Conferencing Covid-Style

Thirty sessions, twenty experts … four microphones, three cameras, two streams, one producer (and a partridge in a pear tree LOL) … that’s what conferencing Covid-style looks like!

I booked my ticket to the Digital Marketing Down Under (DMDU) conference at the end of last year to secure the early bird rate – and was really looking forward to spending a couple of days on the Gold Coast and all that a conference experience usually involves: meeting new people, listening to world-class speakers, great food, lots of “aha” moments, inspiration, networking, learning …

And then, along came a global pandemic.

• Our daughter’s wedding has been postponed until next year.
• Our 30th wedding anniversary celebrations (a trip to Melbourne to see the Harry Potter play) have been moved to October (yeah … we’ll see).
• And it was announced that DMDU was going ahead – albeit online.

Initially I wasn’t too sure about that. I mean, half the fun of going to a conference is meeting and mingling! The thought of sitting in front of my computer for 2 days straight to watch the sessions,  just didn’t have the same appeal. Maybe I could request a refund?

What saved the day for me, was when another local business owner suggested that we try conferencing covid-style!

With small gatherings allowed, three of us booked a nearby training room with a big screen and arranged our own “watch party”. It meant that it still got to feel like an event, and we had the chance to share our learnings, and escape the isolation of working from home for a little while.

Like any live event, there were a couple of hiccups, as well as a couple of extra challenges due to the online environment. For example:

• One speaker based in Amsterdam missed her allocated time, because she had it booked in her calendar for her Friday … which is actually Saturday here in Australia! Her session was hastily rescheduled for the following day, and another speaker slotted into her place. The joys of working with time differences!
• Technical issues, such as videos that didn’t roll when they were meant to, or the sound not working. However when you consider that out of 30 hours of live TV created over a two day period, only 11 minutes were affected by tech problems, I’d say that’s a pretty good record.

One of the challenges of online training is being able to see both the Powerpoint slides AND the presenter. There were a couple of speakers who only did the voiceover, but I think it’s really important that we be able to see the presenter in action as much as possible!

Kudos to the team behind DMDU for all their hard work, to move an event of this size online. They put in a huge effort, and as a virtual attendee, I really appreciated things like:

• Our great MC, Sofie Formica (best known from “The Great South East”). Having an MC with substantial live TV experience really helped with the smooth running of the two day program.
• The ability to interact via the Facebook group, as well as leave comments (and see those of others) during presentations;
• And the organisers sent a wonderful VIP “goodie box” to our group, which included some amazing brownies and other goodies for morning tea, a free copy of Molly Pittman’s book “Click Happy”, DMDU pens, and a voucher for Uber Eats which we really appreciated.

I took about 20 pages of notes over the two days, and have already implemented some of the tasks I set myself during the conference. Plus I have access to recordings of all the sessions, so I can catch up on any that I missed (there were two different streams running at once) at my leisure.

While it wasn’t quite the same as the full conference experience – it was pretty darn good!

Have you missed out on any conferences – or attended any online – this year?!

PS I love this video promotion that was aired during the conference, “Forrest Gump Teaches Email Marketing”, so much that I’m going to share it here. Gosh there are some smart marketers out there 😉 !