7 Tips for Microphones and Meetings
Planning for and Using Microphones: 7 Tips Here are a few lessons learned about planning and using microphones at meetings and events, gleaned from my own experience and experiences from other meeting planners. I hope you find them useful! If you’re a planner, consider the Rule of 30: If your event: – involves more than about 30 people, – has a layout with more than about 30 feet between the speaker and the most distant audience member, or – will last more than about 30 minutes, then you’ll find some degree of voice amplification will help make your meeting or event more effective. When establishing the agenda, consider whether there will be people in the audience that will need to make statements, ask or answer questions, or be recognized. Does your speaker (or panel) have a question/answer session planned? If so, put at least one microphone on a stand in the audience, or have a runner with a handheld microphone ready to move around the audience. Some people feel resistance to using the microphones, but if the meeting is being recorded most of them will go ahead and use the mics. Encourage people to use the microphones so that their questions or comments will be on the recording. By default, try to get your speaker to wear a lapel mic. Infrequent speakers have a tendency to look away from a fixed lectern microphone to see slides while commenting. As they move their heads away, the sound level drops. Likewise, inexperienced or distracted speakers may unintentionally go off-mike while gesturing with the hand holding a handheld mic. Lapel mics help keep speakers consistent in both volume and distance away from the microphone. Experienced speakers almost always prefer the freedom of movement that comes with a wireless microphone, but note that they may wish to use a handheld wireless microphone if they intend to interact with individuals in the audience. The pros put fresh batteries in their equipment for every show for a reason: it’s worth it. Start with fresh batteries for each microphone or transmitter pack. Have a replacement set on hand for every microphone. It can save your meeting from disaster. If your group is in a room with large bare walls, or if you are only taking up half of a large room, consider adding some noise-dampening materials to the walls. Even pipe-and-drape can be effective. Closing off part of a room not only helps the event to feel better attended, it also helps the acoustics of the room and can require a lower gain on the microphones. This reduces noise and the risk of feedback. You can easily avoid the most common sources of feedback. First, performers should remember not to walk in front of a speaker with a live microphone. As a planner, you can help your platform presenters by getting to the venue early and putting down tape to establish a “no mic” zone. Your AV team may be able to tape off some areas in front of the speakers so that there is a visual reminder. Also – if you can’t get the presenter to wear a lapel mic, remind her to hold the microphone within 6 inches of her mouth and speak in a conversational tone. The audio technician will adjust the gain, but if the mic is too far away then the elevated gain makes unpleasant feedback more likely. (You can find more helpful conference audio tips here.)
4 Guidelines for Maximizing Attention and Retention at Meetings
4 Guidelines for Maximizing Attention and Retention at Meetings Okay, I’ll be the one to say it. If you want your meetings to be as effective, engaging, and memorable as they can be, then yes, there should be elements of creativity and fun in the mix! Whether you’re a corporation, association, or even a government agency, your meetings have a return on investment – derived from both attention to and retention of the content. That return will ultimately be greater if you give your attendees a combination of tension and release in their experience. That tension and release may include a segment or two which are lighter on pure content than the other segments, but those kinds of segments can actually increase the overall impact of meetings. Relevant Fun Has Real Value We’ve all seen the news. We know that the degree of scrutiny applied to meetings, events, and conferences – especially when funded with taxpayer dollars – seems to be at an all-time high. Last year brought plenty of controversy surrounding conferences by the GSA and the NOAA. Since then, the IRS has come under fire for a number of comedy videos produced for and shown at training events and conferences. Some outside speakers who were hired to speak at those meetings are also being criticized on the basis of their content or fees (often by commentators who have not researched the question of whether fair value was actually delivered). How can we make sure we are using creative segments effectively and maximizing our audience’s attention and retention? Here are four useful guidelines. 4 Guidelines for Maximizing Attention and Retention at Meetings Chunk the content. No, not out the window – into segments! Include breaks for the mind as well as for the body. People engage more, learn more, and retain more when they are given the breaks they need to process information most effectively. A coffee break between morning sessions is good, but an outside speaker or entertainment segment that can build on the underlying concept in a unique way could be even better. Every other form of storytelling – film, theatre, television, etc. – makes use of rising and falling tension in order to bring intensity to the key content. Your graphic designer will tell you that white space matters. In the same way, your conference days can and should be intense and focused on objectives, but pummeling an audience with heavy content for hours will not result in increased retention. In fact, it reduces the ability to remember what happened at all – and that’s certainly not good for ROI. Link creative segments to clear objectives. Give creativity a chance to flourish with outside speakers and activities, but be prepared to link them to objectives. Check out my article on “Culture Building versus Teambuilding” for a framework that you can use to understand and explain how different activities and speakers are supporting your organizational objectives. Sure, some team-building and culture-building experiences can be trivial, but some are effective and meaningful. Meet with providers by phone, video conference, or in person to discuss your meeting’s real business objectives. Do they have credible tie-ins to support your objectives? Compose the snapshots yourself. At the risk of using campaign terminology, just remember that optics matter, whether it’s fair or not. Who’s standing on the platform matters, as does their billing in the agenda, the content of their bio, the look of their promo, and what they’re wearing on the stage. You have to ask yourself, “What will this picture look like on Facebook?” Here’s a hint: Advise attendees that you are taking professional photographs (hire a photographer!) and that you’ll be sharing them on your event page, Facebook page, or other online gallery for them to download. Take the initiative to provide the photos, and you simultaneously gain the ability to control which images from your event are in widest circulation. Go deeper than a meeting theme: Create a meeting narrative. We’re in a new day, and you need more than a theme whose only purpose is to explain your decorations. You need more than a catchy phrase to put on the welcome sign in the lobby and on the cover of the program. You need a narrative. You need to tell your attendees – before, during and after the meeting – how to describe the experience. And like an effective speaker uses cues during a presentation to help the audience understand the roadmap of the presentation, your meeting needs to be structured so that every attendee can describe the roadmap of that conference. Your opening session each day should lay out the overarching objective of that part of the journey, and your closing message should reinforce to attendees their success in getting to that spot. The story of the conference has to be told in every communication, from registration to post-conference follow-up. In Conclusion… With carefully spaced content, creative but relevant segments, careful attention to the visuals, and a narrative that your attendees can understand and communicate, you give your attendees a framework on which to build their meeting experience day-by-day. That’s an immediate benefit for comprehension and retention. Another lasting benefit, though, is that you make it easier for them to retain and articulate that experience and its value long after the meeting is over.
Evaluating the Quality of Unique Services
Most people have never experienced live magic or mentalism, and even fewer have had to book a performer or speaker for an event. Here are 6 tips for evaluating the quality of providers of unique services when you lack a large set of real-life “data points” from which to make your assessments.
