Our AV technicians’ guide to a smooth-running event for event organisers and speakers

We spoke to AV Technician, Matt Monaghan, from our in-house audio-visual service provider, Venue AV, and asked him for tips and insights on how meeting organisers can best prepare their speakers to ensure events run effectively.

Q: What are common on-the-day issues, and how can they be avoided?

PowerPoint slides

PowerPoint slides can be problematic if they have not been exported properly, or there are compatibility issues. If you have no animations in your presentations, like videos, or moving images, PDF is a safe format to use. If you do, then we recommend you export you slides as a PowerPoint, making sure to embed all the fonts that you use. This means that the fonts, layout, and styling of the document won't change when share your document with someone who doesn't have the same fonts installed that you do, and special characters won't turn into rectangles. Font embedding is useful when using non-standard fonts, and it helps with the online conversion to pdf files. Here is a Microsoft guide on how to embed fonts, for both windows and Mac.

Also, it's useful to have any important videos or audio files available as separate files, so we can rebuild it on the presentation machine if the slides don't transfer properly.

We strongly recommend everyone using slides comes to see one of the AV technicians at least 15 minutes before the start of the sessions, for us to check through the slides, to avoid issues on stage. If it’s a multi-day even you could even come the day before, to give yourself extra time and peace of mind.
Similarly, we need to know in advance if you’ve got audio clips on your slides, or if you have notes that need scrolling through or enlarging. This is because you won’t be able to scroll through notes on your screen automatically from your device – which you might expect – but the technician can do so manually for you, with advanced notice.

Hand-held microphones

It is important that everyone in the room – from the session Chair, to those in charge of moving the microphones around, and the audience asking the questions – understands that people need to be given the microphone, and speak into it properly, in order for those online to hear them, as well as for the recording. People are often unsure how far from their mouth they need to hold the mic for it to pick up the sound. The answer is fairly close, and they should speak into it. It is very useful for the Chair to remind people of this at the beginning of a Q&A session.

Please also pre-nominate your mic runners (those in charge of moving the microphones around) and let AV know who they are, so they can be briefed on the importance of getting it to the speaker, hand held technique, and how to use the boom poles.

Lapel microphones

It sometimes happens that speakers remove and reattach lapel microphones onto a different part of their clothing, which results in the mic no longer being in an appropriate place to capture the sound correctly. Please advise speakers to keep them in place! If the technician needs to come down from their control cabin to adjust a lapel mic, it interferes with the event flow.

Hiding off stage

We often see Chairs or even presenters off to the side of the stage where it is not lit properly. Please make anyone that is onstage aware that they need to stay within the lights! This is important so the cameras in the room can see them properly. If they are in the shadows, the quality of what people can see online, and off the recording, is greatly affected. They may seem a bit bright but we have set the stage lights to as dim as possible.

Finally, not common but not unheard of, technicians greatly benefit from the receiving the meeting programme in advance. This way they can do things like programme the countdown timers on stage for each speaker.

Q: As an AV technician, what sort of prep makes you happy?

Printed paper agendas! We take a lot of notes on what is happening throughout the event, such as different speaker requirements and who has been assigned which mic. This allows us to keep the event running smoothly. Ideally, we want one printed agenda per technician.

Knowing when remote speakers have been asked to join is very useful, so that we can plan for this, rather than have to interrupt event organisers and ask. That way we can also make organisers aware if speakers haven’t joined. We recommend they join 15 minutes before they are due to talk. It is also helpful, from a technical point of view, if the remote speakers can either speak first or last in the session.

If speakers are planning to present from their own laptop, they need to tell the technician and it needs to be tested on stage before their session, or at the start of the day, in order to make sure it works correctly.

Considered break lengths. Sometimes we get given schedules with very short breaks - like five minutes. Not only is it impossible to get people out of the auditorium and back in again in such a short time, it also doesn’t allow enough time for checking set up for the next session. When it comes to lunch, we technicians also need to eat, as well as prepare for the afternoon, so it is greatly appreciated when lunch breaks allow time for both these things to be done properly.

Q: What should people who are presenting bear in mind?

Be mindful of your outfit! There are two bits to a lapel mic: the mic and the belt pack (the power pack, basically). The belt pack needs to attach either to a belt or be put in a pocket, so ideally your outfit should incorporate one of those two.

Also – beware of rattly jewellery. The noise some jewellery makes can make it difficult to hear what you’re say.

Please take notice of the countdown timer aimed at you on stage, which counts down the amount of time you have left allocated to speak. This is intended to keep you on track, and over running your time slot can cause issues for the rest of the event.

Q: Is there anything speakers should be mindful of, once their presentation is over?

We will come and take your microphones off, post session. Please don’t try and remove them yourselves as they can get damaged.

Please remember that you are wearing a microphone, and don’t walk out with it still on, otherwise the technician needs to spend time finding you, which can delay the start of the next session. Similarly, people sometimes walk off with the clicker or the laser pointer, which the next speakers will need for their own talks.