendas. We hear about the wisdom of crowds a lot lately, probably because tools and success stories are starting to surface. The online town hall meeting tapped into that wisdom through giving the ability to vote up or down the questions. With web-based tools available to poll invitees or letting them vote up or down a topic, even conference topics can be a self-selecting process. What will happen eventually is that those topics that could not rise about a certain level of interest for the larger majority, will start forming their own sub-groups within the larger community, thus qualifying for their own niche events.

Seek the Path of Least Resistance: Once the meeting organizer knows the goals of the meeting and the comfort-levels of the audience with various technologies to interact, it behooves the meeting planner to go for the simplest mechanism that will deliver the goods. If that happens to be an island in a virtual world and avatars, that is fine. If that happens to be a combination of emails, online polls and the television, that works. Find the medium that offers the least or no resistance to achieving the goals of the meeting, whether it be disseminating a message to an audience, getting feedback, or engaging in live interaction, or all of the above.

The reason virtual events are becoming mainstream so quickly is because of the ease of use of various tools, and because they can be combined seamlessly with traditional methods of meeting. One can now even foresee such hybrid virtual events being used for something as local as a PTA meeting.

Values-based Business: Dr. Mark Albion, and 'The Good Life'

A few years back, Dr. Mark Albion had obliged me by appearing as a virtual keynote speaker in an Online Alumni Reunion. Yesterday as I was researching a visitor to our website, I stumbled upon a story called 'The Good Life', I believe from Dr. Albion's book, captured really well as an animated video by Free Range Studios. Here is the video for your viewing pleasure!

What story does your virtual booth tell?

Very few websites tell a story well. I must admit that even iTradeFair.com's corporate website fails to tell the story of what our work really means to our users. It is harder to capture stories when you have 59 exhibitors logged in from 17 different states to meet with thousands of attendees from 7 different countries. That, however, is no excuse for our website not telling a good enough story about the human side of our work, about the connections we help make, about the businesses that we help make visible to corporate buyers, or about the job candidate who got a phone call from a corporate recruiter on that Sunday morning immediately after she noticed the candidate's virtual footprints on her virtual booth (yes - this customer for a job fair actually staffed their booth virtually on a Sunday morning to find the best job candidates).

Getting a corporate website to come up with a universal script for a story that appeals to all visitors is a tough call. However, it is a lot easier to make a virtual booth that is set up for a specific purpose to tell a compelling story. When you have self-administration capabilities to add and manage the content in your virtual booth independently, use it often and use it creatively until you perfect your story-telling abilities. Here are a few suggestions:

If your virtual booth is in a trade show that is specific to a closed corporate trade show, then you can tailor every item on your virtual booth to speak the lingo that your corporate audience can relate to. You can tailor your presentations to that specific audience. You can get your CEO to tell a story about your company, give it her own personality, and make your virtual booth stand out in the crowd.

If your virtual booth is product-specific and has a story behind it, perhaps a secret recipe handed down in the family, or a product that customers love to talk about, use that on your virtual booth. Your virtual booth can show your customers saying great things about your company.

Your virtual booth can be a podium to get your team to talk about how proud they are to be making the product for the customers.

Your virtual booth can give a factory tour taken with a camcorder.

Everyone seems to be selling solutions these days. Give your virtual booth some personality. Make it tell a story tailored for the audience.

What makes a virtual trade show tick?

What makes a virtual trade show or a virtual job fair really tick? -- It is not about virtual trade shows being environmentally friendly. It is not the green angle that is being pushed by many. They may save users from traveling for some time for initial due diligence activities. However, if a high-value business relationship is the outcome of a virtual trade show, at some point both parties would consider a face-to-face meeting. The same goes for a virtual recruitment fair. Or any of the other specialized virtual fairs that occur in business settings. So what makes them tick?

They tick because the virtual trade show structures vast quantities of information to suit the needs of the visitor. If all business websites followed a common standard for navigation, a common standard for depth, freshness and relevance of content, and live-interactivity combined with personalization capabilities for the visitor, a virtual trade show may not be needed.

They tick because the virtual show makes it possible to directly involve decision makers and influencers from any part of the organization to pre-screen and comment on a participant or engage them in a dialog. Virtual trade shows and other virtual shows cut through layers of traditional bureacracy.

They tick because virtual trade shows are very low maintenance, yet highly engaging. Virtual trade shows are low maintenance because they are the outcome of user-generated content and user-generated interaction that occur during controlled spells of time.

They tick because they are extremely convenient in extending a face-to-face encounter both before and after the fact.

They tick if they are effortless to set up for the non-technical user, if they scale up by allowing multiple participants to simultaneously build the show (user-generated content), and they tick if they launch easily without requiring a pit crew.

They tick because the virtual show does not recognize borders. They tick if they can be enjoyed regardless of the quality of internet connection. They tick if they do not require special downloads that allow only some users to enjoy the virtual show. They tick when the virtual job fair is able to bring together in a matter of days, several recruiters and hiring managers on the one hand, and job candidates from 38 states in the country and 9 foreign locations on the other, in direct and instantaneous contact with each other in a highly cost-effective manner to help them pre-screen each other.

In general, they tick when kept simple, structured and are designed to serve a purpose. Anything else is a fad or a game that will not stand the test of time for use in business.