Video highlights:

00:10 - How do you organize your schedule?

00:45 - How do you deal with speakers who go over time?

01:48 - Never say THIS (It is a sure sign of an unprofessional)

02:28 - Getting your audience into the room on time

03:55 - Should you film an event for content?

05:45 - Is a five-day event overkill?

06:55 - The live exercise portion

08:26 - How big a crew should you have?

09:37 - Why the food costs so much

See James’s live event tips in action at SuperFastBusiness Live 2017

Download the PDF transcription and Live Event FAQ

Transcription:

James here, and today, I've got some follow-up questions from the last video I did, which was about running a live event.

Organizing sessions

The first question is: You do short sessions. Do you have a session and then a break? Or do you stack sessions together?

Well, I like to start the event around nine o'clock. We do a maximum of 90-minute session, then we go into morning tea. And then after morning tea, we do two blocks of 50, and then we have lunch. Then we do another two blocks of 50. We have afternoon tea. And then we have a shorter session at the end of the day and finish around about five. I don't want to have people starting at eight. I don't want to have people finishing at seven. At least, there's plenty of time to do other things to catch up with each other and socialize. But keep the blocks fairly short.

When speakers go over time

So, what do you do if a speaker runs over time?

Well, unfortunately, you have an unprofessional speaker. Make sure you're very clear with your speakers that your times are set. You need to give them some things that will help them - like put the time on a countdown in front of them. Have someone in the front row with an iPad. Have some time cards saying, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes. And ask them to acknowledge. Just a little yes or a thumbs up so that they know that they're on time.

Now, if they happen to be still talking at the time that you're supposed to be finishing, just go up and help them off the stage because you need to be strict with your times. I'll cover this more in the next little tip.

The other thing to do is if they finish early, throw it open to Q&A. Just get ready to rescue them. Get up there with your microphone and throw open the questions. And then a final strategy is if they do finish a little bit early, then break early. Give people more time to talk to each other. What a bonus - you got through the material in time.

"Advanced Event Tips"CLICK TO TWEET

A speaking tip

By the way, here's a speaking tip - never say, “I don't have much time. So I'm going to go really fast.” The audience will just groan like, 'Oh, gosh, they're not professional enough to structure their presentation. All that time they had to prepare and to get it right, and now they're making me have to be overloaded?' Don't shift it across to the audience.

The audience will never know what you didn't tell the...