Here are a few in-depth descriptions of events I’ve produced.
Case Study: Arizona Native Plant Society
The largest and most successful event I’ve facilitated was the 2020 Botany Symposium held by the Arizona Native Plant Society (AZNPS) in October 2020. This was a three-night event, two hours each night, held Monday through Wednesday evenings October 5-7, 2020.
Historically, the AZNPS has held in-person annual events somewhere in Arizona — typically Phoenix or Tucson — over one or two days, with a registration fee between $40-$60, with normal attendance of around 100 registrants, and the event either broke even or lost up to a couple hundred dollars overall.
The 2020 event, held online via Zoom Webinar, had a small registration fee of only $10, but attracted over 340 registrants from around the world! US-based registrants were primarily from Arizona, of course, but there were registrants from 18 states ranging from Florida to Alaska, and internationally from Canada to Australia. Financially, the event raised over $2,000 after expenses, and a post-event survey showed many registrants thought a $25 registration fee was appropriate for the event.
Services provided by GoodClix Event Success Productions included:
- Full management of the registration process through Eventbrite, including handling refunds and handling most questions and other “customer service” contact.
- Configuration of the client’s Zoom account for the Webinar, including settings for recording the event via the Zoom Cloud.
- Facilitating selection of the event moderator, who was the “face of the Society” during the event.
- Conducting 3 presenter training events, with coaching on the screen-sharing process.
- Collecting copies of all presentations as back-up to be presented in case of technical difficulties on the day of the presentation. One presenter asked GoodClix to show their slides for them in advance, and one additional presentation was done due to technical issues. (Always have a Plan B!)
- Recording of each night on the Zoom Cloud and locally.
- Editing of each presentation and uploading to YouTube. See the Symposium playlist here.
- Follow-up survey of all registrants via SurveyMonkey. See the recap of survey results here.
Note that this was a “single-fee, single-track” event. This means each registrant paid one all-inclusive fee and was entitled to attend each session, and there were no “simultaneous sessions”… one session at a time, with each presentation being only 30 minutes. It ran like clockwork as a team effort — with good planning and several practice runs.
The GoodClix/ESP expected price for an event such as this: $1,500. (The AZNPS fee was somewhat less, as they were an existing customer of GoodClix for maintenance of the AZNPS web site, and I had an established working relationship with most of the people involved in event preparation.)
Case Study: Local and Regional Units of National Association of Parliamentarians
I’m a member of the National Association of Parliamentarians (NAP), as well as the American Institute of Parliamentarians (AIP), though most of my involvement is with NAP. Organizationally, the local groups of NAP are known as “units” (as opposed to “chapters” in most organizations), and there is a state association for most US states, and then districts are formed from a collection of states and some international components.
As a member of NAP, I am currently (2020-2021) president of the Arizona Agua Fria Unit (AAFU), the chair of the Technology Committee of the Arizona State Association of Parliamentarians (ASAP), and am also facilitating meetings for NAP’s District 8 (comprised of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, China, and the Northern Marianas).
Since I’m a member, in general I provide my services at no charge to those elements of NAP that I am officially a member of (District 8, ASAP, and AAFU). But the work is not much different than I do for other groups, by facilitating meetings of 1-2 hours for a group ranging from 10 to 100 people.
Simple facilitation of an event is never as simple as most people think. Using your Zoom Meeting account or mine, I:
- Set up the event (if you haven’t already)
- Set up the recording parameters (on the account, for Cloud recording)
- Log into the meeting as Host, setting up any additional parameters (such as disabling the Waiting Room if a Passcode has been enabled)
- Monitor the participants for background noise (I’ll mute participants as needed)
- Assist presenters in starting screen sharing, and if they have provided me with their PowerPoint slides, present the slides (sometimes as backup, but in certain cases, I recommend doing it as the primary presenter, especially if the presenter’s Internet connection is a slow one).
- Record the event on the Cloud and locally (two recording locations, and multiple videos are collected in the process, facilitating the editing process later).
- Download the video and audio files, and then edit and upload videos to YouTube with title screen, intro, and credits.
The GoodClix/ESP price for a 1-2 hour Zoom Meeting session with under 100 participants and no video editing is $50-$75. A single program video, with editing and uploading, adds between $75-$100, for a total amount in the range of $125-$175. Some organizations don’t want their meeting video published, but just the educational program; some organization have 2-3 shorter educational sessions in a 1-2 hour time slot, resulting in 2-3 videos to be edited and uploaded.
I do occasionally agree to manage one meeting at no charge, both for me to see how your events run and for you to see how I facilitate events. Sometimes the fee is somewhat less, for non-profit groups and very small organizations. And for those organizations I’m a member of, I often volunteer my services at no charge.