Guide to Hosting Virtual Zoom Events
As virtual gatherings become more commonplace, here are some tips and considerations for using Zoom for hosting these virtual events
Zoom Webinar or Meeting
Deciding on which type of Zoom license to use should be one of your first decisions. There are a couple of factors that if required or desired, would necessitate the use of a webinar license.
- You want to have more than 1000 attendees in the Zoom event
- You want to prevent people from ever turning on their camera
- You want to use the Q&A feature
In general, webinars are better for events where you want to have limited attendee participation – where you are presenting to an audience and they will not be interacting. While meetings can limit attendee participation almost as good as a webinar, they are really designed for attendees to interact with each other and the hosts.
Role Definitions for Zoom Meetings and Webinars
As with any event, there are roles that need to be established for certain participants in your meeting. It’s important to make sure everyone knows how to execute their role both practically and technically. Depending of the size and scope of your event, one person may do multiple roles.
The Zoom assignment is listed in parenthesis.
- Technical Host (Host)
There is only one host per meeting/webinar. This is generally the person that creates the meeting or webinar and is more technical in nature than the actual “host” of the event. They have the ability to “promote” people to co-hosts (meetings) or panelists (webinars) - Production Host(s) (Meeting: Co-Host & Webinar: Co-Host/Panelist)
This is the on camera host of the event and will handle the open and close of the event as well as the introduction of segments in the event. There can be multiple production hosts - Moderator (Meeting: Co-Host & Webinar: Co-Host/Panelist)
This person is responsible keeping the production on time by communicating with the host(s) as well as selecting questions from the chat or Q&A to the through “back channel” communication (which will be discussed later in this document) - Presenter (Meeting: Co-Host & Webinar: Co-Host/Panelist)
These are people that will be presenting either through audio and video and/or screen sharing for your event. - Security (Meeting: Co-Host & Webinar: Co-Host/Panelist)
For some types of events, it is important to have someone monitoring the video and chat to make sure no one is posting inappropriate content and if they are, remove them from the meeting. - Technical Support (Meeting: Co-Host & Webinar: Co-Host/Panelist)
This is a contact that technical questions from attendees or others can be directed. - Captioner (Assign To Make Closed Caption)
If your event will be live captioned, you will need to assign that person to make closed captions once they join your event by hovering over their name and selecting it in the “More” menu.
Pre-Recorded Content
The success of playing back videos through screen share is highly dependent on the network speed of the person sharing the content. If you are hosting the event from home, we recommend using a wired ethernet connection for the person doing the video sharing and they should have 100mb+ upload speed. Note, playing back media directly from the host computer is the only way to guarantee great results. Re-streaming media will work, but not to a high level of quality.
Examples of pre-recorded content you might want to consider producing for your event:
- Welcome Screen
This video produced with a music background will allow attendees to join the meeting before their start time and will be able to test their audio reception. This video can also be used to show the agenda for the day, or provide information to attendees (like if you will be using break out rooms or if you want them to keep their microphones muted, etc) - Breaks
Having a “countdown video” for breaks also helps attendees know how long they have before the event starts again and provides an opportunity to communicate to the attendees, maybe sponsor thank yous, etc - Hard To Schedule Presenters
If you have a high profile presenter who doesn’t have time to attend your event in person, they can pre-record comments that can be played during your event
Back Channel Communications
It’s important to set up a method for all the production people to speak during your event. Using the Zoom chat does not work well because all the chatting appears in one Window. We’ve had great success setting up a Team chat or slack. If that is not possible, then using phone texting would be an alternate method of discussion.
Recording
Zoom provides two different ways to record your event. We recommend a dedicated computer to do local recording if you plan to edit the event later. Cloud recording makes it easier to immediately publish your event but it will have to be downloaded before edits could be made. The person that initiates the cloud recording cannot also record locally. That must be done by a different person that the host or co-host allows to record.
While cloud recording can be configured in your personal Zoom settings to record separate files for active speaker view, gallery view and shared screen – local recording will allow generate active speaker view, with a thumbnail of the active speaker overlayed on a shared screen.
It’s important to remember that chats are saved with the recording so if you want to save the public chats (private chats are not saved), you must record your event.
Streaming
Zoom offers direct integration with Facebook Live and YouTube. If you have a large number of attendees that only wish to watch the event but not participate, this is an easy way to reach them. The URL can be pre-created and can be made public or “unlisted” which means people searching on YouTube will not be able to find the event – they will need the URL
Helpful Resources for Zoom Webinars and Meetings
While we always encourage anyone to reach out to us for tech-related questions, we do have a few articles we recommend for those who are interested in hosting their own Zoom Event.