If you’re a remote live stream producer reading the above headline, you’re likely thinking “well, duh.” But, in my experience, some of my virtual event guests are rather comfortable just moving forward without tech checks and rehearsals. And while I think it’s great when people are comfortable with technology, we as producers must insist on having those tech checks and rehearsals. The flow of a good show depends on it.

Yes, the technology piece is essential. We need to be able to see and hear our guest speakers clearly. That means ensuring they have solid internet connection, good lighting, good audio, etc. However, one key piece of any event is the flow, especially when it’s all virtual or hybrid.

Things like transitioning from speaker to speaker, how to introduce presentations or videos being shown to the audience – all of that contributes to a good flow. And good flow comes from rehearsing.

If it takes too long to transition from one slide presentation to another, or your host is fumbling over who to introduce next, it’s very easy for an audience tuning in via internet to load another webpage or pull up their inbox and start doing other things.

“The show that didn’t go well…we didn’t have a rehearsal,” says Anthony Burokas, a 20+ year broadcast producer and founder of IEBA Communications and Stream4us. “As much as people think ‘Oh yeah, yeah, we’ll just go online. It’s just like Zoom.’ It’s not just like Zoom. This is television.”

Burokas has been producing almost only remote live events since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, mainly for corporate clients. Hear Anthony talk more about the importance of rehearsals in the clip below.

And oh by the way, these aren’t the normal events speakers are used to. They can’t see the audience. They are not in the same room as the other speakers they’re communicating with. Sometimes they’re relying on remote producers talking into their ear for the first time to give them queues, or they’ve never done an event in front of a webcam, so they aren’t sure where to look.

Kimberly Flowers, founder of Remote Producer Live!, a fully remote production company that helps entrepreneurs stream online shows, really puts an emphasis on the prep work with her clients.

“Going through those steps really help the client feel confident in our ability to really support them at the level that they need,” she says. “And [we’re] taking that load off of their shoulders so they can focus on being the content creator and just focusing in on being a host.”

Check out my full conversation with Flowers on YouTube.

Again, it’s comforting as a producer when you get a guest speaker that is tech-savvy. It’s great when they can work a webcam and know how to turn on a specific microphone as the audio input in the streaming software. But as Flowers mentioned during our recent conversation, remote productions can throw a lot of new things at people that they’re not used to seeing, so they have to get used to the remote live environment before they’re thrown into the virtual spotlight.

Here’s a great article from Eventsforce on how to conduct a good virtual event rehearsal.