A first-time client reached out to us to plan a virtual event for their annual sales kickoff. Their employees worked remotely all year, so we needed to improve their attendee experience compared to the Zoom meetings they were familiar with. The bulk of the sessions over the three-day conference was webinar-style with live attendee questions instead of using a Q&A submission tool. MCW also hosted breakout sessions for select teams and a virtual happy hour. Event attendance ranged from 200 people for an all-company meeting to breakout sessions for 15 people.

The roadblocks we encountered along the way provided us with many “probortunities” to discover the solutions that we used to help our client deliver the program they wanted for their attendees.

• Small Internal Planning Team: The client had a small planning team that had to organize the internal portions of the event. Even though their event was for a maximum of 220 people, the difference in the amount of work that goes into a 200 person event and 1000 person event is very minimal. This is where MCW stepped in and alleviated that workload.
• Short Planning Timeline: This was by far the most challenging aspect of the program. The client came to us with about three weeks to complete their program soup to nuts. By the time we got a schedule, and a needs list, we had approximately ten days to plan this program which typically would be done in a minimum of one month. This created some work outside of traditional hours, but we selected a platform that could be created in this short timeline and get a polished product available in time for the event.
• No Rehearsal Time: Working in such a short timeline meant no time for an event rehearsal. We always recommend doing a rehearsal or tech check. But due to time constraints, we had to forgo this milestone. Our solution was a quick touch base with the daily host to go over the show flow and give any last-minute details, allowing them to drive the plan for the day.
• Virtual Happy Hour: Our idea was to have 120 people participate in a Virtual Happy Hour. Through some brainstorming sessions, we came up with a plan on how Zoom could make this happen. But it would have required a heavy lift from the client, and they did not have the bandwidth to accomplish this task. We asked for help from a Trivia Company we’ve worked with in the past and had a live-hosted trivia night instead of the Happy Hour. The trivia team made this happen in less than 48 hours.
• Zoom Live Broadcast: We used Zoom for all live broadcasts in addition to the intermittent sprinkling of some breakouts using the Zoom breakout feature. We had Zoom admins managing the backend of Zoom while also doubling their role as audio/video techs in addition to Zoom admins.