How To Successfully Host Large Virtual Meetings And Events

In this era of coronavirus shelter-in-place orders, while most of the world works from home, it’s critical for businesses to understand how to successfully host large-scale virtual meetings and events. Douglas Ferguson is the founder of Voltage Control, which uses systems thinking to help organizations evolve, change, and innovate. The company takes human-centered design approaches that have been used for years to build software products and applies them to helping people come together to meet, plan, and decide as teams. As experts in facilitation, Voltage Control works with clients to develop trust, uncover major challenges, and provide a framework for solving problems and developing better products and services. 

Here, Ferguson offers his tips for holding large-scale virtual meetings and events that are engaging and create a lasting impact.

1.   Stay true to your purpose.

Don’t just throw your event online. Think carefully about how you can create an experience that delivers on your promise to your attendees.

The knee-jerk reaction for most people is to simply take the event they already had planned and put it online. Most people are just recording speeches or lectures and then hosting them in a Learning Management System (LMS) or hitting play inside a Zoom webinar. That isn’t going to prove a successful strategy in most cases.

If we think deeply about the reasons why we are gathering people in the first place, then we can honor that purpose intentionally. For instance, if your goal is to create community by providing an opportunity for attendees to meet and learn from each other, then how are you re-creating this virtually? Perhaps you need to foster opportunities for random collisions!

2.   Don’t let the tools dictate the experience.

Design your experience first and then figure out what tools to use, not the other way around. For example, people hear that Zoom is great for virtual meetings. A typical reaction to shifting to virtual events is to say, “We’ll use Zoom because it is the best online tool.” Then they open Zoom and start to look at how it works and design the experience based on what the app can do.

Instead, we advocate that people disconnect the design and execution phases because it creates a better product. First, dream big and design the best experience possible. Then you can pick the tools that best meet your needs. It can be helpful to survey the landscape first so that you know what is possible, but don’t do your “design” inside the tool.

I was a judge for a UX Design class demo day a few years ago. The project we were judging was a custom website to prepare the students for building websites for clients after graduation. It struck me how obvious it was to tell which students had designed their websites using Squarespace versus designing the websites outside of the tool and then building it in Squarespace. The former method created sites that looked generic and cookie cutter. Websites created by the latter method were bespoke and dazzling.

3.   Slow it down.

You’ll need to take more frequent breaks. Things take longer on digital.

It is going to take much more time to orient everyone. Expect some attendees to be unfamiliar with the technology and tools that you use. Be patient and guide them through the process. Consider having slides and explainer prompts to assist this process. Enlist your savvier colleagues to help others along.

Also, remember that there are always dropouts and glitches, so account for needing to repeat yourself. Give attendees plenty of time to connect and greet each other due to the loss of connection that would otherwise happen in the hallway or meeting room. Plan these things into your agenda.

Finally, I’m a big fan of taking quick little brain breaks. It’s intense to be chained to your desk all day long. Have everyone turn off their cameras and do a big stretch.

4.   Consider what is made possible when people don’t have to travel.

Can you have more frequent, shorter meetings? Does the lack of in-person meetings and events allow you to iterate more?

If you have team members spread across the globe, the tendency is to wait until you have a critical moment or enough decisions to be made to justify getting everyone together. Even then, schedules will prevent some people from being able to attend.

Now that virtual is the new normal, we can rethink all of this. Instead of waiting for a critical moment, we can meet more frequently. We can have more meaningful meetings just when we need them, instead of waiting for enough questions to pile up and tensions to build. We can embrace lean and agile meetings.

Imagine flying stakeholders to the US from China, Australia, Spain, and Brazil for a four-hour workshop on Monday and another four-hour workshop on Friday. While two four-hour workshops with three days in between for individual exploration between might have been your ideal event design, in the past you never would have suggested this due to logistics and financial constraints. Now, this and much more is possible. Actually, it’s always been possible, but now we have an audience that’s receptive to this way of thinking.

5.   Include physical experiences to build engagement and connection.

If you want to create a more intimate and tactile experience during a workshop, have your participants buy items from a common shopping list. For example, when we host Design Sprints, we have everyone create a sketch on Tuesdays. The sketch follows a template for consistency to democratize idea-sharing. When working virtually, we could build a template in our virtual whiteboard, but we also can have everyone do real-world sketches to share. Design Sprint sketch supplies consist of nothing more than yellow 3×5 post-it notes, a black felt tip pen, a black whiteboard marker, and white printer paper.

This opportunity for greater engagement can be applied to any type of virtual experience. For example, I’m on the board of a performing arts festival in Austin called Fusebox. We had to cancel the festival this year but are planning our virtual offering. Some of our artists are hosting virtual workshops. We are working with them to design physical and tactile experiences to provide the most intimate experience for attendees.

There are many ways, small and large, to incorporate physical experiences to enhance the virtual experience and bring people closer together. I was in a happy hour last week during which we all had to go find the item in our pantry that will last the longest, meaning it has the expiration date the furthest in the future. We all shared our items and celebrated the winner. Are there similar things you can do that help serve your purpose? (See Tip #1.)