Genii Weblog

A virtual conference would require different preparations

Tue 3 Sep 2013, 01:58 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
When you set up a physical conference such as ICON UK or EntwicklerCamp, a lot of the preparations for the event involve travel, housing and feeding both presenters and attendees, including special events such as parties, but also including getting the right meeting spaces, video equipment and so forth. Of course, you have many other items such as getting sponsors and making t-shirts, name tags, etc. etc,. etc.

A virtual conference has many different requirements, though some are similar. For example, in a physical conference, you need to make sure that audio/video requirements are adequate in one building, but in a virtual conference, you need to ensure that audio/video requirements are met anywhere in the world on whatever devices the presenters might use. So, while you might not need to pay a hotel for the presenter, you would certainly need to provide a good microphone and web camera (which the presenters could then keep, of course). In a physical conference, sound checks can be done fairly quickly with several people in succession. In a virtual conference, a lot of time would be required to ensure that every presenter could connect up in a reasonable way, knew how to use the audio/visual equipment plus any software (such as Google Hangouts on Air) that you planned to use. If you want some sort of audience participation, you would need to communicate with attendees about what was necessary to join in the participatory portion. Also, while you don't have to feed or house people, you do need to entertain them and good beer isn't virtual, so you might need to provide musical entertainment or non-technical speakers to boost interest. If you want sponsors, you need to provide them something in the way of exposure and possibly a virtual vendor showcase. 

None of this even touches the hardest challenge, which is how to get people's focus and time when you don't have them glued to a seat in a different city. That's a future point to discuss.


SphereCon - Virtually in your office

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What has been said:


1031.1. Howard (09/03/2013 01:35 PM)

Hi Ben, interesting idea. I wonder if Google Hangout can scale to a hundred simultaneous users (or more). We have gotten over 200 for some of our webinars. Maybe using a paid service like go to webinar or webex might be better? This could be paid by a sponsor(s). Or IBM has the online facilities, wonder if they would step up?

Sounds like a good idea. Some other things that come to mind.. would you do one or two full days or maybe just do 2-3 hours a day for a few days (it can get old watching the computer for more than a few hours at a time). Would you do tracks so there was something for admins, devs, managers?

Howard


1031.2. Ben Langhinrichs (09/03/2013 01:55 PM)

Howard, the Google Hangouts on Air can scale to many thousands of users (I know because Daria Musk has held concerts with that many). A far, far smaller contingent (maybe 10 or 20) can be "live" and interacting, but they can switch quickly and easily so that different people can ask questions or interact in other ways. Those people would need to be signed in to Google+ and in a circle, as I understand it, but there could be hundreds in the circle even though only 10 or so could interact at any one time. If I understand correctly, you would not need to be logged into Google+ or anything to watch, so every session would be essentially unlimited in size. I'm working on finding out details from Google. Of course, this is all a thought experiment for the moment, but I'm trying to make the process of finding out completely open and transparent.


1031.3. Rudi (03.09.2013 16:36)

Hi Ben, the hardest problem will not be the presenters, but the attendees to be online at that moment. If you podcast the sessions this will cause more people (in the end) to watch it, but will also cause less people to attend the live session.

Sponsors would be able to help some, but exposure will be their target, and attendee lists as well. Some people won't give their real names, hoping to not be bothered by those sponsors. Others will simply hope for the podcast, even if it's not announced before.


1031.4. Chris Miller (09/05/2013 03:11 PM)

Side note I totally forgot until someone reminded me. We used your awesome session database!!!