Everything is in order, yet the jitters remain. We get it. With experience producing hundreds of town hall events in Microsoft Teams, we’ve compiled the best tips for running a flawless show. We’ll cover:
- Preparing for the Pre-Show: Setting up and organizing before the event begins.
- Welcoming and Preparing Multiple Presenters: Testing audio and video to ensure everything runs smoothly.
- The Importance of a Show Flow Setup: Why having a structured plan is crucial.
- The Green Room Environment: How it differs from the main event experience and why it matters.
- The Co-Organizer Workspace: Why it’s essential to have two monitors for effective management.
- Going Live: Tips for a successful broadcast.
- Ending the Meeting: Best practices for closing out the event.
- Best Practices for Follow-Up: Setting up a follow-up Teams meeting with your presenters.
If you have any questions, we’re here to help. Contact producer Shaun Parker at shaunp@worktankglobal.com or email talktous@worktankglobal.com and we’ll help you produce a flawless event – from managing content, presenters, the event environment, and tech help with your global audience.
Video Transcript:
Intro
Well hello, and welcome back to our series on getting your event ready using Town Hall and Microsoft Teams. Today’s the big day. We’ve got our event set up in Town Hall, we’ve invited our presenters and attendees, we have our Q&A widget set up, we have our deck and our videos ready to share. Check out all those videos if you haven’t, but now all that’s left is to do the thing. So let’s dive in and go live with Town Hall and Microsoft Teams.
Pre-Show Checklist
So it’s about 30 minutes before we’re live. I have two monitors. I have one that I’m going to run the actual event on, and have another that I’m running content on. It’s really important to have two monitors here, check out our last video for more on that. I have my show flow printed out on paper because I’m a dinosaur, my little fidget spinner, I have a coffee. So I think we’re ready to join. All right, we’ll hit join on our event.
Green Room
The Teams calendar Town Hall will natively have Green Room toggled on, which basically means we have to select to go live. You can find us in the Meeting Options panel just to be sure, but with the Green Room on, your presenters can join, you can make sure everyone’s looking good, talk to each other before the audience sees anything. At the top here you’ll see both a chat and a Q&A widget.
The Chat
The chat is entirely for presenters, and none of that’s going to be shared with the audience. It’s really important to remember that with Town Hall, while you can control who’s on screen, you cannot control who is being heard. Any presenter that is unmuted, even if they’re not on screen, that audio will go through. So it’s going to be really important that you coach your presenters to use this chat window.
Q&A Widget
The Q&A widget next to it is where our audience questions are going to come in, and where we can communicate with the audience. So here I’ll go ahead and say “will be starting shortly.” People is only going to show you presenters, not your audience at all. We’ll get into that in a second.
Sharing Your Screen
Okay, I’m going to bring our welcome slide up. It’s presenting on my second monitor, and when we share, you’ll see all we see is this “you’re sharing your screen right now” alert, rather than seeing the slide. This is why a second monitor is really helpful. The other presenters can see what you’re sharing, you just can’t.
Bringing a Presenter Onscreen
We’re going to go ahead and bring our first presenter on screen by right-clicking and selecting “bring on screen.” I can also click the three dots here, and I could also do it from the People tab, which is helpful if you have a ton of people on that side of the call and you want to just find a specific person.
The “Start Meeting” Button
Okay, it’s time. Let’s hit the big yellow button. I have found that counting down presenters isn’t too reliable here, sort of the start loading time can vary. Just coach your presenters that once they’re live.
The Event Organizer’s “Live” View
They’re going to see a big red live icon at the top left, and a border around their screen is going to turn red. I like to ask them to just wait two seconds before getting started. It can give just a little bit of buffer time to help with an edit, if you need to edit the live event. Okay, here we go. And we’re live. Recordings begin automatically, which is great. If you look up in the upper left corner, you’ll see how many attendees are watching. I have found this number to be an approximation. We’re going to get way more into detailed analytics in the next video. A difference between Town Hall and Teams Live Event is with Town Hall, you can’t view the attendee side. You could with Teams Live Event, but with Town Hall there’s one link. You’re either a presenter or you’re an attendee. If you’re a presenter, you can’t get over here, so it’s really hard to monitor. But it says live in the corner, you’re live, and I’ve yet to have an issue where the attendees are seeing something I’m not. But something to call out if you’re looking for it.
Multiple Presenters
So next up is this little interview bit. So I’m going to lose our PowerPoint by clicking stop sharing, then I’m going to find our other presenter, right-click over them, and at the right moment, bring them on screen. Now both people are on screen simultaneously. If you’re used to Teams Live Events, you’re freaking out. This is huge. I love that this is a thing that you can do. You can have up to seven people on screen at a time, and a screen share, so you can have like a big group presentation. But for here, we’re just going to have a little fireside chat. I want to take our guest full screen, so we’re going to right-click over our first presenter and select “take off screen.” That’s it, this thing is rolling. We are going to keep our eyes on the chat and the Q&A. We’re going to spend our time going through there. But for now, let’s go ahead and move to the future when our event is wrapping.
Ending the Event
So it’s the future, our event has gone very well, Kendra’s taking it home. So to end the event, don’t click leave. That’s just going to take you out of the meeting. Click the carrot next to leave, and you’re going to select “end meeting.” From here, you’re going to get a pop-up, which is good, you know, you don’t want to accidentally end the meeting. From here we can say goodbye. And if you’re used to Teams Live Events, you’re not going to like what’s about to happen. And that’s a pretty big difference between Town Hall and Teams Live Event. With Town Hall, when you end the meeting, it’s going to end the meeting. It’s going to kick off your presenters, it’s going to kick off you, it shuts the call down. If you’re used to Teams Live Events, that’s going to scare you a lot the first time it happens, and every other time it happens for a long time. But it’s okay, just know to expect it. Have a debrief call set up. The presenter chat is still live, you can go in there and say “great show everybody.” Just know when you hit end meeting, it’s going to shut it down.
Wrap-Up
But with all that said, cue the confetti, we did it. We went live with Town Hall and Microsoft Teams, and it went really well. In our next video, we’re going to take a look at Town Hall’s native post-event reports and analytics, and where the recording lives, and all that post-event stuff. But for now, what do you think about Town Hall’s live experience? Are there any features you’d like to see added in the future? Let us know in the comments. For Worktank, my name is Sean, we’ll see you next time.
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