Virtual events Archives - Page 4 of 6

Response time

Otherwise known as, the “awkward pause” that facilitators leave after asking a question. For in-person events, the typical pause is “counting to 7” and in virtual events that goes a bit further: count to 10 (yes, really!).

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2022) CSCCE Glossary: Virtual Events. Pratt, Woodley, Ainsworth, Carter, Crall, Elkins, Gauthier, Ihle, Kornahrens, Martinic, Santistevan, Shaikh, Sidik, and Wyatt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.6608609

Retrospective / recap blog

This is an article or blog post that recounts key details about the events, shares new or existing resources, and synthesizes key learning.

Example: CSCCE community call recap blog posts

Risk assessment

Part of your planning process should include identifying ways that things can go wrong. Rank your identified risks by their likelihood and impact. The likelihood refers to the probability of risks actually happening, while impact is the consequences if a potential risk happens.

See also: Risk mitigation

Risk mitigation

Once you’ve identified all of the things that could go wrong at your event (e.g., an internet outage or a piece of software requires an upgrade), decide if you can prevent something from happening (e.g., updating everything before the event starts) or put in place a plan for how you will handle an incident (e.g., drafting an email for participants that explains something has going wrong and creating a group or listserv that you can easily send the message to).

See also: Risk assessment

Run-of-show

A single logistics document for event staff with the full agenda and added reminders or notes. For shorter events, this may be synonymous with an agenda, but for longer events, it can be really useful have a single place you know to check to find out what is coming up next.

Satellite events

Events that take place around the region/country/world that are connected to a “main event.” All events could happen at the same time, or at different times leading up to or after the “main” event, and may be virtual or in-person.

See also: Watch party

Sense-making

A critical pause needed between presentations or topics for attendees to integrate concepts or reflect on how they apply to their own work or what they care about. The pause does not have to be long, even a couple of minutes will do, and can be structured (using reflective prompts) or unstructured.

Sessions

Blocks of time allocated to different themes, topics, or deliverables at your event. Participants can choose sessions of most interest to them, and an individual session or set of sessions can be repeated to accommodate multiple time zones. Sessions also allow you to easily switch formats, e.g., having a plenary lecture in session 1, concurrent workshops in session 2, and a panel discussion in session 3.

Silent doc’ing

Time set aside during an event for participants to write in the virtual notes document or other work product. This might involve responding to reflection prompts, crowd-sourcing resources, or answering icebreaker questions.

Social media card

This is usually a .jpg or .pdf file that uses graphics and text to display key details about an event. Social media cards are optimized to a platform (and it’s a good idea to check the format requirements before creating a card as they do change over time) and help draw attention to your event by being visually appealing and easily shareable.

Things to include on your card:

Date and time of the event
Speaker names and affiliations
Host organization branding
Sponsor branding
Event hashtag