From the course: Learning to Run Webinars

Filling production team roles

From the course: Learning to Run Webinars

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Filling production team roles

- The creating and preparing a support team for key webinar production roles can help your event run smoothly. It's much easier to produce a webinar if there's a few key responsibilities that you outsource to others. There are three main production team roles that are important to fill. The first important role is that of host. Responsibilities of the host include introducing and concluding the event, assigning speaker permissions, beginning and ending webinar recording and access, and addressing technical issues with attendees and presenters. The second important role is that of Q and A monitor. You can have one or more Q and A monitors, depending on the number of attendees. A good rule of thumb is to have one Q and A monitor for every 50 attendees. The Q and A monitor answers technical questions from the audience, answers content questions, highlights questions for specific presenters and passes questions to presenters for live Q and A. It's a good idea to introduce the Q and A monitors at the beginning of the webinar, so that attendees know who's answering the questions. If you're going to include interactive attendee polls in your presentation, have a polling coordinator. Responsibilities of the polling coordinator include preparing, opening and closing polls for audience members, and showing poll results to the audience. The production team need not have content knowledge of the webinar. They should be well versed in how to do their job. Prepare a job aid for each role that they can refer to before, and during, the webinar. Include screen shots of how to use the webinar tools, specific to their role. Prepare technical and content Q and A prior to the event. The Q and A monitor will have answers to common questions, including links to resources, or dial-in numbers, at the ready, in case those questions appear. Prepare polls in advance, and plan for how many minutes you'll keep the poll open. Prepare an intro script and an extro script for the host, that they can read from to introduce and close the webinar. All members of the production team should attend the full webinar rehearsal and plan on joining the webinar well before the start of the event. Allow all team members to fully practice their role during the rehearsal. When you have a fully staffed webinar your event will have a more professional feel. You'll be able to relay more information, you can include more interactivity and the presenters will be able to focus on presenting content, rather than dealing with the technical issues and interactivity tools.

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