Despite the significant amount of time the average business person spends in meetings each week, it seems as though attending a well-managed, effective meeting happens as often as you would find a four-leaf clover. Granted hosting any meeting is no walk in the park, but trying to host a resourceful audio or web conference can be even more challenging. Thankfully, not only does practice make perfect, but our ConferencingShopper blog is chock-full of tips and tricks on improving your meetings success.
How to manage your virtual conferencePrior to your meeting:Create an agenda and send to each participant in advance. If you plan on having a lengthy conference with a large number of participants, then you should also include a time schedule as well as a list of objectives or expected outcomes for each item on your agenda. This advanced preparation will give structure to your conferences, set and assert goals for you and your participants to aim for, as well as shows respect to your participants and to the company.
Assign a back-up facilitator that is able to take your place in the event of your absence. Be sure to go through both the conferencing software and meeting agenda with him/her thoroughly.
Perform a dry-run to ensure your conference call will run as smoothly as possible. Todays audio and web conferencing solutions offer a robust, comprehensive list of features to improve communication and collaboration that although user-friendly require practice to navigate and execute properly.
At the start of your conference:Arrive early so you can set-up and conduct any necessary tests. Nothing kills a participants focus and engagement quite like a host or presenter that is struggling with the technology.
Welcome each participant as they enter to your conference even if your
conferencing solution displays the name of each participant as they arrive in your meeting, greet them with a simple, Hello. If your
Conferencing Services does not display participants names, a simply ask, Hi there, who just joined? to keep track of your attendees.
Introduce each other once everyone has joined, take a brief moment to introduce each of your participants as well as their role in the company and your conference. This will help both the host and participants to be able to direct any questions or comments toward specific individuals.
