How do you deal with technical issues and challenges in online events?

If your online event involves other presenters, make sure you bring everyone together a day or even a week before the event to test their technologies. Do sound and camera checks, have them run through their slides if they are presenting (get them to send you copies of the slides in case something goes wrong and you need to share them), make sure everyone knows who is controlling the flow of the event, etc.

The person hosting the meeting should not be managing the meeting. For example, if corporate communications is hosting an online town hall with the CEO, then either the executive administrator or IT should manage the meeting. No matter how experienced one is, these large online meetings can be nerve wracking. Each person should have one job and shine at that one job—host, guest, event manager. Then each of those people should have a backup.

In the spirit of continuous improvement, I've found it helpful to schedule a "post mortem" with key stakeholders (comms department, IT department, event planners, speakers if available) to discuss what went right, what went wrong and how to make the next event better. It's a good way to capture insights and feedback while the event is fresh in people's minds.

The following tips pertain to online presentations and forums: Always do a dry run to spot and fix any potential issues. Ask attendees to sign in early. This provides an opportunity to assist anyone experiencing a tech issue if you have an IT team available for that reason. Also, unless the person in question is a presenter/panelist/moderator, never delay the start time because someone is having issues with logging in, etc. All this does is extend consideration to that person, to the exclusion of everyone else. Finally, start your session by letting everyone know what to expect in terms of protocol: When to ask questions, whether or not they are muted, how the chat feature should be used, etc.

Make sure remote attendees do a systems check and confirm they will use the SAME computer AND Wi-Fi. Once a speaker neglected to inform us they were going to be in another location the next day and, surprisingly, Wi-Fi was not up to par in the mountains vs home in the city. Another time a keynote crashed midway because the speaker was using prepaid data and it ran out. Now we always ask “dumb” questions about the circumstances with remote speakers. Is this the computer and camera for tomorrow? Will you be in the same place? Can we help with Wi-Fi or signal? Will it be quiet tomorrow or should we find you another space to broadcast from?