Conference News October 2020 | Page 23

DOING SUMMIT FOR THE COMMUNITY

Steve Squires , founder of Connektd , reviews the delivery of his first online event : The Event Freelancer Summit
thought it would be useful to share my experience and some of the learnings of delivering my first virtual event : The Event Freelancer
Summit .
From an initial conversation just eight weeks before the event date , the summit became a successful global online event with 20 sessions , 38 speakers and over 800 delegates . The agenda was developed according to four guiding principles :
Freelancers : to ensure that all content , topics and speakers would be speaking directly to freelancers about the things that matter to them .
Practical : every session would deliver practical takeaways in the form of reference material , guidelines , direction and / or actions for the audience to follow up .
Consumable : 30min for each session to keep the content focused and audience engaged .
Community : to develop an event where everyone felt part of the global event community , by allowing the audience an opportunity to network with one another .
It would have been very easy to deliver an agenda that focused on the most convenient subjects that came to us or for us and contributors to talk about working in the event industry , or even about the challenges of being a freelancer , but we wanted to engage with the wider industry and give a platform to companies and individuals to offer valuable advice , guidance and information , and maybe even a space for debate and discussion .
The agenda and its tone was key to us , and for that reason every session was motivated around a question , questions that came from discussions we had with freelancers all over the world , from company directors and heads of depts , these questions were important to people from all aspects of our industry .
Next was to consider the line-up of speakers ; this was important to guarantee integrity in the level and transparency of the debate and answers that came from them . We leveraged our networks to approach
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speakers who Case study had experience in the areas , and in one or two cases we were approached by people in the industry who , having seen our agenda , wanted to speak on a particular topic . The mix of agenda topics and speakers started to give us a good feel about the direction . We also knew we were onto something when every single speaker we approached said yes to taking part without any hesitation , resulting in some high-profile speakers including Simon Hughes and Caroline Jackson from the BVEP , Michael Whyrley-Birch of TRO , Andy Lenthall from the Production Services Association , heads of global agencies , board members of global associations , and numerous other freelancers and executives from all areas of the industry .
Next came the choice of platform to host our global summit . Having experienced the numerous domestic and corporate video conferencing tools the world had become addicted to this year we knew that we needed something different to develop the community and networking aspect of the summit . It was around this time , six weeks before the event date , that we were introduced to Simon Latter from PSA Audio Visual . PSA worked closely with a platform called Remo , which proved to have all the usual functionality including audience chat and polls , but also a networking function that is live throughout the event , offering a delegate experience that emulates key aspects of the way a delegate might attend a live event . Ajay Parekh , www . conference-news . co . uk