Best Practices for Event Production

Staying organized and communicating async with clients

Create a running notes doc to record notes from all client meetings, starting with the kickoff meeting. Note the dates and attendees of each meeting.
Create a comprehensive run-of-show document to refer back to.
Create a spreadsheet with action items assigned to relevant stakeholders, a list of rooms that need to be created, a list of workspaces (if there are multiple), etc.
Agree on a regularly scheduled meeting time to check in on the progress of the event.
Determine who from the client side is the decision maker and request that they attend every meeting.
Create a Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, etc. channel with all event producers and relevant stakeholders. (The earlier you establish a communication channel, the better).
If you are communicating via email, try to keep one email thread going about the event.
Create deadlines for the client and leave a paper trail.
Check in async before every regularly scheduled meeting to ensure that the client has completed all relevant action items (e.g. sent you assets, put together a list of speakers, etc). If they haven't, postpone the meeting.
During your regularly scheduled meeting time, run through the status of action items with the client.
Schedule 1-2 rehearsals for the event where (ideally) all speakers are present. (Most issues with speakers during the event occur because they haven't tested out ohyay).
Schedule a calendar invite for the final event and add all relevant stakeholders.

Negotiating your rate

Consider how much time you realistically will need to complete this project, including weekly meetings, email correspondence, build time, day of support, and trainings (if needed). Try your best to define the time in hours.
Once the above step is completed, send a time estimate to the client with a drafted scope of work. Get the client's read on whether or not the scope of work matches what they had in mind.
Decide if it makes sense to charge a lump sum (a single payment made at a particular time) or an hourly rate. Clients who seem like they will need a lot of guidance are best to charge hourly, unless a sizable lump sum has already been stated and agreed upon.
Firm up your rate and scope of work and send it to the client with your contract (if applicable). Continue to reference the contract if the client changes their requests and/or budget.
Remember to record your hours. Our creators recommend Daily Time Tracking, Harvest, and the HoursTracker app.

Pre-Event: Room Checklist

You'll want to make sure that, if applicable, the following rooms are in your workspace:

Welcome Page with Tech Tips (Example from Room Gallery)

Lobby/Reception (Example)
Help Room (Example)
Auditorium/Main Watch Room/Panel (Example)
Breakout Rooms/Social Areas (Example)
Event Lock (Example)

Pre-Event: Properties Checklist

Before your event, you'll want to add a bunch of test bots and test everything out as if it was the real deal. Make sure that you've considered the following:

User Roles: Have you given the right people editor, director, and viewer access?
Tags: If you've assigned tags, do the right people have the right tags?
Max Users/Workspace Capacity: Is there enough capacity in your workspace for all of your guests?
Room Capacity: Is there enough capacity in each room for your guests?
Number of On-Screen User Slots in Each Room: Does each room have fewer than 20 on-screen slots or, if more than 20, an Audience Mode slot?
Vanity URL: Have you set a vanity URL for your workspace?
Region: Is the region set to wherever the majority of your guests are joining from?
Security: If the client wants to secure the workspace, have you set a password, SSO restriction, etc.?
Screen Sharing Permissions: Have you given screen share access to the right people and turned off screen share permission to everyone (if desired)?
Presenter User Slots: Have you manually assigned presenter slots to the correct email addresses?
Off-Screen User Slots: Are there any rogue user slots off-screen?
Video Quality of User Slots: Are user slots set to the right video quality? (If too many are set to high video quality, your workspace may start to slow down).
Music: Does your workspace and each room have the right music set?
Unwanted Elements: Have you checked in the Layers panel to see if there are any hidden unwanted elements that you should delete?
Room Previews: Have you checked to see whether the audio and “link to room” is on where necessary?
Buttons/Links: Do all of your buttons and links lead people to the right places?
Breakouts: Do all breakout buttons work and break the right people into the right rooms?
Action Buttons in Notes & Controls: Do all of your action buttons in your Notes & Controls panel work? (Sometimes when you’re tweaking a workspace, your buttons can reference non-existent elements and rooms).
Side Conversations: Have you disabled/enabled side conversations across the workspace as desired?
Following: Have you disabled/enabled following across the workspace as desired?
Test Bots: Have you removed all test bots in your workspace? (Your guests will be able to see them).
Enable Contact Info Exchange: Have you turned on Enable Contact Info Exchange in your Workspace Settings, if desired? Enable Contact Info Exchange allows users to easily share their email, phone, Twitter handle, and website URL (if they opt in).
Collect Reaction Usage: Have you checked "Collect Reaction Usage" in your Workspace Settings? You'll need to do this to see which emojis were sent during your event.

Pre-Event: Auditorium Checklist

You can follow our Setting Up a Presentation guide to learn how to prepare an auditorium setting. Make sure you have done the following:

Increase Max Users in your Room Settings so that all of your guests can fit in the room.
Disable Side Conversations and Following in the settings of your user slots so audience members can’t accidentally talk to or follow a speaker.
Manually assign email addresses to user slots that will be used by presenters only.
Change Participant Dragging from Drag Self to No Dragging in Room Settings so that audience members can’t drag themselves into speaker slots.
Add a link to your help desk/tech support in the corner of the auditorium room.
Add a question board element if desired.
Organize your buttons in your Notes & Controls panel into categories (e.g. timestamps) via text elements.
To check if a speaker has come in with the right email, click on the speaker’s thumbnail in the left-hand Rooms List and look the right-hand panel.
Disable screen sharing in the space if not already disabled.
If you need to broadcast to any other rooms, make sure room preview has been embedded and correctly set (volume on, thumbnail only unchecked, and link to room unchecked).

Post-Event

Schedule a debrief with the client. During the debrief, go over what went well and what could be improved for next time.
If desired, download a list of users who attended the event by navigating to Users > Manage Users from the menu and clicking on Download as CSV on the Attendees tab.
If desired, download a Usage Report by navigating to Workspace > Usage Report.

Want to connect with other ohyay creators producing events for clients? Introduce yourself and ask your questions in the channel on our Discord server.