Attendance.

Approximately 40 out of 69 registrants turned up for the free virtual event. This is quite a good number considering the participants had made no financial commitment to attend (no ticket to purchase) and the event occurred on a Friday evening.

Production Values.

As our fourth annual streamed event, the level of familiarity with technology (on the part of presenters and guests) has improved demonstrably:

• • All speakers were well-illuminated, well-framed, and could be heard clearly.

  • The program had good pacing, and extended moments of "dead air" (awkward pauses) were virtually non-existent.

  • There were few interruptions due to technical issues.

As this year's event featured the highest production values of all ECW Zoom events, it is reasonable to surmise that the overall level of tech-savvy played some contributing role.

The ability to attract and present THREE guest speakers during a 1.5-hour program is not merely a great accomplishment, but also a great asset. It offered a broader diversity of views and, with regard to future events, could be leveraged to attract a wider audience.

Format-specific Opportunities.

A virtual conference can be a powerful outreach tool with which to engage a broader audience in dialog and action. This year's event demonstrated that such a production can be accomplished without the need of rehearsals.

If the goal is to engage and expand its audience, the organization may consider presenting streamed events more frequently, however it will be difficult to achieve this without reducing the effort required to produce a streamed program.

Example: In a future state, a dynamic speaker is unexpectedly available to speak briefly about a timely topic of interest (a 15-25 minute talk, plus Q&A). (Production turn-around: 2-3 weeks.)

1. The Program Team decides the details (date, time, promotional copy, target audience, who will host) in a single meeting, locks in the speaker, and passes the content and timeline to the Web Team.

2. The Web Team creates a Zoom meeting link; an EventBrite registration page; posts a teaser to the ECW-NC website's landing page (as a highlight); posts the content to the event's page; schedules MailChimp releases and reminders to targeted audiences, parishes, convocations, and external organizations; and build a short, post-event evaluation survey in GoogleDocs.

3. The Program Team follows up with the speaker and ensures that the event starts and ends on time.

The biggest obstacle for any organization to have capacity to produce streaming events regularly is not manpower, but workflow:

• ECW-NC already possesses the capacity for a high-functioning Program Team. Switching to targeted, short-form events can minimize the amount of deliberation and planning required for any single event.

• Streamline information workflow. Webhosting, Zoom, and Mailchimp are fixed annual costs -- they cost the organization the same regardless of how much or how little they are used. The organization's increased event-related expenses are the result of the relative inaccessibility of these systems. A future state might look like this:

  • All five systems (Zoom, EventBrite, Website, MailChimp, GoogleDocs) are standardized solutions (no custom-made back-end processes).

  • All event workflow tasks are clearly illustrated in step-by-step How-to documents.

  • A Web Team (two or more people) are sufficiently familiar with the five systems to confidently complete its workflow tasks associated with producing an event.

  • An outside Technical Consultant is available to provide system maintenance, website redesign, and media editing as needed. Note: Because the five systems are standardized and documented, the organization has the freedom to change consultants without negitive impact.