Backups and redundancy
That story of the chairman from a bank apologising in the newspapers for the rescheduling of the AGM due to technical difficulty is real. Disrupted virtual AGMs, will need to be reconvened. Imagine how much of everyone’s time that would eat up.
Backups of backups and thorough testing of all the audio visual system along with the live webcast platform and voting platform is essential.
Motion Media Works has a highly redundant failsafe AGM platform that runs on multiple servers and data centers and will survive multiple server outages without skipping beat. Do check them out for virtual AGM webcasts.
Last Minute Scramble
Being able to accommodate changes and being flexible is a part of being in the events industry. However balancing changes available time is something to watch out for.
Imagine the chairman turning up 10 mins before the event and saying he would prefer it, if the right monitor shows a different output instead.
5 mins to change the configuration and the chairman decides that he prefers the original setup. How will that affect the 40,000 shareholders waiting to watch the webcast?
Public Private Conversations
That other story of the chairman having an unmentionable conversation made public is not a myth.
Yes a rehearsal so directors know when the transmission is live is important. Equally important is to ensure that there is enough production crew members to watch out for the different tasks such as audio engineer to mute mics, video operator to manage the mixers. With live events, cost cutting is great till it isn’t. It always looks like there is too much crew on set until something goes wrong. So you do want spare capacity. There are no second chances in a live event.
Backup Plans, But How and When?
Backup and contingency plans are only good when everyone knows when and how it gets activated. Schedule time to practice it during rehearsals. Especially if the backup plan is complicated and needs things to be done in a certain order.
Conclusion
Those are some pointers for the moment, but I am sure more will come to mind. Writing this at 3 AM on a Sunday morning might not give me access full access to my 2 brain cells
