How to prepare and make the most of an all-day online event
I have attended many an all-day event over the years and many online events since lockdown.
Some of my favourite online events so far have been with Erin Thomas Wong with The Mumpreneur Collective and The Cocoon https://www.mumpreneurcollective.com/and also with Janet Murray and her various online social media courses. I have learnt so much, it’s all been so valuable to my business for so many reasons.
The event I am attending next is the 2021 sorted online event https://www.janetmurray.co.uk/2021sorted/with Janet Murray, so many people have told me how good it is and so I can’t wait to get my hands on all that info and knowledge and spend time online with like-minded people.
As I have been to a few online events with various themes over the last two years, and so I thought that I would share with you some of my top tips on how to make the most of an online event.
It is all too easy to just rock up on that first morning and find that everyone else seems to know exactly what’s going on and then you get caught out because you haven’t done your homework, you didn’t check the emails, you forgot to download the workbook etc, and if it’s a paid event, you could miss out on some valuable content because you didn’t do your checks and therefore you waste some of your valuable investment.
Best practise, do all the setting up before the event and you should be good to go.
Here Are My Top Ten Tips:
- A Good Position and Chair – Make sure you are sitting at a good level, in a good chair, look after your back and neck and move around when needed.
- Good Lighting – It is so important to have the correct lighting, too harsh, or too low-level lighting will cause stress on your eyes and can cause headaches. Try to get some decent lighting set up and you don’t have to spend a fortune, use what you have, be creative but don’t work in the dark.
- Atmosphere – Light a candle to create calm and a sense of occasion
- Notebooks – It is so important to have a good notebook, your favourite one and one for rough notes so that you can transfer the info over later in your other notebook in an organised way.
- Good Pens – This is so important, you may need to write quickly and so a pen that flows is really important, one that feels good in your hands and doesn’t put too much pressure on your fingers, pen or pencil make sure it’s one you love. Oh, and don’t forget the highlighters, you may want to use two or three different colours, one for ‘act on soon’, another one to remember ‘its importance’ and a third one for ‘content ideas’.
- Block Out The Day – Make sure you haven’t double-booked yourself, or have an interruption during the day, as this will be distracting and could break your creative flow.
- Food & Drink – At an all-day online event, sadly you won’t get fed, so do make sure that you have some snacks and drinks all lined up, in case you go over lunch as the content is so good and some of it might overlap. You may not want to leave the event just to get some food.
- Sound/Tech Check – Test your mic, visuals and sound beforehand, if it’s on zoom, you can set up a dummy event and add a person and test it with them and if you can have a backup plan, somewhere you can use a hotspot in case other methods fail.
- Put On Your Best Attitude – Just take it all in, enjoy, interact, help and support if and when it’s relevant.
- Do Not Disturb – Last but not least, put a do not disturb sign somewhere so that your family etc know not to bother you unless is really urgent.
Last, of all, enjoy the event, go on it smiling, it will put you in a good frame of mind and make notes that you can read in a way that works for you.
