Virtual meetings are not about the technology anymore — you need to get involved in meeting design and content, says former BBC TV presenter Roy Sheppard. Photo Credit: Getty Images
‘Zoom Fatigue’ is now afflicting hundreds of millions of workers. The
truth is most online meetings are really bad. They ramble, lack
relevance. And I’m not just talking about internal meetings,
‘professionally’ run virtual conferences can be the worst offenders.
The world is crying out for people to organise and design more
interesting meetings. This represents a massive opportunity for anyone
who wants to add value (and a lot more interest to their working lives).
These new skills will become highly valued in the next few years as
more meetings go virtual, regardless of how quickly the world returns to
normality.
Meeting design
I’m going to share some tips and techniques for anyone who schedules
online meetings or has ever been given the ‘opportunity’ to organise
their company conference. These ideas are based on what I’ve learned as a
BBC TV presenter and conference host.
In my experience, pre-Covid, more attention used to be given to
choosing a menu, than organising the content of the meeting. And it’s
this lack of meeting design knowledge that results in dull meetings and
conferences. Fix that, and your meetings will improve instantly.
Virtual meetings are not about the technology anymore. You need to
get more involved in the meeting design, content, meeting objectives and
how to help contributors look and sound more professional – and more
relevant to your audiences. Do this and you’ll stand out as someone who
adds real value to your meetings.
Think “Live TV Show”
As someone who used to work on live network BBC TV in the UK for many
years, the way you design a TV programme is VERY different to the
design of a conference. The next generation of virtual conferences can
learn a great deal from the TV world.
A professional TV show is always planned meticulously by a producer
who knows how to structure and format an engaging show in order to keep
the audience ‘hooked’ and interested. That usually means lots of shorter
sessions. They are no longer than 4-5 minutes on TV. You could probably
get away with 12-15 minutes – but no more. One-hour lectures simply
don’t work on-screen – especially if the speaker is a ‘knowledge
expert’, not a professional performer.
Read the full article, with more tips from Roy Sheppard, via our sister title, AMI Magazine.