When travel issues threaten to keep a key speaker from your meeting, here’s how technology — and planning — can bridge the gap.
Y
ou’ve identified the perfect speaker for your meeting — one whose message will resonate with
your audience and have them hanging on every word. But there’s a problem: Time or budgetary constraints prevent you from having that speaker at your meeting. Such was the dilemma we faced at
Convening Leaders in San Diego in January. We were keen on having game designer Jane McGonigal as our open- ing general session speaker. McGonigal is world-renowned for creating games for organizations including the Ameri- can Heart Association and the Interna- tional Olympic Committee. “We knew that Jane would make an impact within the Convening Leaders community,” said Brad Lewis, executive director of the PCMA Education Foundation and PCMA’s head of education for the 2012 meeting. “We also knew that getting her to San Diego would be a challenge.” McGonigal’s presentation would only be 20 minutes long, and making the trip from the San Francisco area, where she is based, to San Diego was less than optimal. “Jane is very protec- tive of her time,” Lewis said. “She’s very selective with her engagements and how they affect her schedule.” Then Jennifer Bird Bowen, an agent
with The Leigh Bureau, which repre- sents McGonigal, proposed that the game designer deliver her remarks via a remote broadcast. “I was open to the suggestion,” Lewis said. “I thought it could fit into our mantra of innovation and risk-taking, while demonstrating another way to deliver a general session.” The idea of using Skype was quickly discarded; the platform, prone to lags, is not compatible with the IMAG
projection system that PCMA was using at the San Diego Convention Center. And production values for the 3,100-person session were high: McGonigal’s image would appear on two 11-by-20-foot screens at the front of the room and two 9-by-16-foot screens placed over the audience. Technicians with Freeman, PCMA’s
technology partner, couldn’t test the on-site connection before their arrival in San Diego a few days before the Janu- ary meeting. Instead, they tested it the Friday before the Monday session, and then early that morning. Freeman also flew a producer to San Francisco to double-check the connection at the videoconferencing facility where McGo- nigal would be making the broadcast. The presentation would be live — but
not without a net. Freeman was ready in the event that the audio or video (or both) failed. If the video dropped out, the audience would hear McGonigal talking them through her slides. In the worst-case scenario — that both video and audio failed — a clip of McGonigal’s 2010 TEDTalk was on standby. An alternative script was loaded onto the main stage teleprompter, to minimize potential disruptions to the session. Fortunately, Plan A worked. Not per-
fectly: Bill Knight, a production man- ager at Freeman, noted that there were occasional audio challenges for McGo- nigal, and that the conference-room lighting in San Francisco could have been improved. Still, the session dem- onstrated that technology can deliver a powerful meeting experience.
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Kelly Peacy, CAE, CMP, is PCMA’s senior vice president of meetings and education.
BREAKOUT
The Specs Remote broadcasts can solve a number of problems, but they aren’t inexpensive: meeting organizers can expect to pay about $25,000 to produce a remote broadcast similar to the one delivered by Jane McGonigal at Convening Leaders. However, expect to reduce speaker fees by as much as 75 percent, and eliminate or minimize a speaker’s travel expenses.
This list outlines the technology and production needs for McGonigal’s presentation. If you’re producing a hybrid meeting, chances are you’ll have some of this equipment already budgeted:
On-site
› Rented Polycom HDX 8006 videoconferencing system from VER
› T1 line with dedicated 6 Mbps and 2 drops
Off-site › Lifesize Room 220 video- conferencing system
› Remote producer fee/expenses +
ON THE WEB Watch Jane McGonigal’s TED presentation — PCMA’s contingency plan in the event of a total video and audio failure — at convn.org/ ted-mcgonigal.