Speaker 1: Hi, it's Peter Maggs here. Your organisation is planning to run a live Q&A webinar. You have a great special guest in mind or even an amazing expert panel. You've got promotion for the live webinar all organised and you're good to go, right? Firstly, let's press pause and get a clear understanding of the why, the who and the how before we do anything else. Because only then can we get down to working out what will be required before, during and after the live webinar. We're obviously hoping that the live Q&A webinar will increase engagement, allow us to reach a broader audience, help with our branding and enhance our organisation's visibility. But what if the timing of the webinar is poor or people simply aren't aware it's on and hardly anyone turns up to the live event? Was it even worth doing? The answer is definitely yes, if you treat the live webinar as an opportunity to create quality new content. By editing and curating the recorded webinar, we can develop cross-platform content that will be available on demand and can build engagement over time. If we get lots of people joining our live webinar, that's a bonus. If not, we'll have great content to push out to a much broader audience. So who do you need for the live webinar? As well as the guests, you need a team of at least three people, preferably four, especially if you're all working remotely. Because we all know that with live events, PCs can crash and internet connections can drop out. So we're going to need our well-prepared, confident webinar host. A dedicated admin person running the webinar backend. We'll also need a moderator checking feedback and chat, as well as being the backup host if needed. Finally, a video editor recording the webinar and standing by as a backup admin person if required. In summary, you have your team of three or four people to ensure that there are backups for each role in the live webinar, and that you have your plan B, C, and D in place. We need to work out what level of audience participation we want the webinar to have. Remembering that the people on our panel have great knowledge and expertise, so we want to make sure we've curated a range of relevant questions for them before the webinar. If some terrific questions come in from our audience during the webinar, they could be incorporated into the list. But by having our core questions already prepared, it provides a level of certainty about the content that will be covered. The webinar moderator will also be answering audience questions via chat, providing links to relevant resources, and potentially making people aware of the organization's other activities. So what does the team need to have in place before the webinar? Well, obviously, we'll need to confirm our webinar speakers and outline our expectations to them. We'll explain the type of questions they're likely to be asked, and let them know that we'll be back in touch prior to the webinar to check that they're good to go. We need to have our webinar registration process ready so we can start promoting the webinar across our comms channels. It's also important we provide an option for those that can't join the live webinar to view the edited recording later on. We'll be encouraging those who register to submit their questions for our panel of speakers. This will be laid out in the email they receive once they've registered, along with all the other relevant details. And finally, I'd always suggest the team does a webinar rehearsal at least 24 hours before to check that equipment is working, that everyone is ready if plans B, C, or D are needed, and are comfortable after a run-through. On the day of the webinar, our administrator will have the webinar open 30 to 60 minutes before the official start time, so they can admit registered participants in an orderly fashion. 30 minutes before the webinar, our moderator will start answering any queries that come through in chat, and keeping an eye out for new questions that could potentially be included. And five minutes before the start, our video person will start recording the webinar. After the host gets the final thumbs up from the administrator, they're ready to welcome our guests and begin the webinar. In the background, the rest of the team perform their tasks, and stand by if they need to jump in. Once the webinar finishes, our video person will make sure the recording is safely saved, and ready to start the editing process for the polished version, with each question and answer chapterised, that we'll make available across our multiple platforms. In summary, the completed webinar should now allow us to create our cross-platform curated content that can be delivered on-demand and build engagement over time. I hope this has been useful, and feel free to check out my other working from home videos.