MAP Digital - Onsite Speaker Support Networks

EVENTWEB
Internet News & Analysis
for the Meeting Industry
May 17, 2002

A computer network increases the professionalism of your event, streamlines transitions between presenters, and helps avoid frustrating your audience with waiting for presentations to be set up.

Last week I attended a meeting in Washington, DC hosted by the Alliance Service Network, a marketing and sales organization that represents service providers to the meeting, convention and exhibition industry. The program consisted of tabletop exhibits and a series of educational programs offered by alliance members. It was a good program and I had an opportunity to speak to a handful of technology vendors.

Mary Ann Pierce is president of Events Digital [now president of MAP Digital, Inc.], an Internet and network service provider for meetings and conventions. Events Digital sets up any type of on-site network in order to provide webcasting, Internet access, kiosks, speaker-support services and other types of networking requirements.

I saw Pierce present. She is an engaging, straightforward presenter. So I followed-up with her Wednesday to interview her about one of her offerings — speaker-support networks.

If you run a medium to large conference program with lots of concurrent sessions, you may want to build an on-site speaker-support network. Such a computer network may serve to increase the professionalism of your event, streamline transitions from one speaker to the next, and help ensure that your audience doesn't get frustrated as presenters try to connect their own notebook PCs to the in-room projectors.

A speaker-support network is simply a computer network that links all of the meeting rooms and a speaker-ready room with a central on-site server. Each meeting room consists of a networked computer that is connected to the in-room projector.

Before a speaker conducts a session — either before your meeting or while on-site, he or she emails or uploads a PowerPoint file or other types of presentation materials to a central server. Thus, when the speaker arrives at a session room, there is no need to connect a notebook computer to a projector or high-speed Internet connection. There is already a computer in the room and it only takes a second to open the previously uploaded presentation since all presentations are already stored on a central server.

I highly recommend that you visit [Ms. Pierce's company] website. You will find an effective diagram that shows you how on-site networks can be set-up for both speaker-support and other networking requirements. Go to this link and move your cursor over different sections to read the descriptions: The Digital Life Cycle Of An Event.

Pierce offers the following tips and benefits for creating an on-site speaker-support network:

Encourage speakers to upload their presentations before the start of the meeting. This will save you a lot of work and hassle.
In the speaker-ready room, allow your speakers to upload their presentations at the last minute to the central on-site server.
Some speakers will still want to bring their own notebook computers for their presentations. So let them.
Most networks are often created using the already-installed internal facility networks that use CAT 5 high-speed wiring.
Speaker networks are especially valuable if you have a very short turnaround time between sessions. There is no wasted time and no fumbling.
At this point in time, wired networks are still preferable over wireless networks for pushing data-intensive presentations. If lots of speaker presentations include embedded video clips, you could run into trouble if you only rely on a WiFi (wireless) network.
Tell speakers what you will do with their presentations once they are uploaded to your network. Are you creating just a private on-site network, or will the presentations also be published to and accessible via the Web?
A speaker-support network can be integrated with a speaker registration system. Presenters can register for your event online and then complete additional forms regarding their presentations. These forms can include audiovisual requirements, webcast release forms and the ability to upload presentations to the speaker network.