Revent-ing and Blogging
Celebrating 5 years in virtual and hybrid events, Revent Consulting reflects on the evolution of the industry and looks ahead. The future promises personalized experiences through AI, immersive hybrid events with AR/VR, a stronger focus on sustainability, and year-round community engagement. We’re excited for the next wave of innovation and creating impactful event experiences.
90s sitcoms like Friends and Seinfeld kept us hooked with strong openings, relatable content, and great pacing—keys to a successful webinar. Start with an energetic intro, keep it relatable with real-world examples, and engage your audience with polls or Q&As. Wrap up with clear takeaways, and offer a replay for lasting impact. Ready to make your next webinar as memorable as your favorite sitcom? Apply these simple lessons!
In the era where virtual and hybrid events and meetings have become essential tools for connecting with audiences and employees worldwide, Accelevents is emerging as one of Revent’s go-to consumer and enterprise platforms because of its versatile platform design that is focused on creating engagement and seamless virtual and hybrid experiences. Let’s explore the standout features that make Accelevents the ideal choice for hosting successful online and hybrid events and meetings:
Accelevents excels in hosting fully virtual events, but we feel that their deep focus on providing all the tools necessary to create dynamic and interactive online experiences makes all the difference. Whether it’s a conference, trade show, an internal town hall or webinar, Accelevents supports high-quality video streaming, customizable virtual stages, and multi-session events. Attendees can easily navigate between sessions, visit virtual booths, and interact with speakers—all within a branded, immersive environment.
Hybrid events, which combine in-person and virtual elements, present unique challenges. Accelevents seamlessly integrates both experiences into one cohesive event. The platform ensures that virtual attendees receive the same level of engagement and access as those on-site, with features like live streaming of physical sessions, virtual networking opportunities, and interactive Q&A. This unified approach ensures that all participants, regardless of location, have a consistent and engaging experience.
Organizers can create branded virtual spaces that mirror the in-person experience, ensuring a consistent look and feel across all event components. The platform also allows for customized attendee journeys, with personalized schedules and content recommendations based on individual preferences.
Creating a sense of connection in a virtual space is crucial, and Accelevents offers a range of features to achieve this. Organizers can design interactive virtual lobbies, expo halls, and networking lounges where attendees can engage in real-time. The platform also supports live polls, Q&A sessions, and breakout rooms, fostering active participation and collaboration among attendees. Our favorite feature is the ability for a video to auto-play when attendees first join your event that can be used to simply welcome attendees or you can provide a navigation guide to your event and it is another great opportunity to thank your sponsors.
Tracking the success of virtual and hybrid events requires detailed insights, and Accelevents delivers with advanced analytics. Organizers can monitor attendee engagement in real-time, track participation across both virtual and physical components, and access comprehensive reports post-event. This data is crucial for understanding audience behavior, measuring event ROI, and making informed decisions for future events.
Accelevents is a powerful platform designed to meet the demands of today’s virtual and hybrid events. With its robust hosting capabilities, seamless integration of virtual and physical experiences, interactive environments, and detailed analytics, Accelevents empowers organizers to deliver engaging and successful events. Whether you’re planning a fully virtual conference, a hybrid seminar or a humble webinar, Accelevents offers the tools and flexibility needed to create impactful experiences for all attendees.
If you are looking for a demonstration, contact the our team to schedule one today!
Welcome to the wild world of virtual events on Zoom – where technical hiccups and awkward moments converge to create chaos. Let's take a moment to appreciate the comedic gold that virtual events often bestow upon us and learn how to avoid these moments next time.
We've all been there – someone starts a heartfelt speech only to realize they've been on mute the entire time. Unless the speaker is a silent film star, it can lead to some awkward moments during your polished webinar.
Solution: Zoom has a feature called “Request Permission to Unmute Participants.” You can turn this on in your Zoom settings and enable it for every meeting/webinar to give the host the power to unmute anyone in the meeting (unless they are co-hosts). As long as the speaker opts in when they join, you can quickly react and make sure they can be heard by all!
Remember the lawyer who accidentally turned into a cat during a virtual court hearing? That was just the tip of the iceberg. Picture this: a serious business meeting where the CEO's face is replaced by a talking pineapple. Virtual backgrounds can be a real zoo, even if it’s just body parts disappearing from the screen or a purple mustache.
Solution: Encourage speakers to avoid using virtual backgrounds, as they are often more distracting than helpful. Instead, have them be in a clean room (or even just in front of a plain wall). If your main purpose for virtual backgrounds is branding, Zoom has released a variety of branding offerings from backgrounds that lay behind the videos, to logos, to lower thirds and overlays. Use these instead!
Who needs reality TV when you can just join a Zoom meeting? Children barging in like tiny tornadoes, partners making surprise cameos in pajamas, or a cat that must make itself seen. Forget carefully curated backgrounds; the real star of the show is the unscripted chaos that unfolds behind each participant.
Solution: Holding your speaking engagement from a room that is separated from the home chaos. If that is not an option for you, consider using an external microphone that has noise cancellation built in and blurring your background (this is our only exception to the virtual background rule).
Oh bandwidth, it can be a fun little bugger that one. From frozen videos to Zoom becoming unresponsive and just disconnecting you all together. When the internet decides to throw a tantrum, it can really impact the impression on your attendees.
Solution: Hard-wired internet is always your safest bet. If that is not an option, here are a few ideas: Stay as close to your Wi-Fi router as possible, ask other members of your household to stay off the internet during your presentation (even their phones!), and worst case scenario, try disconnecting from spotty Wi-Fi and connect to your phone’s 5G hotspot. It’s gotten our team out of a few jams.
In the virtual realm, what happens on your computer doesn't always stay on your computer. A moment of panic sets in when you realize you've just shared your screen, revealing your extensive collection of cat memes or, even worse, you started sharing when someone else was presenting!
Solution: You should avoid sharing an entire screen; only share the application window and practice during the pre-conference to make sure you are sharing the correct item. Also, make sure the host has a copy of your presentation so they can share it on your behalf if needed. To prevent accidentally sharing over someone else, the host can change the screen-sharing permissions so that only hosts can share, and then make only the presenting speaker a co-host.
As we navigate the digital landscape of Zoom events, let's not forget to embrace the mishaps, laugh, and learn from them. After all, the virtual stage is just another platform for us to showcase our wonderfully human, and sometimes technologically challenged, selves. Cheers to the next Zoom event – may it be filled with laughter, surprises, and maybe a cat crashing your video feed.
If you need help on your next Zoom event, do not hesitate to contact the Revent team for more tips and moral support!
We hear this question a lot: should I make my upcoming in-person event a hybrid event? While the team here at Revent loves producing hybrids, it is not always the right use case!
A hybrid event is one that has an in-person audience watching a show, presentation, or lecture AND an online audience watching from the comfort of their own homes. For a true hybrid event, your web audience should also have some form of interaction with the onsite room.
A few years ago, as we were coming out of Covid, we received a call from a potential client asking if we could assist in making their in-person holiday party a hybrid event. Upon discussing the nature of the event, it became clear that the entire event was essentially a cocktail party. We asked what he expected the web audience to experience by watching other people have fun and quickly concluded that this event should stay in-person only.
Not all decisions to go or not go hybrid are as clear cut as the above example, so let us provide you with some parameters that we use to help our clients decide which is the right path for them:
Yes: Is this event a presentation, speech, or training? These formats work well online.
No: Is this just a party or a super interactive activity that the web audience wouldn’t be able to take part in?
Yes: Do you have a large event budget that can accommodate the costs of a platform, a camera crew, and onsite/virtual support? Hybrid events can be costly, starting around $5K/day/room.
No: Do you have a very small budget where every penny counts? As an alternative, you can record your event and post the recording on your website afterward.
Yes: Is your audience spread across the country/world or do they have difficulty traveling? A virtual option is a great solution.
No: Is your audience in the same geographical location or even in the same office? In this case, in-person attendance is feasible.
Yes: Do you already have an event app for your in-person portion? Adding a hybrid component to the app can be easy and cost-effective with platforms like Accelevents and Whova.
No: If you don't have an app, adding a virtual platform can be costly. While Zoom is cost-effective, more interactive platforms start around $6K and up.
Yes: Are you at a conference center, hotel ballroom, or corporate office? These venues likely have the necessary hard-wired internet.
No: Are you in a field, a tent outside, or on a boat? Hard-wired internet is a must, and Wi-Fi alone won't suffice for a hybrid event.
If you answered "no" to several of these questions, you should reconsider if making the event hybrid is worth your time, your audience’s time, and your budget. However, if you have many "yes" answers, you are ready to take your in-person event to the next level! Hybrids are a great tool to engage more attendees, whether for fundraisers, internal all-hands meetings, trainings, product launches, or team building activities.
If you need help deciding the best path for your event, don't hesitate to reach out to our team at Revent Consulting.
In our previous post, we introduced you to the essential features of StreamYard, a robust platform that simplifies live streaming. Now that you're familiar with the basics, it's time to delve into a few more techniques and capabilities that can help elevate your broadcasts. Here are six advanced features of StreamYard you should be utilizing in 2024:
Once a video has been livestreamed or recorded, StreamYard makes it simple to edit and repurpose your content, then quickly publish your edited videos, shorts and reels to connected social platforms. From your Library of recordings, click the menu icon for the desired video and select Edit & Repurpose. From there, the editor will format your video to 16:9 or 9:16, apply auto-generated captions, and even utilize AI to pick out a few video highlights for you without even touching the editor.
If you prefer to get more hands on you can quickly trim, cut, and follow alongside a transcript to finalize your edit, and then when you're ready, just Publish, choose your desired destinations, and add in the description text. If short form video platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels are your primary audience, you can also always conduct your initial recordings in a vertical format.
streamertemplates.com
While many users may not need to touch the Overlay feature to create high quality content, it's a sneakily powerful feature within StreamYard for customizing the look and feel of your broadcasts and expanding your production options. Overlays are always fullscreen, but they can be partially transparent, which means not only can you create unique graphics to appear on screen when cued, such as important takeaways or lower thirds, you can also design or purchase fullscreen templates that fit around StreamYard's video windows, resulting in a completely new look and feel. StreamYard also maintains a free library of studio assets for the community that’s continually updated.
Even if you're happy with the built-in options, since the Overlay layer always appears in front of any videos or content being shared, it's an invaluable tool for displaying opening and closing slates, backup slides, break images and notifications, while you add or remove presenters from backstage. Then, when you're ready to go live, remove the Overlay and your presenters only need to see themselves as their cue to begin. It’s also always a good idea to have solid black and white overlays on hand to help smooth out video fades and transitions if needed.
After using StreamYard for a while, you'll likely have a few favorite layouts that you return to often, or perhaps you have an idea for a layout that isn't included in the defaults. By clicking on the 'Edit layout' or 'New layout' icons located to the right of the layout tray, StreamYard's video window instantly goes into edit mode, allowing you to add or remove cameras and media, add a dynamic camera grid, reposition, and resize. Default layouts can be tweaked, and new layouts can be saved for easy access.
Once you're happy with your layouts, by going into Settings and selecting the Layouts tab, you can change around the order of the icon tray and prioritize your favorites. You can also remove any layout that you don't want to click accidentally, and toggle if the solo layout appears fullscreen or if it’s framed by the background image. That last option can be toggled back and forth from the Settings menu at any time, providing a hidden switch between the two if needed.
StreamYard has expanded its business functionality in recent years. The platform now supports multi-user access, allowing team members to collaborate on live streams. This can be particularly useful for larger productions with a need to delegate tasks. Team members can be assigned as Admins that can manage the entire platform aside from account and billing settings, or as Co-Hosts who can cue graphics, banners and users without adding or deleting any of your content.
At higher tiers of the Business access plan you gain more control over your Team, with additional user roles, over 10 seats for your team members, and the ability to organize shows in separate spaces, with control over who can create content and manage access in each. SSO authentication is also supported for organizations that require it.
Leading conferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams offer integrated webinar functionality for a more controlled viewing experience, and while each has their place, StreamYard's underrated On-Air webinar platform enters this space from a different starting point. It's worth exploring if you're a StreamYard user looking to publish to a dedicated event page, either publicly or privately, in addition to your social channels and with the potential for user registration and collecting viewer analytics. On-Air attendees can also comment, react, and even be invited into the studio environment as a live guest.
If your plan supports it, creating an On-Air webinar is a simple process, as it’s now featured on the StreamYard dashboard. A webinar can be scheduled as a live broadcast or as a pre-recorded video playback. If registration is enabled, custom fields can be added, and users are given links to add to calendar or join the live event. The On-Air attendee view can also be embedded within a private website, either live or on demand, as part of a larger virtual experience.
While there are no limitations in features if your plan supports On-Air webinars, the total number of viewers allowed is capped depending on your tier. This flexibility makes it an attractive option for one-off, large-scale events that require a dedicated webinar player for attendees, instead of purchasing an annual license for a platform that will only be used for one or two months out of the year.
If you’re used to physical video switchers, adjusting to a mouse based interface can be limiting when it comes to executing commands as quickly as possible. For that, StreamYard thankfully includes a wide range of customizable hotkeys for producers to take advantage of. It takes some practice, but it also allows you to quickly execute various actions such as switching between layouts, muting/unmuting audio, sharing screens, advancing slides and toggling display names without having to navigate or scroll through the interface manually. Markers can even be created in realtime during a recording, so you can find a spot easily later on in the editor. A full list of available options can be found in the Settings menu, under the Hotkeys tab.
And if that’s not enough, and you still crave the touch of physical buttons to make your layouts dance, StreamYard is also supported by the Elgato Stream Deck, which offers a grid of customizable physical buttons at your fingertips to map out and work with. It can be an invaluable tool when using StreamYard as part of a larger broadcast setup, offering at the ready platform control without taking your attention away.
As you grow more comfortable producing content using StreamYard, or with a partner like Revent, we recommend exploring some of its more advanced features to take advantage of its full suite of live streaming capabilities. And since the platform is frequently updated with new and commonly requested features, be sure to keep an eye on StreamYard’s own help center and blog, as well as this space, for the latest updates and insights. Happy streaming!
In the ever-evolving landscape of online communication and live streaming, having the right tools at your disposal can make all the difference. And while it may not have the name recognition of Zoom, Google or Microsoft, StreamYard continues to stand out as a leading platform in 2024, empowering content creators, businesses, educators and more to broadcast to the world with ease, professionalism and affordability.
First released out of beta in 2019, StreamYard has been a powerful resource since its inception and has continued to evolve through the years, adding new features and functionalities to enhance the streaming experience. In Part 1 of our look into StreamYard, we'll delve into the features that make it a compelling option for new users looking to elevate their live streaming game in 2024.
The duck may look unassuming, but it’s got powerful chops.
Gone are the days of cumbersome software installations and complex setups. StreamYard's intuitive browser-based interface puts the power of professional live streaming at your fingertips, no matter your level of expertise. With its uncluttered design and straightforward controls you can effortlessly manage your stream, transition between cameras and layouts, invite guests, chat privately and publicly, and incorporate multimedia elements—all within a single, convenient platform.
One of StreamYard's standout features is its ability to easily connect and livestream to multiple video platforms simultaneously. Whether you're broadcasting to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitch, Instagram, or a custom RTMP destination like Vimeo or Microsoft Teams, StreamYard simplifies the process, allowing you to reach a broader audience with just a few clicks. You can quickly schedule and post upcoming events to your linked platforms, and while live, view an integrated chat with the ability to display comments live on screen. By expanding your reach across various platforms, you can maximize exposure, engage with different audiences, and amplify your message.
In today's crowded digital landscape, branding plays a crucial role in distinguishing your content and attracting viewers. StreamYard understands this importance and provides robust branding and customization options to help you stand out. By uploading overlays, logos and backgrounds, you can personalize your streams to reflect your brand identity. You can also find templates or create branded assets that align with StreamYard's built-in layouts, augmenting the look and feel of the platform. For both highly customized and minimalist approaches, StreamYard provides a professional and polished look that leaves a lasting impression on your audience.
StreamYard goes beyond standard conferencing platforms by incorporating advanced production features designed to elevate your broadcasts to the next level. With features like themed banners and tickers that can be edited on the fly, built-in slide presentations, and intuitive music, video clip, and image management, you have the flexibility to create dynamic and engaging content tailored to your audience's preferences. StreamYard has a surprising amount of post-production boxes checked as well, including cloud and local recordings from each guest, shareable replays, separate audio track downloads, long term storage, and a built-in trimming tool with frame by frame precision (which isn’t always the case!)
StreamYard's tooltip functionality is a subtle yet indispensable feature woven seamlessly throughout the platform. Useful for both novice broadcasters and seasoned professionals, these unobtrusive pop-up hints provide invaluable assistance, from file size requirements to defining advanced customization options. This approach not only enhances the user experience but also accelerates the learning curve, empowering individuals to unleash the full potential of StreamYard's suite of features. And when more detailed information is needed, a help center full of easy to digest articles is available for producers and guests on all aspects of the platform.
What sets StreamYard apart is not just its core feature set, but also its flexible pricing structure. With options ranging from a free basic account to affordable paid subscriptions and business plans, StreamYard ensures accessibility for all. Even on a free plan, users can experience many key features, including multistreaming and custom branding, for the price of a watermarked logo on your broadcasts. Diving into the paid tiers unlocks additional perks and goodies, such as transcripts, pre-recorded streams, increased quality, more guests on camera and backstage, on-air webinar hosting, more team members, and even a greenroom. StreamYard's pricing caters to all budgets while delivering an exceptional value, both at monthly and discounted annual prices.
Like all platforms, StreamYard is not a one size fits all solution. We primarily utilize StreamYard as the stage for an event and as a backstage for staff, while a complimentary platform provides the attendee experience. At higher tiered plans an on-air webinar platform is included, with simplified registration, a live video interface and live chat, though it's worth considering if social media should be doing that work, or if a dedicated webinar platform is appropriate if those features are a priority. It's also worth noting that Full HD video at 1080p requires a Professional plan, and while streaming quality is routinely high, Zoom still holds the crown for user settings and bandwidth mitigation, and there’s a risk of audio and frame drops if a connection is poor.
Still, for many use cases, from interview shows and podcasts to presentations and live hybrid events, StreamYard provides the tools needed to deliver professional-grade productions with confidence and reliability. It's one of our go-to platforms at Revent, and what's even more exciting is how it's continued to innovate while remaining user friendly and approachable. In our next post, we'll take a look at some more advanced features for experienced users looking to dig into everything StreamYard has been building as the platform continues to evolve.
