It looks like online events - from school classes to haute couture weeks - are here to stay. It would seem that there should be no great difficulties in switching to an online format: just read your lecture not in front of a crowd of listeners, but in front of a webcam, and switch slides in time. But no :) As it turned out, for online events - even modest conferences, even intra-corporate meetups - there are “three pillars” of best practices, useful tips and life hacks. Today I’m talking about them in a conversation with Denis Churaev, team leader of the Veeam technical support team, Bucharest, Romania (although in the Work from Home world this is not so important).
— Denis, this season you and your colleagues participated in the VeeamON 2020 online conference — a new Veeamathon event. Could you please tell us a little more about what it was?
- Our support engineers were given a limited amount of time to demonstrate some knowledge or the ability to do something outside the box for troubleshooting (troubleshooting) or configuration tasks. That is, there was such a blitz for support to show what else can be done with Veeam products, in addition to well-known tasks, and how cool our guys are.
Initially, [Veeamathon's idea] looked a little rosier because there were no closed borders due to the virus, and we all hoped to go and put on such an interesting show on the spot. But in the end it was transferred to the online format, and quite well.
— And how did you do it? Were these talks, online demos or recorded demos?
- As I said, engineers were involved in this project. In principle, support has no problems communicating with clients, our guys are very technically savvy and speak [foreign languages] well, but some do not feel comfortable enough to present themselves in front of a large number of people - and there were thousands of people who watched (and then it is still recorded and re-displayed).
Accordingly, someone prepared a live recording, corrected it and, when he was satisfied with the result, simply posted it. That is, it was like a stream, but in fact it was a recording. But at the same time, the author of the report was in the stream itself, and when people asked him in the chat, he answered.
And there was a format when people presented [their performances] live. For example, my case: firstly, I did not have enough time to prepare and edit the video recording, and secondly, I am confident enough in my speaking abilities, so I spoke directly.
One head it's good, but two better
- Let's take an example with Teams (about him Denis already - approx. ed.) - this was my colleague from St. Petersburg, Igor Arkhangelsky (we worked together on the preparation of reports). He also performed live.
And in the end, the two of us helped each other: in my part, it was solving problems with VMware and ESXi - he was my wingman, so to speak, he answered questions, and I led the live part. And then vice versa: we changed, that is, he talked about restoring Teams and what can be backed up, and at that moment I was answering questions from clients and those people who watched the recording in the chat.
- You, it turns out, had such a tandem.
- Yes. We had only 20 minutes for each speech, and most of our speeches included at least 2 people - because we did not want to distract the main speaker from the story, but at the same time we wanted to answer questions as fully as possible. Therefore, we synchronized on topics in advance, learned the details, thought through what questions might be, and during the stream, during the presentation, the second person was ready to answer no worse than the first.
Helpful Tip #1: Listeners should have the opportunity to ask questions “in the flow” - that is, here and now. After all, many come to the conference for answers to their questions. And when the “train left” (another report began), it’s already more difficult for a person - you need to switch, write somewhere separately, then wait for an answer, and wait until ... this is not an offline conference where you can catch a speaker at a coffee break. Often time is left for questions at the end of the speech, where the moderator voices them, and the speaker answers. Working in tandem - one reports, the second in the chat immediately answers questions - is also a good option.
- You mentioned that you already have a lot of experience in performing. What about other engineers? How often do they perform for a wide audience?
- About the experience - it's interesting that many people have it. Because we are already used to preparing training presentations for each other inside the support team. Our whole training procedure is based on the fact that the support itself finds key specialists who understand something, and makes trainings.
NB: You can find out how our support built its training system in .
It was similar in the preparation of Vimaton - [to the call for participation] a lot of people responded, and in a large mass of people there is always someone with interesting ideas. That is, if we take only one person responsible for everything, and he prepares topics, then one person can be limited by his horizons. And when we include a lot of people at once, then such brainstorming happens, many interesting ideas come up.
We do our trainings in the same format: we also have the practice of preparing video recordings of speeches, and we give lectures to colleagues just in the course of daily work.
And although neither I nor my colleague had the practice of speaking in front of a large number of people, but when you talk to the screen (you don’t see the people sitting in front of you), you just imagine that you are talking for a class or for a group. And it helped not to get lost, not to be nervous.
LifeFac: If you have a good imagination, you can imagine the audience. A photo with a crowd of colleagues or just a very famous image of a lot of people will help someone:
"Attention, question!"
- Were there tricky questions that you could not answer right away?
- There were no tricky questions as such on the topic, because we knew our topics well enough and could answer any questions. But for some reason, questions arose that were completely unrelated to the topic. (That is, you had to work through your head for a few seconds, why does a person even ask you about this here?) We told such people either to wait and after the session to ask for an answer, or we said that there is such another topic that is presented by Imyarek, and for your questions, you can go there and ask a specialist who understands this better. They gave some links to shared resources, documentation, and so on.
For example, for some reason, at my training on how to deal with the speed of VMware disks, they asked me about Wim licenses. I answer: guys, here is a link to the document, and you can go to a presentation on licenses, they will also tell you there.
Helpful Tip #2: And for speakers (as well as for listeners) you need a memo-program of the event, with the topics of all reports and the schedule.
— Were there any difficulties during the preparation or implementation? What was the most difficult?
— The most difficult thing is to answer this question :) We were told about participation in this event back in February. Accordingly, we had a lot of time to prepare: all slides, tests, labs, test recordings were made in a few months. In fact, we just could not wait to do all this, so that we could see our result. That is, there were no difficulties in how it was organized, how much time was given to us. In the end, we were just waiting for VeeamON to finally happen. Already 10 times they honed everything, tried it, and there were no more problems.
About "screening out"
- The main thing was "not to burn out"?
- As I understand it, it was difficult for those who decided whether or not to go [to participate] after it turned out that we were not going to Las Vegas. As soon as it became clear who was left, everyone who remained was already interested in this [online event].
— That is, there were people who aspired to go to an offline event?
— It seems to me that there is always such a thing, because it’s a new experience, communication with people, live networking… It’s more interesting than sitting at the computer like this and talking on the screen. But, as I remember, not many people "fell off". All the speakers with whom I personally communicate - they all remained. And I can explain why so many people are left. Because, firstly, it was a shame that you had already prepared [material] - and I would like to show it. And secondly, I still wanted Vimaton to be successful, so that it would be repeated next year. It was all in our interest.
— As far as I understand, your preparation started in the winter, that is, the call-for-papers was at the beginning of the year?
- Yes, I just looked at the dates - it was a very long time ago, we had a lot of time. During this time, I broke my lab three times, in which I conducted the test. That is, I had time to fully check everything. (I even found a lot of things for myself that I did not include in the presentation, it was interesting.)
— Were there any special requirements, restrictions, any nuances regarding the reports?
- Yes, I can say that the reports were selected by the method of exclusion, since there were many applicants.
We have a group of Veeam Vanguards, they are quite advanced. Plus product managers and other comrades who know the direction of the company well. And so they checked our topics and abstracts for compliance with the VeeamON theme.
Here, for example, is my speech: I had two different topics instead of one. They were completely unrelated. But none of them covered me, no one told me: “Focus on only one, don’t do the others!”. And there, and there I received minimal corrections.
In fact, everything rested on some kind of time management and time limit, because for 20 minutes of this [content] it’s too much - I first came with a huge number of ideas, I wanted to tell everything, but it’s impossible! After all, everyone should be given time to speak.
So my review was cut a little, I ended up focusing on clearer things, and this is probably better. Because people then gave feedback: “This is what I was looking for! That's something I'd be interested to know!" And if I talked about more things, I would not be able to talk about it.
Accordingly, we were given some recommendations, helped to correct something, but at the same time we had a fairly wide freedom in preparation.
Helpful Tip #3: Timing is everything. Rule of thumb: if there are 30 slides in a report for 20 minutes, there is a high risk of dragging out the presentation and climbing into someone else's time. Focus is on the most important things. Editorial team, then rehearsals. The result, as you can see, pleases the listeners and the speaker himself.
About pictures
- We even made the slides ourselves, we were given the opportunity to make our own design (the only thing was that we were given a certain background and so on, that is, they gave us the format, pictures, beatmaps there so that we could draw). No one limited us in what we do there. I don’t like, for example, when I make some cool thematic powerpoint slide, and then the design team takes it and remakes it so that in the end nothing is clear even to me. That is, it may look more beautiful, of course - but for an engineer it is not clear. Well, there were no problems in this regard, everything was very good.
- That is, everything that concerns the design, you did yourself?
— By ourselves, but we still checked with Karinn [Bisset], who was the lead lead for the whole project. She gave us good recommendations, because she already has experience in this area, she participated in VeeamON more than once, so she helped us to correct it.
Helpful Tip #4: Templates, of course, greatly simplify life. But if you are doing, for example, an internal conference, then it is quite possible to give speakers a certain freedom of creativity. Otherwise, imagine 5 reports in a row with absolutely identical templates, albeit beautiful slides. Visually, most likely, none will “hook”.
- Karinn, as I know, acted as an ideologist and inspirer.
- She was essentially an organizer, yes. That is, it initially interested people, attracted them, compiled lists, and assembled a system. We wouldn't have done it without her. Karinn helped us a lot.
- And in the end you prepared as many as 2 performances.
- Yes, I told two completely different topics, and they were at different times. I presented one during the [session for] US and then for the [Asia-Pacific] APG region (that is, Asia and Europe scrolled it later), the other I told during APG, and for US it was scrolled. Accordingly, I had two presentations in the morning and in the evening. I even slept between them.
About the audience
— Have you already run these presentations, these topics on your colleagues, on juniors?
- No. It was such an idea: I didn’t show anything to anyone on purpose, and then I said: “Guys, support me!” I wanted more people to come and look at VeeamON, and they thanked me in the end, they were interested.
You know how it sometimes happens: it would seem that some kind of interesting event - but you are busy, you have no time [to come to it]. (This, by the way, is again a question of time management.) And then those whom I became interested in later thanked me, as they were a little distracted from such a routine and did something else, interesting.
— So you brought the target audience with you?
- Well, partially yes, several managers, my colleagues and engineers - they looked. Not everyone watched online, some watched recorded. And they also confirmed that the scrolling is in good quality, the video is visible, and everything is fine. They were able to enjoy my presentation at other times when they were less busy.
life hack for those planning to attend the live online event:
Here you can and should do almost everything that you do at offline meetings: plan time for participation, prepare and ask questions, take notes, take screenshots, discuss, share experiences. The more involved you are, the better your focus and thus the benefits of participation. And there are prizes for the best question :)
— Were there many Russian participants besides your colleagues from St. Petersburg? Were there Russian-speaking listeners?
— There were visitors, but there were few speakers from Russia, and I would like to improve this next year. As I understand it, some guys missed the opportunity to participate in the event this year. Why? Because in past years, as I said, this event concerned other departments, and support was not very good. And not everyone saw in such a huge letter about the holding of VeeamON that there will also be Vimaton for support. And when we began to connect people, unfortunately, some simply did not have time to prepare the material. But now, after the guys have seen it, there are already more interested. And I'm sure that next year we will involve support (including Russian support) in this issue much more actively.
- Did you get feedback?
- Yes, each speaker was sent an Excel file with answers to his presentation, with personal feedback (of course, anonymous) from everyone who viewed it. And since there were hundreds of people there, there was a huge file for everyone.
As far as I know and asked other guys, all [listeners] were quite adequate in terms of understanding some technical problems (when someone's Internet sagged, something else), and everyone was very happy with the content itself.
Helpful Tip #5: Make a small reminder for the audience on troubleshooting possible problems - FAQs that may arise during the event. Although, for sure, they will still send cries for help to the chat, but it is better to give a brief instruction to everyone in advance. For speakers, also provide support, especially in performances with live demos (someone just records a video in such a case). Think about what and when can go wrong, and come up with work-arounds. It is best if the technical support will be handled by a separate person who will help, starting with rehearsals; about how it was on Veeamathon-e, Denis told .
- The feedback that we remember is that 20 minutes is too short to tell some interesting topic. That is, next year, most likely, you will either have to do double sessions - for example, divide into 2 parts - or reduce the amount of material so that it is easier for people to absorb it. Because we are techies, we already know a lot, we speak technically, and perhaps someone lacked a small introduction or a little more simple material.
In general, there were many good moments that pushed the organizers to think about doing a hybrid format next year. So colleagues from Veeam can now prepare for the fact that call for papers will be for many teams, for different regions.
Prepare the sleigh in summer and the cart in winter
— Seeing how some guys did not have time to apply for participation, I can say to those who are involved in Knowledge sharing: it is better to plan in advance for the next year, at which conferences you want to speak, and prepare in advance. And then calmly wait for this conference. So much less stress than when you are preparing in the last week.
I used to have a principle that I was busy with everything, I had a calendar. And when I made reports, I was already preparing before the events themselves. So this year, I've had a lot more fun knowing that I'm ready ahead of time, having everything checked and done. How is it said? Just do it. Because the usual problem is how to manage to make slides and everything else. But we create this problem for ourselves. This is also a matter of time management. Unfortunately, I myself did not realize this before, although I did a lot of work in this area - and only now I realized this. Maybe this advice will help someone.
Useful advice number 6 from Denis: Someone wants to participate in conferences? A very good idea: on weekends or in your free time, at least half an hour a week, do something for your performance. And you will not notice how quickly the material is typed. It helps a lot.
— Very good and not even difficult advice to implement, thank you!
Also, don't stress. Because, I repeat, if there is time in advance, then you can calmly prepare without worrying, and at the same time look much more professional than those who did it at the last moment. Unfortunately, I only now, after Vimaton, realized this, when it so happened that I simply had a lot of time [for preparation]. And I realized after the fact - what happened that I was so pleased and fun to do this? And because no one pushed me, I had a lot of time, and I calmly did it. It was very cool.
- I can only applaud!
- Yes, the main thing is to squeeze the maximum out of every opportunity, and everything will be fine.
Source: habr.com