The Olympics has evolved significantly since the 1896 inaugural tournament in Athens, Greece, which involved 245 male competitors 43 competitions spread across nine broad disciplines. The 2021 edition in Tokyo, Japan, featured 33 sports and 339 events.

Organizing and successfully staging the Olympics is among the most complex assignments event organizers undertake in the moderning sporting world. The event’s scope, scale, and complexity require high-level multi-sectoral planning and collaboration to make the event successful.

The Tokyo Olympics were held under one of the most challenging environments when Covid-19 ravaged the world, disrupting every aspect of human activity. Minimal human contact was being advocated to contain the spread of the virus. Nonetheless, the organizers were able to pull off what looked like an impossible mission and stage a successful event amid the pandemic.

Lessons to Other Event Organizers

Any aspiring or experienced event organizer can learn much from the Olympics and apply the knowledge in their events. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a Knowledge Transfer Platform where aspiring hosts can learn from the experiences the past organizers.

Most cities bidding to host the Olympics are doing it for the first time: Therefore, the Knowledge Transfer Platform is a very important source of information for them.

The following are lessons you can pick from the Olympics organizers:

Outline Your Objectives

Countries bidding to host the Olympics provide clear objectives of what they intend to achieve from the tournament and how the participants and all stakeholders will gain. This helps them design strategies to achieve the objectives.

An event planner with clearly laid down objectives can organize a successful event by creating a plan to achieve them.

Your Brand Identity is Key

Almost every sports fan can identify the Olympic logo, arguably one of the most recognizable logos globally. It has been the same for over 100 years without changing.

Create a strong brand that everybody can recognize and avoid rebranding many times. Some companies rebrand for big events, which is not advisable as it makes it look unreliable. Your brand identity matters, and unnecessary changes might not achieve the intended purposes.

 However adding a logo or colors that signify an event that is happening can help a brand move with the trends. Some sites like OS GUIDE know how to take advantage of branding during Olympics. 

We are in the Era of Social Media

Organizers of the last few Olympics understood the impact of social media and have utilized that to their benefit. Several instances during the event have been amplified on social media by making them viral. The “disappointed” face of McKayla Maroney and Michael Phelps “death stare are some examples that went viral.

You can use social media to put your brand on the global map. Create something memorable to engage your attendees and encourage them to share with their networks. This will help your audience and brand to grow.

Site Visits are Important

The Rio Olympics taught the importance of site visits before the main event occurred. Australian national team arrived at the Olympic Village only to find uninhabitable accommodation with blocked toilets, gas smell, exposed wires, and plumbing leaks. The team was moved to an alternative hotel as fixes were being conducted.

Site selection is essential to event planning, and site visits are crucial to avoid last-minute shocks. As an event planner, I visit the venue in person before the actual day to ensure that all the necessities are available. This will guarantee the comfort of your attendees.

Security is Priority

Security, in any event, is paramount and Olympic organizers have demonstrated it by the elaborate measures they undertake to ensure the safety of every participant.

Athletes at Rio Olympics reported being mugged and their valuables stolen from their rooms. Brazil’s government hired 85,000 security personnel to boost security by patrolling Olympic venues and key installations such as airports.

Event planners can borrow a leaf from Olympic Organizers to elaborate security measures to ensure their events are secure. Plan for emergency procedures to cover accidents and other emergencies.

Teach basic safety procedures to attendees to enable them to act accordingly in case of security breaches such as fire breakouts.

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Determine the Purpose of the Conference

The first thing to consider when organizing a virtual conference is the purpose of the meeting. The aim should be clear and specific so that everyone participating knows what to do when they are at the conference. 

For example, suppose you want to organize a training program for your employees. In that case, it is important to decide how you will assess and evaluate their performance after completion of the program.

Set Goals and Objectives

Goals and objectives are important because they help you to know what your conference is about, what it aims to accomplish, and how you will measure the results.

Setting goals and objectives can be tricky, especially if you’re organizing a virtual conference for the first time. You want to ensure that everyone involved has some idea of what they are trying to accomplish with this event.

Here are some questions that can help you determine your goals and objectives:

1. What do you want people to get out of this? 
2. What do you want them to take away from it?
3. How do you want people to feel after attending our virtual conference? 
4. What will make them feel like they gained something from attending?
5. How will you measure success? Will there be an evaluation form or survey at the end of the event or after each session? If so, what questions should be in these forms/surveys? 

Target Audience

You can select your target audience by determining who you want to attend and why they would have an interest in being there. 

Suppose you are planning a virtual event for individuals interested in learning about a particular topic, such as digital marketing or social media. In that case, you might create an online course that meets their needs. You can use the same process to determine who your target audience is and why they would have interest in attending your virtual conference.

The target audience of your virtual conference should consist of people with similar interests and goals. For example, if you want to host a virtual meeting with students from your school, they should be students enrolled at the school; if you want to host a virtual conference with entrepreneurs, they should be entrepreneurs who run businesses; and so on.

Choose a Virtual Conference Platform Technology?

Virtual conference technology has become increasingly popular over the past few years. Today, many of the most important companies in the world are using virtual conference platforms to host their events. These platforms offer many features, including social media integration, web conferencing, video conferencing, and more.

There are many different types of virtual conference platforms available today. Some companies prefer one platform over another based on their needs and characteristics.

Technical Support

Technical support is one of the most important factors in organizing a virtual conference. The technical team should provide the participants with all the necessary technical support for their event. They should also have enough knowledge about the latest technology and guide on how to use it effectively.

The first step is to get in touch with your technical department. Ask them what they can do for you, what kind of equipment they need, and how much time it will take them to install everything. 

If possible, try to set up a preliminary meeting where you can discuss your ideas and get an idea of how much time they need to prepare for your event. It will help you decide whether it’s worth investing so much money in organizing this event.

How Will the Audience Get Involved in Your Virtual Conference?

At the heart of any virtual conference is the audience. The audience is individuals who want to learn about a specific topic but may not all be present simultaneously. Moreover, you may want to add additional people to your virtual conference, such as speakers who can share their expertise with others or students who need extra help on a subject. 

For your audience to participate, you’ll need some way for them to interact. You can accomplish this through a variety of methods:

Online chat: Online chats are very convenient because no matter where people are, they can join in when necessary. They also allow for quick responses from participants, making them useful for answering questions during an event.

Audio recordings: You can use audio recordings as a supplement to online chats or as an alternative method. You can upload recordings onto websites like YouTube, so anyone who wants to listen can do so without taking time out of their day or waiting until they get home from work.

Have a Budget and Cost Estimate Set Aside.

You need to have a budget in place to be sure that you can cover all of the expenses that come with organizing a virtual conference. Knowing how much money you will need for the event and what exactly it will cost before you begin working on it is important.

Sponsorships and Partnerships

Sponsorship and partnerships are the most important factors when organizing a virtual conference. When looking for sponsors, it’s important to know that not all sponsors will be a good fit for your event. To find the right sponsor, you need to identify the type of sponsor you’re looking for and ensure they’re interested in your event.

To do this, start with your target audience and their needs. If you want to attract more people, look at companies that can help you reach more people or offer services that will bring them into your event. If you wish to have more attendees, look at companies that can provide products or services that attract new people to your conference.

When it comes time to set up partnerships with other companies, make sure they have something in common with yours — this includes how they operate and how they relate to each other’s goals in terms of attracting different audiences and boosting sales.

Post-Conference Analysis and Follow-Up

After the conference, you should conduct a post-conference analysis and follow-up. You can ask participants to fill out a questionnaire or create an online survey.

You will want to ask participants who attended the virtual conference what they thought of it, how they engaged with it, and what they learned from it. You will also want to know if there were any problems with the conference itself or if any participants could not participate because of their location or other reasons.

A post-conference analysis will allow you to see how effective your virtual conference was and identify any areas for improvement in future programs.

Organizing Meetings Made Easy!

Hopefully, this blog helps bring about some clarity as to how to organize an online conference. The key takeaway is that there are multiple factors to consider when organizing your event, and the more time you spend planning out the details, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

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Let’s start with the most fundamental necessities. A virtual conference is an internet gathering in which anybody from all across the world may participate. Using a computer or other electronic gadget, they may watch speeches, keynote addresses, and panel discussions from their own homes or offices.

You may not believe it, but virtual conferences have also moved into the entertainment business, for example, check jackpot city casino online review, where they talk about how the virtual casino operates. Virtual meetings have several advantages over in-person events. They are more convenient to participate in (no need to buy a ticket), cost-effective (there is no venue fee), and produce less carbon dioxide than traditional gatherings. You may communicate with a worldwide audience, as well as convert leads from almost anyplace on Earth if you use the proper platform

So how do you set up a successful virtual conference?

Follow these steps:

1) Choose the right platform

There are a variety of virtual conferencing systems to consider, each with its own set of features and pricing range. Do research to see which platform is best suited for your needs.

2) Promote your event by advertising it

It’s time to start advertising your event if you’ve chosen a platform. To reach out to individuals who might be interested in attending your virtual meeting, utilize social media, email marketing, and other platforms.

3) Make a compelling to-do list

A good conference agenda, whether virtual or in person, is critical for success. Collaborate with speakers and panelists to develop a lineup of presentations and discussions that will be of interest to your audience.

4) Give something of value

An interesting program with the possibility of winning incentives, gaining access to unique material, or receiving discounts on things and services is required. Provide something that will motivate people to attend your event.

5) Make sure to contact those who attended your event

You may use the methods discussed in this essay to hold a successful virtual meeting that engages and enthralls people from all around the globe.

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Let’s try to figure out what’s most annoying about the online format.

Low Involvement

There is a difference between watching football at home or in the stadium. It’s the same with conferences. At an offline event, the participant is focused, fully immersed in the process. When learning from home and the office, routine worries, phone calls, or burnt cutlets are distracting. Of course, you can then corral all the participants in an online conference in a group or chat, but, as practice shows, personal acquaintance is much more memorable.

Technical failures

Any Internet broadcast is highly dependent on technology and connection quality. And problems can arise from both the listener and the organizer. Low speed, bad sound, unexpected disconnections – there are many reasons, but the result is the same. Handheld microphones in conjunction with a huge hall gives such a disgusting sound background on the recording that you three times curse the organizers for saving on loop machines and direct recording of sound from them.

Lack of networking

Rarely does anyone leave a conference without a pile of business cards and friends on Facebook. At such events a lot of useful acquaintances are made, often the organizers themselves practice facilitated networking – in other words, they manage communication. There is no such thing online. In an online format, it is difficult to organize such effective networking that an offline conference can boast. When you come to a face-to-face event, there is a sense of celebration. Working online, it’s hard to achieve the same effect.

Little use – a lot of advertising

The image of online conferences has been severely damaged by pseudo-beneficial events and infobusiness. A participant comes for knowledge and practice, but receives advertising. Undoubtedly, you can’t do without it at conferences. But if the participant remembers only it – it was a bad online conference.

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Four modes of video conferencing are distinguished:

• video call (point-to-point);
• symmetric conference (all participants on the screen);
• video-lesson (all participants can see and hear the lector, and the lector sees and hears all);
• conference call (all participants can see and hear the speaker only).
• Videoconferencing is not only a video communication, but also a collaboration tool, indispensable for corporate communications.

What do I need for video conferencing?

Various peripheral equipment is used to provide participants with sound and video: cameras, screens, microphones, speakerphones, headsets, congress systems and projectors. As a transmission medium can be used both enterprise network, built on different principles, and the global network of Internet. Modern video and audio codecs, specialized network protocols, and various algorithms of signal processing enable high quality communication practically on any communication channel.

Often there is a need to demonstrate various media data during a video conference, and to do this video conference systems allow capturing and transmitting to remote participants presentations, pictures of the desktop or separate windows, as well as various formats of documents. It is achieved by using special software, additional cameras (for example, document cameras), capturing signals from video outputs of notebooks, PCs and other systems, including medical complexes.

Types of video conferences

There are two basic types of videoconferencing – personal and group. A personal video conference implies a video communication session with just two participants. Group videoconferencing refers to all other types of videoconferencing. Different established rules for displaying of video conference participants for each party are called types of videoconferencing. We suggest to understand this question in details!

1-on-1 videoconferencing

Everything is simple here: two parties participate, both of them can see and hear each other at the same time. Let’s mention that during any video conference there can be used different collaboration tools such as text-messages, files exchange, presentations and other media.

Symmetric video conferencing.

They are also called Continuous Presence. This is the name of a videoconferencing session where more than 2 people are participating and all participants can see and hear each other at the same time. Naturally, video conference implies full-duplex communication. In other words, it is an analogue of a round table where everyone has equal rights. Group videoconferencing is suitable for meetings where maximum involvement of each participant is required.

Voice-activated videoconferencing

The name of this mode comes from the English designation Voice Activated Switching (VAS). This videoconference assumes the following format of communication: all participants of a session hear and see on their screens only the speaker while he sees himself or the previous speaker. Minor variations of this mechanism are possible, but the essence is the following: VCS server monitors voice activity of subscribers and switches an image, broadcasted to all participants, to speaker. This mode has significant disadvantages, such as false triggers for noise, cough or cell phone ringing.

Video conference calls

Mode in which participants are divided into two types: speakers and listeners, where each listener can become a speaker (with the permission of the conference organizer). The presenter of such conference appoints speakers himself and can remove them from the video platform at any moment.

This mode can also be called a role video conference. A selector video conference is most frequently used for web conferences (webinars).

Video conferences for distance learning

A special mode in which all participants (students) see and hear only one broadcasting user (the teacher) and he sees and hears all the students. Students are not distracted by each other, and the teacher controls them.

Video Broadcasting

A type of videoconferencing in which the speaker broadcasts to a large audience of listeners without seeing or hearing them. Other participants can only see and hear the speaker. Feedback is only possible via text chat. Often, in order to smooth out changes in network conditions, a significant delay of up to several seconds is introduced between the broadcaster and the listeners during the broadcast.

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