By The BRAC Social Innovation Lab
Imagine you’re in a conference room with Asif bhai or, some other director/senior director for a conference call with Bill Gates. You have slaved for weeks to prepare for this call; making innumerable visits to the 20th floor to book a slot on the director’s calendar that miraculously coincided with an opening on Bill Gates’ schedule. It’s 8 minutes past 10am; the call was supposed to start sharp at 10. But, for some reason, the laptop you’re using simply refuses to connect to the wi-fi!
Can you imagine the intolerable, excruciating agony and embarrassment of knowing that both a BRAC director and Bill Gates himself are waiting, having to waste their ultra precious time just because you didn’t bother checking something as trivial as the internet connection? It may be a pretty extreme scenario but heed our warning when we say, “It’s very real…very possible!” We speak from experience.
That’s why we have come up with the following check list (please see below) to make sure we do everything possible to limit the chances of something, anything going wrong. Hope you find it useful.
2-4 weeks in advance
- Sending out a save the date; name technology and let people know if they need to install anything, share user name, etc.
- Booking room for the physical meeting (with 30 minutes on each end); make sure that room has adequate internet situation
1-2 weeks in advance
- Finalize agenda
- Share agenda with all participants (1 week before), as well as a reminder for any required preparation (technology or content)
- Dry run of entire presentation for call, with complete slide set, with the actual hardware intended to be used in the session, ideally with 1 person joining remotely
- Decide on roles: note taking, managing technology, presentation, facilitating/presenting, time management
24 hours in advance
- Final slide deck—if distributing beforehand, send to all
- Final reminder for call
During the call
- Printed hard copy of any crucial document for the event (i.e. notes, slides, etc.)
- Engage those in the room, via eye contact and having slide presentation
- STAY ON TIME—no one wants to run late
30 minutes before the call
- Get completely set up; slides on the deck
- Review roles during calls
Afterwards
- Send notes out within 48 hours, ideally with a quick summary at the top
Tips
- Ability to mute people, share screen is helpful—go-to meeting is a pretty good tool
- Make sure that the microphone/speaker in the room is high quality
- Be prepared! Practicing presentations is important; having notes on hand also helps
- Know the time zones and specify if you mean BDT etc (helpful for others if you include the time in their time zone as well)
Remaining to do
FIGURE OUT WHAT INTERNET SET UP IS MOST RELIABLE!
