Before our eyes, the global event industry came to a screeching halt. Meetings were postponed and corporate events cancelled. With the current economic situation quickly being defined as the “new normal,” the need to communicate with employees, clients and partners is more important than ever. Organizations have promptly shifted to virtual events utilizing technology that combines multichannel webcasting and video streaming to ensure that multilingual attendees are able to access the content.
Since all live face-to-face events are on hold, those of us tasked with ensuring equal access to information have jumped at the opportunity to showcase the skill sets we have worked years to create to ensure that organizations can continue to meet their audience. Following best practices, proven methodologies and tricks learned along the way, live virtual multilingual events are here and they work.
We have outlined 3 steps to ensure success with multilingual virtual events.
- Focus on the experts.
Every event producer knows that the devil is in the details and that every member of the team plays an essential role to make sure that your virtual event goes off without any issues. Every carefully crafted event is managed down to the most minute detail to be successful. This is especially important for multilingual events. You will need to build into your team a very strong team of multilingual experts that will manage the multiple channels to support your in-language attendees and ensure that the content is delivered simultaneously to the entire audience. Beyond expert linguists, this team must consist of project managers experienced with managing live virtual events to manage all the behind-the-scenes details.
- Content is king.
Delivering high-quality, relevant multilingual content impacts audience engagement so you will need to develop content that is interactive, visually stimulating and allows for repurposing on your website and social media platforms. Your language service partner will need to access the English content well before the event so they can ensure it is translated accurately and localized for your target audience. Allow your language service partner to help with multilingual logistics such as event design, registration, promotion, content collection, project management and technology ownership to ensure exceptional audience buy-in.
- Plan, plan and plan again. Then practice, practice and practice again.
There can never be enough emphasis on planning and practice with virtual events. Live events generally lead to a more captivated audience with fewer distractions. Virtual events by nature are wrought with distractions — dogs barking, email notifications dinging, coffee brewing, to name a few. Virtual events must be stimulating and engaging visually with perfect audio and video quality. Presenters must allow time to rehearse not only their presentations but their slide transitions and other content like music and videos. Even with all the planning and practice, it’s important to have a back up plan in case there are technical challenges.
Virtual events are our new normal and with the right team in place, excellent content translations and perfect planning, your multilingual event is sure to be a great success. Contact us today to get started.