Tony Lorenz, founder of bXb Online (Note: Cece is providing consulting services to bXb Online), wrote an intriguing post today regarding Celebrity Talent and virtual events inspired by Brian Wilson’s of the SF Giants foray into virtual events. Tony highlights three considerations when leveraging celebrity talent for your event:
- focus on the objective, not the talent
- be relevant to your audience
- integrate the celebrity throughout your event
Are there other considerations to add?
Simon Owens highlights how South by Southwest and the Aspen Ideas Festival leveraged social media for sharing amongst speakers, conference organizers and audience (both virtual and in-person). There are interesting points, such as leveraging different platforms to aggregate content, partnering with Foursquare for geolocation, and livestreaming panels.
Ike Singh of Social 27 wrote a post about the 7 uncommon questions you should ask before choosing a virtual event platform provider. Though Ike is a vendor himself, he lists great questions that corporations should consider. This augments a series of posts I wrote titled “Virtual Event Vendor Checklist.” What other questions should meeting & events practioners consider? Include them below.
Ragan.com posted this article about “7 Video Mistakes that Communicators Should Avoid.” The tips are also relevant for those using video online. The 7 tips are: use lighting, have quality sound, keep the videos short, use a tripod to avoid shakiness, add variety with different spokespeople, add shots of what you’re talking about – not just the figure head, and do more than point and shoot at the subject.
Ike Singh of Social 27 writes a very in-depth post about How to Use Social Media Before, During and After Your Virtual Event. The tips are related to audience acquisition, engagement, and relationship management.
Dave Smith, a reporter with Inc. Magazine, published two articles this past week regarding virtual events. The first is a visual slideshow of 8 Neat Ways to Utilize Virtual, which provided eight examples and descriptions of these events (Note: Both Donna and I assisted with Virtual Edge Summit, which is highlighted as one of the virtual events). The second article focused on How to Host a Virtual Event. The article focused on three key areas: timeline, marketing and design.
On The Virtual Edge Institute website, Cece authored a blog post about How Digital Events Can Help Reach Billion Acts of Green goal established by the Earth Day organization. This post provides a quick overview on how virtual events, when incorporated as a strategic aspect of your larger events strategy, can help save the environment in terms of carbon emissions, water consumption, and waste.
This article in MeetingsNet, Brain-Friendly Meetings – Not Just the Flavor of the Month, looks into the role that the brain plays in our boredom at meetings. While the focus was on physical meetings, there are salient points for creating interesting presentations for an online audience. The comments provide more insight as well.
Virtual Studio TV wrote a blog posting on “10 Reasons Why Virtual Events Fail.” I recommend reviewing this list so you can avoid them when designing your virtual event. I particularly like number 10 regarding no follow up.
Phil Tierney with Intel makes some great points on the Virtual Edge blog about tools that need to be created for virtual and physical events to truly integrate the two environments. “I would suggest that hybrid needs to be about audience integration as much as it is about audience extension.”
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