Events Tips for Easy AV provider workflow
If you’ve ever organised a big corporate event, you have a good idea how stressful it can be. There are so many people you have to deal with – your suppliers, the speakers and presenters, the delegates, and of course your boss! The best way to manage it all is with clear communication up front. That helps us to help you. So here’s our shortlist of ways to work better with your events AV provider:
1. Book your AV provider as far ahead as possible
A longer lead-time gives us more time to prepare and get everything right.
It also gives us more capability to hire the best technicians for your project. Many – most! – of these people work on a freelance basis. The earlier we contact them, the more likely they are to be available.
COVID hit the events industry hard and many people found alternative work. We’re still in recovery phase right now, so the freelance pool is smaller than normal. That makes booking early even more important.
2. Provide a run sheet
The run sheet covers all the basics of your event:
- Who’s speaking, when and in what location
- Whether they have a presentation
- Whether they have any videos
- Anything else ‘funky’ you want us to check
We understand you may not have all of these pinned down. We know that in the world of events things change. But from the perspective of the audio visual service provider:
Why? Let’s take some specific examples.
- You might have a panel of ten people, but your quotation only includes 5 microphones. Ideally, everyone on your panel should be wired up with their own mic. It makes sense to check that in advance and adjust the quote if necessary.
- Perhaps a speaker wants to share a video.
In this case, we’d like to know in advance, so we can download the video in advance and play it locally. This removes any risk offloading or spooling during the video if bandwidth goes down at an inopportune time. Even worse, we’ve seen cases where a YouTube video at an event was interrupted by ads. That’s something you want to avoid! - Some people use presentation software (like Vizme or Prezi) which depends on an internet connection. If we don’t know that, there’s no guarantee there will be internet with good bandwidth.
- You have a speaker who is dialing in from interstate or overseas and presenting virtually. In this case, our company wants the time to do a full tech check in advance. We go beyond connectivity to assess the lighting, the camera angle and so on. Far easier to fix that well in advance than in the last 30 minutes, when the event has already started and we have our hands full with that.
- You may have multiple event streams, or a plenary room which is going to be divided during the break into several smaller workshop rooms. There’s a fair amount of technical juggling involved in this, so the sooner we know and can start planning, the better!
3. Send us presentations beforehand
We get it, this is challenging. We know all about presenters who want to change slides and fix typos as they’re walking to the stage.
But if we can have something in advance, it helps. It might only be a draft presentation, but it gives us a backup. We can create some placeholders to go on screen, either between presentations, or in case of any unexpected issues or changes.
4. Consider your background music
Music in coffee breaks or between presenters can make such a difference to the atmosphere of your event. These days it’s easy to create a Spotify playlist or similar, then download in advance so it’s ready to play.
At SmoothAV we have some playlists we keep on hand which suit many events – but they may not be what you want. If you don’t like them, we’d rather know before the day of the event, when we’re trying to wire up a presenter and make last-minute changes to their presentation.
It’s not exactly easy to find music which hits your definition of ‘light and high energy’ at zero notice! Nor can we guarantee that the results from these hasty searches will be free of swearwords you don’t want at your event.
So do yourselves and us a favour by facing the music in advance!
5. Give us a chance to brief the presenters
We don’t need a full rehearsal, but it’s good to have a chat with the speakers. 15 minutes or so before they go on stage is a good time to mic them up and test their presentations. This includes showing them the specific clickers we’re using that day, so they know which button does what.
If a speaker has video in their presentation, we’re doubly careful about that. We want to make sure it’s easy to start the video with a single click of the clicker, rather than having to use a mouse. (Powerpoint has got better at this.)
At most events, we can just brief speakers in the ops area where we’re looking after the AV. If you have a large event with multiple breakout sessions and dozens of speakers, we may recommend a special “speakers prep” room with dedicated equipment to make sure this all goes smoothly.
Is your events AV provider easy to work with?
If you follow the tips above, your provider should be a great partner, making it easier to run your event rather than harder.
That’s what we strive for with every client, every event. Obviously, we can’t control how far in advance you book, but if you hire us, we’ll request run sheets, music, presentations and so – because we want your event to run smoothly just as much as you do!
Want to know more? Let’s talk.
