What’s the best way to keep an audience’s attention at conferences or events? Providing top speakers? Using a stunning location? Providing plenty of food and drink? An opportunity to network with peers and business associates?
These are, after all, extremely important factors in ensuring that people come to your event and stay for the duration so it is not surprising that conference and event organisers concentrate on getting them right.
Unfortunately, all too frequently, they overlook a crucial feature that is equally important – audio visual provision. If your audience cannot hear or see the event properly, their attention will quickly be lost. There is nothing worse than trying to hear someone giving a speech, when the microphone keeps breaking down, there is interference in the transmission or simply you cannot understand them because of language difficulties. Likewise if you are trying to see a computer generated image on the screen and visibility is bad, tables and diagrams are indistinct or the screen is badly placed so that not everyone in the audience can see it, then audiences lose interest.
Avoiding such problems is simple. All you have to do is make preparations for audio visual coverage very early in your event planning. Talk to your provider about the event, give them all the information they need as to anticipated audience numbers, size of venue and the type of service you need to provide. Add in details about any special needs such as conference links with speakers in other regions or countries and whether translation services will be involved. Give them the opportunity to go to the venue and assess the rooms that will be used. Seek their advice on the best type of equipment needed for the job and think carefully as to whether you want to have your own people taking responsibility for operating the equipment, or whether asking AV company to provide specialist technicians.
Using specialist AV technicians will certainly reduce the potential risks of problems arising. They will have spare kit at hand, and will be able to react instantly to any signs of potential problems. The AV technician will be able to deal with an emerging problem before the conference organizer even realizes that there is a problem!
As far as the audience is concerned, it will simply have been a great event meeting all their requirements, ensuring they are more likely to return for other events in the future.
