Virtual meetings well and truly became an integral part of our lives in 2020 and thanks to their convenience they are here to stay. But are you really making the most out of what the technology can offer? Are you planning your meeting effectively or efficiently? Is the audience actually engaged with what’s on screen? These are some of the questions that The Corpus team answered during our first Virtual Masterclass.
Corpus’ Operations Manager, Josh Hall, kicked the Masterclass off with his presentation, centered around meeting planning and setup. Josh touched on a number of different areas such as timelines, choosing the right style of meeting, objective setting, the participant invitation process, registration management and social/cultural/geographical preferences, as well as other critical areas to consider such as platform selection. Meeting organisation can be a huge topic and is something that we will soon be revisiting in a dedicated future virtual masterclass!
After meeting preparation comes the event itself and the battle to keep an audience engaged. This is what our Business Development Manager, Jan, spoke about. Highlights included how to use aesthetics to draw the audience in, making sure the format of the meeting suits your objectives, creation of tailored content and making the most of the audience engagement tools available to you within the platform being used.
Our Chief Technical Officer, Simon, ended the meeting in style by recounting the current state of the videoconferencing sector and also showcasing some exciting upcoming technological advances. This was focused mainly on the integration of Artificial Intelligence in many of the systems we currently use and the ways that AI will help make videoconferencing not only fun, but also accessible and useful for enhanced learning. Simon also touched on the use of Virtual Reality and, although there is still a way to go, how these technologies are changing the way we communicate from remote locations.
Having spoken at length about audience engagement, we left plenty of time at the end for audience questions, with some excellent ones being sent in. Running meetings in different languages was one such question and, as a global company, is something that The Corpus has a lot of experience in. Our platform allows simultaneous translation into up to eight different languages and there are a number of other platforms out there that offer their own translation/interpretation services too, so it is something worth checking before you sign up to anything.
“How do you select the right platform for your meeting?” was another great question and one that requires a great deal of consideration when you’re planning your meeting. There are so many virtual meeting platforms available at the moment thanks to the increase in demand over the past twelve months, all of which offer something a little different. The best way to identify the right platform is to think through your meeting objectives: why are you holding this meeting, what do you want to achieve, and how are you going to achieve this? This information will arm you with the information you need such as size of meeting, breakout requirements, level of interactivity needed, etc.
The Corpus has been running online medical education meetings since 2014. Our meeting platform was purpose-built to run highly interactive small-group meetings with maximum audience participation. If you’d like more information about what we offer, or are looking for advice the next time you’re looking to organise an online meeting of your own, contact us and we will use our expertise to help guide you through the process.