hi if you have been a regular viewer on this channel you know 2021 has not been my reading yet at this point i don't have anything to talk about there's nothing that i want to say there's more so what i want to do and i keep trying to fix it and it keeps not happening so i was sitting here and i was thinking to myself mega and what can we do what can we do to make you you know to make this happen to get our reading slump to have so many favorite books and i thought let me just ask you guys what your favorite books you've read so far this year have been and then i'm gonna read them so that's what we've done i just asked on twitter like casually or something like that i don't know why i said and i probably could have got more responses like if i did something a bit official or if i did on instagram as well but i only asked on twitter there was a ton of books but obviously it was just a ton of variety because you're reading different things so there was like so many books that like one or two of you said but the ones i'm going to be reading in this vlog was like three or four of you said so it's not like overwhelming numbers of people but that's because i didn't do it that officially so what we're gonna be reading let me show you i'm very excited so the first book i am terrified to read because i haven't done a five star prediction updated video i have now lmao i filmed this a long time ago but if i was to do one now this would be on there and four of you said the house in the cerulean sea by tj klune are we surprised this is like a bookshed favorite i have not seen anyone read this and not love it all i know about it is that it's about a guy who has to travel to like this orphanage with magical children that are maybe gonna end the world because they're so dangerous and i think it's like a gay relationship between him and the guy who runs the orphanage as well i've heard it's like a middle grade for adults it's just so like emotional and heartwarming and lovely and i'm so excited riley has been telling me to read this for so long i know this is one of her favorites so i hope i'm gonna make her proud so yeah i'm super excited i'm so excited to read this and then the ones that three of you said firstly we've got watch over me my nina lecore i already owned this this was one that i've been so excited to read for such a long time all i know is it it's about a girl who goes to this farm i think she's an orphan and she goes to live on this farm to kind of like work there but it's haunted by ghosts or something and it's also to do with her trauma super excited to get to this i think this could possibly be like a favorite favorite favorite i mean i think all of these could be this is the first time in a while i've done a reading vlog and i'm like these could all be five stars wishful thinking you're a dreamer you dream a lot in your sleep no not really yes you do no yes you do then we've got another one i already owned which is legend borne by tracy deon this is like an atherian retelling i don't really know anything about it other than that like her mother dies in a car accident she's at this university when she's only 16 like she's like an advanced student and there's like something about this like atherian knights very strange but i've heard really really good things about this i've been super excited to read it for a while and then one that i had heard quite a few people speak about like on booktube that they were reading it but i actually haven't i don't think i've heard anyone review it i think i've like watched live sprints when people have been reading it but i wasn't expecting this to have so like to be one of the books in this video it's amari and the night brothers by bb alston i don't even know the plot of this it's a middle grade that came out earlier this year amari's brother's gone missing she's invited for a trial the bureau of supernatural affairs she's certain this is her chance to save him okay for this one we're just gonna go with it and find out what it's about as we go along i really am excited for this though because i love middle grade i love the experience of reading middle grade and i haven't when was the last time i loved loved middle grade i don't know i generally can't remember so i'm hoping this could be a new favorite so they're the four books we're gonna be reading in this video that have been some of your favorite books so far this year and i'm really excited because i feel like these could all be five stars like these are all heavy hitters these are big names these are big name books i think i'm gonna start with watch over me i'm hoping this can be one that i can read pretty fast because it's only like 260 pages so it will like get me motivated get me like this in every video about how i need to get motivated to read but we're gonna start with this and we'll see how it goes it's so dark in here it's like two o'clock but it's like so dark i've got the ring like cranked up right here's the thing i feel like i'm getting my mojo back that's the first thing i want to say like i feel like we're back i feel like the tide is turning i mean to enjoy myself jc style you know i want to make i just want to be me i usually check in like a third of the way through a book or halfway through a book i got halfway through this last night and then i went to go make dinner and i was like okay after dinner i'm gonna come and check in and then when i was making dinner i was getting some baked beef out of the microwave and i got them wrong and i burnt my hand i spilled them then i dropped the bowls they spilled them all down me like hot hot hot hot and i got it all up the walls so i felt a bit sorry for myself and i didn't want to like come and film so i was just like megan you can just finish the book you can just do that it's okay no one's gonna hate me i hope no one's gonna hate me that is not correct here's the thing it's five stars it's five stars it's five stars it's five stars i loved this this is everything this is this is my kind of book this is my kind of book this is it this is it smash smash smash smash smash we're following a girl named mila who has been in the foster care system and she's aged out of it she gets to go to this farm where other foster kids live this couple runs this farm and kids like young adults who have aged out of the system can go and work there and like teach the younger kids there and she gets that position but when she gets there everyone there can see ghosts there's like ghosts that like dance and play with everyone like child ghosts on the farm and for most of the book you're not sure whether those ghosts are real they're kind of like is this actually happening or like what's going on here but this is just an app you guys you don't even understand this is an absolutely beautiful book about trauma about grief about her it's written so hauntingly like that's how I would describe it not just because ghosts but the style of writing it's so haunting and like kind of like grief and the melancholyness lays so heavy over the book oh my god I can't describe too much I love this there's this really special relationship between mila and the boy that she teaches Lee how they try to like work through their trauma together and how she tries to help him even when she's not really really ready to help herself the thing I love about this it reminds me of a lot of those kind of my favorite like YA weird books you're not sure who you can trust so like I never really trusted the people on the farm I can't trust them they don't know what they're doing it's written in this way where you don't know what is real and people act in very strange ways like people don't really act the characters don't act in a way that people act like the way that they interact and so you're like what is happening here like are we all imagining this is something sinister going on and that's what I love in books when there doesn't have to be something actually sinister going on but it's got that undercurrent of our knees because of how like melancholy and sad this book is I almost cried at the end there was oh my god the ending like I read the last 100 pages of this engrossed and I haven't read a book like that in a long time we're like I literally can't take my eyes off there the denouement of the book was so beautifully written I was like almost crying like just how beautiful and poignant my god I'm like just how beautiful and poignant the words were this was so good it was so good so I just love I think I've realized like my favorite genre is probably this kind of like weird young adult surrealism fabulism magical realism whatever you want to call that kind of like big encompassing bracket that's my favorite genre like without a shadow of a doubt I really can't wait to read uh we are okay by need a little core I don't have it and I'm on a book buying man but one day I'll get it and I'll read it I'm very excited it definitely reminded me of Katrina Leno I've got Katrina Leno's other two books so I'm really excited to read them because this is just kind of like the vibe right now you know what I mean like this is it I'm obsessed so if you've got any more recommendations particularly I want to read more sorts of color like in this vein in this kind of like surrealism often like melancholy or dealing with like anger or sadness or trauma books that's what I'm looking for so if you've got any recommendations please let me know and the way it explored grief and trauma and her was so beautiful such a beautifully written book we are off to a success I thought I'd be reading like heavy hitters like I'm getting a bit violent oh that was that was one thing I wanted to say I love the quietness of it it's such a quiet small book like you're on this farm isolated there's this like you know group of characters who are kind of like acting as a family together and just how quiet it is so an example I can think of is you must not miss by Katrina Leno he's very loud in its anger the character has been through trauma and is very like angry with that trauma and rightfully so but what I loved about this is it's kind of like the opposite where the trauma has made the character like draw into herself and everything is very small um I just thought it was done so well so five stars if you've been eyeing this up pick it up it was so good it was so good oh my god I loved it next I looked at you weird then next I think I'm gonna read Amari and the Night Brothers again I don't know anything about the plot for this but I'm just feeling like a middle grade and the cover is beautiful this has got like a 4.5 something rating on Goodreads like it's got such a high rating so I'm hoping for really good things like people are saying it's their favorite middle grade they have ever read I'm gonna start oh my god look there's like really gorgeous illustrations in here okay I'm gonna go start this and I will check in with you partway through this I won't just read the whole of it and then come back to you so to this video I started it weeks and weeks and weeks ago and then I've done like three vlogs since the level of unprofessionalism far too much it's been really broken up but I am halfway through Amari and the Night Brothers but that reading has been very broken up it's been like 40 pages here then I read another book 50 pages here then I read another book so I'm hoping to just read the rest today so that it is a more of like a cohesive reading experience but I am really enjoying this this is like one of my favorite middle grades that I think I've ever read so basically we have Amari whose brother has just gone missing and she gets an invitation to this like camp or training place for the bureau of supernatural affairs and that is somewhere that her brother was and it's this whole secret life that she didn't know he had and it's basically he was a really famous agent for this bureau of supernatural affairs so it's all about these supernatural creatures and magic and it's really like magic boarding school vibes and so it feels like nostalgic in that sense I love Amari as a character and the writing and this is amazing honestly this is so good you guys this is so good it's it's amazing it's so amazing to me this is just mind blowing I remember I watched Nicole talk about this in a wrap-up that she did a couple days ago and she spoke about how it explores issues like race and class really well in lots of different settings like how Amari is disadvantaged by her race and class in lots of different settings even in this supernatural world and it's so interesting and it's really fast paced I'm just really I'm just loving this experience but I feel like it isn't a proper check in because my reading has been so disjointed like I literally just read the last 40 pages um but everything else I read like kind of weeks ago so like I'm a bit like oh there's like these trials as well which is really fun like I feel like this is a lot of like classic trope elements um but done in this really new and exciting way so to stay in the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and to kind of like become this agent you have to pass lots of trials and so there's like kind of like a different trial every week which I think we're kind of approaching the first one now and we're gonna go through the rest of them but that's really fun like this competition element with the other kids and I won't say who but this does draw in some like characters from classical Victorian literature um and reimagines them in this like supernatural setting and that's something that one of my favorite not in a supernatural setting but one of my favorite um series The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter did that where you had all of these characters from classic Victorian literature in this story again and I really love that like when we just kind of like bring those characters back they're in the public domain nobody owns them let's just use them I'm a genius I love it I think it's so fun to have those to Easter eggs like appear so yeah I'm going to try and finish this today it shouldn't take me long because it is a middle grade but I'm really enjoying it I didn't finish Amara and my brothers last night but I'm actually going to pop out to the Waterstones Cafe in the city today because I haven't been um obviously because they've been open in ages and I'm moving back home in like a week so I want to go before that happens and go and spend some time there so I'm hoping I'm going to finish Amari and the Night Brothers and also maybe get a bit of the way through the next book which is Legend Born. I had such a good time sitting in the in the cafe yesterday and reading and I read so much I don't even think I get some of my best reading done when I go and sit in a cafe like I just get in the zone and I just read so much so firstly I finished Amari and the Night Brothers by BB Alston this is like a 4.25 for me it's like somewhere between a 4 and a 4.5 it just has the perfect like whimsy magical tone in the writing that you want from a book like this that you want from a middle grade fantasy just the way it is written is so amazing like it has so many amazing little nuggets of information and like magicalness like so many complexities to it which I really love like it's a really fleshed out world and magic system how this bureau has all these different departments and we get to visit them all there's loads of really great characters we have quite a big cast of characters in this and I think they're all done equally well it was such an engrossing read the second half of this like I just sat there and flew through it nothing was getting me to put down this book like I loved it it was so good it just didn't feel like a five-star but it's definitely I think up there as one of my favorite middle grades of all time if not is it the favorite middle grade of all time I don't know I can't think at the moment of anything that can top it but I feel like I have given a middle grade five stars before but maybe not maybe this is it it was just clever and funny and difficult and explored so many topics I loved Amari as a character I cannot wait I cannot wait to continue on with this series I'm so excited for more to come out in this series the fact that this is a debut is honest it's shockworthy the fact that this is a debut is shockworthy I can't believe it if you want like a middle grade boarding school magic kind of vibe oh it's just so good so so good it was such an enjoyable read I'm so glad I read it you guys are right this was a great book I understand why so many people love this rightfully so I am actually already halfway almost through legend born as well I told you I read a lot I read a lot I just stayed there for ages and just read I'm listening to your audiobook of this as well it's a really long audiobook it's 18 hours long this is a quite a long book because it's almost 500 pages and the font is tiny in this the following brie whose mom has just died in a car crash she's gone to is it carolina she's gone to university as like an early admission person like she's only 16 but she's kind of gone to college now she gets caught up in this secret society which call themselves like legend born and like descendants of king Arthur and this is whole like energy and magic and she can see things she's not supposed to and yeah okay um it's fine I'm sorry that my behavior has upset people and I've never intentionally set out to upset anyone like I'm enjoying it it's not bad it's really well written but I don't feel the same pool to read it that I felt in something like this I feel like in this all of the minor characters were really well fleshed out but I feel like we almost have in some ways too big of a cast here it's and it's all like these a theme in this is like racism and colonization like historical colonization and historically white spaces and what it's like to exist in those as a black person so in the society we just have so many white people and all these white people names and they're all the same then that I just don't I can't separate I just I know the two main guys in this society and then everyone else you're all blowing into one I I just feel like it it's a bit long like I feel like it takes 10 words to say what could have been said in six as a whole there's not necessarily sections I would cut out but everything is just a little bit too long and listen I'm a sucker for long sentences this isn't usually something I'm a problem with but it just feels a bit like not actually much has happened in a lot of story you know what I mean but this makes it sound like I'm not enjoying it I am really really enjoying it the audiobook narrator is great I will update you with my thoughts once I finished it but like right now it's just good what I'm about to say could hurt some people but I don't give a shit okay so I'm back was I in the same spot yesterday I think I was we're going home soon it doesn't matter I finished it and I really don't know how to feel I'm in a conundrum okay so for the majority of this book I wasn't loving it and that's a very unpopular opinion I've gone I've looked on Goodreads everyone is out here giving it five stars everyone and their mum every single person five stars five stars five stars five stars no not not for me not but I know I'm the outlier here so like don't let my opinions put you off reading this because everyone else loves it I actually started reading the audiobook at three times speed which I never do just because I wanted to get through it I was just bored I could recognize it was good like objectively but my enjoyment level I was bored I don't feel like I ever bought into the like magic system and particularly how it affected like the wider world I could never see really how it went beyond this little like group of teenagers like I it was mentioned and it was explained but I think it felt very insular because I could never see it beyond the group we had I struggled to believe in it and also I've never been a big fan of love triangles I've never really vibed with that haha this is not for me no they've always frustrated me so there is a love triangle in this not obvious but you can see how it's being set up for the other books and it just irritated me and wherever we had scenes that were like to advance the love triangle I was just like fuck off like I just didn't I know if you would like them it's just a personal thing they've always made me angry like I don't know why I just don't like them but here's the thing the ending like the last 50 pages were amazing like we're so good so so good it was so moving so interesting I just I just loved it I just absolutely loved the ending I thought it was genius it was something I could never have predicted and was really unexpected and when you see it come together it was just so clever but I've been having this conundrum recently I had it in my last reading vlog does the ending change the rating of a book if the large percentage of it you felt another way right so like I read um spoilers for my last vlog if you haven't seen it but I read the devil in the dark water by shua turton and the majority this was a five star but the ending wasn't great and so I decided like the ending didn't prevent this from being a five star right this is a three like a three star book for me but does the ending raise that and I don't know if it does because here's the thing maybe it could raise it to like a 3.5 but then I should have I should round it like a four on goodreads and it's never a four it's not a four because I felt bored so I think I'm just going to give it three stars but the ending was great originally I wasn't actually going to continue on with the series but I think the ending has made me want to I'm sorry I feel like I need to be more careful with the YA fantasy I pick up because it's something I pick up a lot but I don't think I have a ton of success with I definitely haven't haven't had a ton of success with it this year I think I know what I like and what I don't like but I still pick up things with the tropes and the kind of like world building that I know isn't my favorite but I still pick it up hoping it's gonna be my favorite it's a three star I'm really sad I thought I was gonna love this because everyone loved it but alas so that brings us on to the last book of this vlog which I am actually about to explode with excitement for like I don't know how to contain myself the house in the cerulean sea by tj klune oh my god I cannot wait searching for something that ain't lost have a garden our lives cry I'm a step it doesn't really matter wish it for something better you guys I'm I've only read the first chapter but I'm already in love I'm already in love with it like 10 you guys I am about third of the way through I'm on page 126 I'm in love we did it I'm in love I'm obsessed I already want to reread it this is gonna be five stars if you're wondering what my rating was guarantee you don't even need to watch the rest of this video you could click off you know the rating I'm in love I'm in love everything I've ever wanted in a book it's everything I've ever wanted it's everything I've ever wanted I this is this is it how have I not read this yet how has it taken me this long where'd I even start let's tell you the plot if you don't know because everyone's been speaking about it we're following Linus Baker who works for the department in charge of magical youth and they go around like these orphanages where these magical children are and deem whether it's suitable living situations for the kids but there's obviously some kind of like shady shit going on and I don't think they treat the kids very well and the living situations and like if they tear apart an orphanage and say it's not good enough the kids don't necessarily go on to a better place and Linus has always followed the company line he's worked there for 17 years he doesn't have much of a life he doesn't question authority and then he gets sent on a special classified mission to the orphanage in the house in the serenity where there are a group of children who are very unusual very very unusual unlike anything he's ever seen before so you guys it's told in this whimsical magical joke like jokey kind of tone almost like you have this omniscient narrator living above the story who's making fun of everything that is how I like my stories told you know what's the most exciting thing about winning it's when you win I love that feeling I like it to feel like we're watching so like I don't know old timey moody or something or or play and there's this narrator who's helping tell the story who's like above it do you know what I mean or just a star that it's told is sarcastic and fun and funny and oh my god I just love it oh my god I can't I can't emphasise sure enough how much fun this book is it definitely reminds me of another west school for wayward children very similar premises yeah the wayward children series by Sean McGuire it's very similar I feel like that one's a bit darker that series and this series is a bit more whimsical it's everything I've ever wanted a book America facts are facts it's everything I've ever wanted a book I cannot get over it I'm actually in shock like I really don't know how to act I really do not know how to act I'm in love with the kids already we've only really just met them I'm in love with the guy who runs the orphanage I'm in love with the whole attitude him and line us a button heads but we know soon what is that that's not supposed to imitate anything I was just trying to show that they're gonna fall in love basically that wasn't it's like a fairy tale it's like this whimsical magical I've had it described by the author as like a middle grade for adults and that's what it is it's it's written for adults it's not a middle grade but it captures that whimsy and that magicalness and that childlike energy of a middle grade and I'm just obsessed I'm gonna go read more I cannot stop reading it and I'll check in if you want something a bit more but oh my god you guys how's it taking me this long how's it taking me this long ladies and gentlemen this is something that girl a ground breaker breaker breaker anyone remember la print anyone I felt like that was only really successful in the UK but he now writes music for euphoria if anyone was wondering that was your labyrinth update thank me later I'm still in love with it it's a ground breaker breaker breaker I don't actually love myself this much I just act like I do I love it with my whole heart it's already one of my favourites ever I already want to reread it it's immaculate it's I'm having the best time I actually feel embarrassed I feel embarrassed to come and stand here and talk to you because no words that are gonna come out of my mouth are gonna give this the respect it deserves none of it nothing I say will be good enough because it's outstanding I'm on page 250 and I just love the kids in this and the way that it's like looking at helping them recover and gain confidence ah oh my god so basically I've got a lot of different characters we've got for example a gnome a gongal who's a gnome we've got this boy oh my god my favourite is trancey who's like kind of like this water no one really knows what's up with him like water fishy kind of like a jellyfish he really wants to be like a bellboy from watching it in film so he's like oh my god there was this scene where Linus walked past his room and he was in the mirror like practicing to be a bellboy and my heart broke like I actually can't take it don't make also it's very quiet in the same way watch over me was very quiet and gentle I'm just looking at about these like kids being happy and like also the persecution in this society against them and the prejudice against them oh there's loads of kids I haven't gone through them all we also have Lucy who is Lucifer who is the son of the devil so that's a very interesting dynamic it's just the perfect book it's beautiful whimsical the perfect amount of whimsical it's everything you need in a book oh oh no never has such a perfect book been created I'm saying it I haven't even finished it and I'm saying it anyway I'm gonna go pack for a bit we're moving out in three days and I'm gonna pick up my books first and foremost I want to pack them by genre just so they're easy for me to sort through and I kind of like know roughly where everything will be when they get home so I need to start doing that well I'm gonna put all new releases together and then by genre so I'm gonna go start doing that and then after that I will finish the book and I am so excited it's really interesting to see actually like the spread of my genres so we've got romance between books then mystery thriller is those two sexes which is quite a lot then nonfiction uh horror um graphic novel and contemporary but by far the majority of my books are fantasy with the these two sex and then like magical realism and historical fiction so a good mix but it's crazy how much fantasy I have okay so I finished it and it's one of my favorite books of all time it's one of my favorite books of all time I loved it so much I love good news love good news I just love good news it was beautiful rimsical magical joyful it's such a happy book I feel like if you're wanting a happy book a scapist happy book to read this is what you need to read I already want to reread it I can't wait to make everyone in my life read it oh my god the relationships that Linus the main character and the children form are just incredible to see him go from this like gray person as anyone do you remember the music video for bad day and it's like in the music video that they're like working in these offices and they're like sad that's what his before was and the way that he grew and learned to open himself up to joy and to love through the relationship with these children was just like I almost cried at the end there was a point at the end right at the end where I almost cried it's just it was just like this little moment between him and one of the children and like I feel like when I've loved a book so much for a while afterwards I struggled to speak about it like when I have issues with a book that's easier to speak about but when the book was perfect there's nothing for me to say other than it was perfect like I'm just like in awe at it what this book really focuses on is prejudice against people unlike us in society and and like how damaging that can be and just really exploring that topic and I just thought it was just done so well and this book is perfect and I want to reread it I very rarely want to reread books but I feel like this could be something I could reread again and again and again and again I just loved it I don't know anything I'd say perfect characters perfect storyline perfect progression perfect dialogue the way that it had that like it will say things like and he loved it so or something like just the way the sentences were formed from like the narration perspective was just everything it's just everything if you haven't read this yet please go read it it's so good don't wait around any longer like I was so this vlog was incredibly successful I'm out of my reading slump I'm out of it she's gone she's in the past we're only moving forward I don't know the woman and on the whole we had a really successful video with two five stars thank you to everyone who recommended these to me I had such great fun reading these let me know down in the comments what your favorite reads of the year so far have been and if you've gone to the end because this has been a long ass video comment like a house emoji the house from serenity and yeah I hope you've enjoyed this vlog and I'll see you very soon another one bye


Hello, and welcome to today's Business School's webcast. My name is Michael Bunker and I'm going to be your host for today's panel discussion. So today we're looking at struggling with your digital event program. So I'm going to ask the audience, have you ever compared your digital event program to a bad relationship? Well, a lot of people have and that's why we put together a great panel today to help answer some questions that you guys have sent through, but also give you some insights on how you can run an effective webinar or webcast program. So for the first time ever, we're giving you full access to a panel of people that are extremely experienced in this space. We've got Cassandra, Cass, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. So Cass, you've been with Redback Conferencing since 2016, correct? Yes. And in that time you've helped execute and deliver hundreds of digital events, correct? Yes. Nice, so a lot of insight there. We've got Miranda as well. Miranda, you've been with Redback now for five and a half years? Four and a half. Four and a half. I keep adding extra time on there. So you've specialized in helping sell digital event programs to our customers. Correct. Nice. And Michael Harris, thank you for joining us. You've got two Michaels today, so it's going to get a little confusing. You've been with the company for over five years as well, and you've been heading up the digital event team, delivery team. Indeed. So you've seen it all from the good, the bad, and the ugly. Definitely seen a lot of events. Nice. And as I said, I'm Michael Bunker. I am one of the sales managers here at Redback Conferencing and digital event consultants. I've worked with hundreds of customers over the years helping achieve a lot of fun digital event programs. So let's look at today's session. So we're breaking down digital events into three stages. We've got the group before, the during, and after. And with these, we're going to be looking at technology and marketing features, functionality in your presenters, as well as hosting and post event marketing. So we're going to cover off a lot of information today. You'll notice today we don't have slides, but we do have the Redback report just to the side of the video player. Please feel free to scroll through that because we will be using a lot of stats from it, as well as that we have a resource library in the bottom right hand corner in that you will find a lot of downloadable white papers on all the things we're talking about today. So you guys ready to jump into it? Yeah. So look, we're going to start off with technology and marketing. And when we look at technology, I'm going to be first coming to you, Michael Harris.  What is the number one rule to delivering a successful webinar when you've never done it before and you're looking at technology? Keep it simple, keep it consistent. If you're doing a program, you want to make sure that you've got the same laptop, same computer, same headset, same camera across all of the series.  You have the same experience and it's consistent across the audience's point of view as well. Nice. And that's definitely from the organizer's side. So whoever's maybe monitoring it from the business, what about from the presenter as well? You need to maybe briefing them on specifically using the same technology across all presenters? Exactly, exactly. And if they are presenting remotely from home, you want to make sure they've got a good consistent internet connection, wired, not Wi-Fi, always in the first instance, and same sort of setup as what you would have in your office or in your boardroom, you want to ensure that they have the same headset or in line with what. So that's the sort of webcam and headset that you're using. Nice. What about a backup? So if you're running a digital event like a webinar, what are some of the things that people can do to ensure that that message is going out? Indeed. So you'll always have to, you know, you want to use Vype or webcam in the first instance, and then you have a backup on the telephone, which is always an option as well, but also going through that backup situation with the presenter or the organizer beforehand setting up in your testing period. Just let them know in the first instance we'll go with the laptop and headset setup. If that fails, then you want to go with the telephone backup. Nice. Okay, Cass, I'm going to throw over to you. So you've been working with a lot of organizers and presenters over the years that you've been with us. What do organizers forget to do before running their first webinar? I think definitely rehearsing, rehearsing the content, reviewing the platform, introducing the platform to your presenters, so they're comfortable and confident with using that technology on the day. Nice. Well, especially when you have the webcam up, you don't want someone to be like, oh, I don't know where to click or anything. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you don't want them to be nervous as well, seeing everything for the first time. Nice. So Miranda, I know we're just spoken about webinars right now, but you've got a lot more experience in the webcast front. I've been very successful on that side. So what's, so webcast traditionally can be studio based like we're doing right now, but a lot of our customers do it from a venue of choice. So looking at a venue of choice, what are some of the things that your customers forget to do in the instance when they pick that venue for their event? Yeah, the number one thing I would recommend is double checking the internet connection there. We always recommend a dedicated internet connection for peace of mind. I mean, we have delivered off 4G from a caravan, not ideal, very stressful. The other thing would be to check the lighting on the stage, often if you're filming, you want maybe some extra lights so that the online viewers don't see sort of a dark presentation. And the sort of third most important would be to make sure you have a camera riser so that when people are walking in and out of the conference room or interrupting the session, you're not just seeing the people walking around on camera and you're able to focus on the actual presenter, which also means have a manned camera and a good videographer so that when presenters ultimately walk around the stage, really do they just sort of stay behind the lectern, the cameraman will follow them around and it won't be jolty. Those are two very good points. A lot of times there are a lot of people up there that are trying to do webcasting and it can be quite expensive so they might be trying to do it a little bit on the cheaply and they might just have an unmanned camera at the back of the room. See an empty lectern. See an empty lectern. Exactly. But also the lighting when people think about it and venues are very bad at this is they'll light the lectern. A lot of presenters nowadays, they like to walk back and forth. If anyone's lapel, you do need to make sure that you have a full stage watch because as soon as they walk away from the lectern because they want to be freely moving, they start going into shadows, it's a bad experience and if your camera is not actually manned, then they're going to be completely off it and you're just giving a really bad viewing experience to the end users at home. Cool, well look, that's the technology front. We are going to move on to marketing but I think the last thing to just talk about is when looking at running a program, it is consistency with technology. As Michael said, we want to make sure that every time you're using it, you're not being throwing something new in the mix that's going to hinder you delivering a very successful event. So now we're going to look at marketing and I'm going to throw open a very broad question to the panel first, which is just common mistakes with digital marketing for an event series. So Miranda, I'm going to throw it back to you. What would you say would be one of the biggest mistakes when someone starting at a digital program and they're marketing an entire series? What are some of the things that people forget? Sometimes they have only nailed down the time and date for the first presenter so they only actually end up advertising the one webinar, which defeats the purpose of running a series. You want to get people excited about the entire program, you want to give them an idea of what topics will be discussed. It doesn't matter if you don't have time and dates yet, but you can advertise when you're marketing it. This is the first one. Click here to register and also register for all of the upcoming events and you'll get notifications as they at the dates confirmed. Planning is definitely key on that. I think the other thing is probably knowing the end goal. Yeah, that's probably one thing I would say. The other thing is how are you going to measure the success of your program? A lot of people find they, you know, they do their first webinar, they get X amount of people and they think, oh, that's great. We actually have people online terrific, but they didn't actually think about what their target number was or how they're going to measure the success. Is it by getting members that we've never had before attending our physical events? Is it a revenue-generating exercise and you therefore want to have an X amount of revenue that you're trying to achieve through the program in order to demonstrate the success? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, data is definitely key. Cass, I'm going to throw it over to you now because of everything that you've worked with, different marketings and everything for your customers, what are some of the things that they forget when looking at an entire series marketing plan? I think a common mistake people find is not understanding the participant journey. So not understanding all the different touch points you'll have with your marketing and having a clear mapped up plan. And also what Miranda said, touching point on marketing your, all your events as a series instead of just individually. Yeah, I think that's very, a lot of people do it, they'll have all the events on the website and everything, but you kind of can forget different touch points where when you're advertising the second episode in a series, at the bottom of that invitation, promote the on-demand of the first one. And similar when you do your on-demand email from the first event, you want to be advertising the next one, you want to make sure everything's connected at the end of the day. So I'm going to throw that over to you as well, Harris, like looking at common mistakes in digital event marketing, what would you say from the technology side that gets missed? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Like there isn't too much in the technology, like I said, keep it consistent. You want to keep the, from an interviewer's point of view, when they are turning up to either, like you said, episode one, episode five, episode seven, they want the same experience, they want things to work and they want to know, I've got my laptop, I've got my computer set up for a specific type of event, I want to know that I have my same set up. Next time, I'm going to get the same experience from an end-user's point of view. And definitely thinking about the end-users in mind, you want to look at having support details, so whether you're running your end-user support or you have a provider that's doing that for you, make sure it's across every bit of marketing because you want to make sure that user experience is always good. Now, although in the marketing side, we've just touched on a lot about the direct email campaign and everything, but let's throw it up into some passive marketing channels. So, when we're talking about passive marketing, we're talking about free things and it's not the dedicated campaign that we're running. So, looking at passive things, so there's like email signatures, your newsletters, what are some of the other things that you can do that are free ways of informing your audience about an upcoming webinar or webcast. I'll open that up. I think definitely use your social media, advertise it. Social media is free, so that's definitely another way that you can promote all your webinar or webcasts event series. Yeah, and so yeah, just creating that buzz really, just your presenter is a key part of that presentation, your series as well. So, having them reach out to their marketing or their networks, get it out there on their social media contacts and their points. LinkedIn is another great one, just getting that message out there, creating that buzz. And then as part of a series, it just grows on from event to event. You're just building that buzz around the whole series. Our presenters are key and they've got their own audiences, they've got their own databases, but we do want to make it very easy for them to help us and help promote the webinar. So, a good recommendation is template up what you want them sending out on their channels, so they don't have to think about it. So, create the blog post for them or create the social media post, have the link to the event, make it very simple for them to help you get your numbers up. Perfect. Before we move past marketing, because I know we just do need to keep the time, because we've only got you guys for 45 minutes today, is I do want to recommend that everyone does go down in the Resource Library right now. We've got about three or four different marketing white papers in there about social media marketing, tips for marketing, the Big 50. So, please go down there and download those so you can read along. Cool. So, let's have a look now at during the event. So, we've got features, functionalities, and we've got the presenters. Those are three main areas and this is probably the bulk of where a lot of our work is focused is executing this live event. So, looking at an effective strategy for running a webinar or a webcast program, how should our customers be utilizing the features on the platform? Miranda, what's your advice? Yeah, I mean, there's a huge amount of different engagement features you can use. I would say my favourite would be polling. So, you can have a poll pop up at the beginning of your webinar and you might say during this webinar we're going to be talking about these three things and then the poll will pop up and you have these three things. Which one would you prefer that we spend the most time on? And then you can one get people interacting with the features, the polling. And then two, you can see quickly exactly what, you know, 60% are most interested in this topic, only 20% are most interested in this topic. So, we know where to focus our time, we're making it relevant and the audience feels like they're being listened to. And then also on the topic of polling as well, something else that we've seen working really well for series is people will have at the beginning of the program, how confident do you feel on this topic on a scale of one to ten? And then they'll again run that same poll, how confident do you feel now on this topic of the scale of one to ten? And then you've got something to go back and say, this is the return on investment we've now got, you know, 60% more confidence levels in this or whatever it is, or other way around. And then, you know, you've done something wrong. No, absolutely. Cass, I'm going to throw that same question to you because looking at the features, functionalities and everything across the series, what are your recommendations? I would probably recommend try and use the same features and functionalities across your webinars or webcast series. So if you do wish to use a poll, keep that same poll in every single event. Just when it comes to reporting, you've got something to benchmark at the end. Yeah, no, very true. So when you are looking at a series and it is comparing apples to apples, you don't want to be doing one event to the next and it being apple to orange. You're not going to have consistent data. So utilize the features, polling, surveys, all those things are going to give you really good user data. And then taking that data afterwards will tie into your whole marketing plan and everything about how are you achieving your ROI. And then also think about where you're storing this data. A lot of the platforms will either have plugins to your CRM or they can download the stats as CSVs that can easily be uploaded into it. But you do want to make sure that what you're reporting on before and during will match up for your series. So Harris, anything else you could add to this one? From a production point of view, again, thinking about that end user experience, you know, typical people join webinars, you get a slide presentation to present the talks throughout that presentation as they go through and they might answer, open it up for Q&A at the end. If that has been the theme in your series previously, why not go in and add a webcaming? Keeps it dynamic, keeps people engaged. The viewers at home are actually seeing what the presenter is conveying and you get a lot of emotion and you can see their face throughout and just conveys a bit more meaning and added value to the presentation. But for webcast, definitely go in and added a live demo and so you can, if you're at a conference, you do a live event and the presenter is doing some website demo on his laptop, bring that through for your audience, connect it up and then they are also seeing that same demo live and on their video player at home. Nice. And as you're saying, that's features and functionality are two different things. So features will be the things like polling, survey, that's where you can benchmark your reporting. But doing new things with functionality like demos, live video questions, anything like this is just going to take your event to the next level and help engage with your audience and keep their attention for longer. And speaking about attention, looking at the redback report, if you guys haven't scrolled through it already, some interesting stats came out of this year where actually holding your audience's attention has shortened. So over the last three years, 60 minutes was what our audience said. This year for the very first time, they're saying 45 minutes is the optimal time for running a digital event. I know that's not great for all types of events, but would you guys agree that that's a good duration or should we say more or less for some events? I think it's a really good duration. You want to keep it short. You want to keep it sweet to the point. Keep your participants engaged. Also factor in Q&A time as well. A lot of the times we forget about that. But I think 45 to 60 minutes is a really good timeframe. Yeah, as soon as you've covered your content, there's no point fluffing out for the next 15 minutes. Yeah, just get a schedule to go for it now. It doesn't mean you have to go up until the hour. But it is good in keeping in time. It's good to lay out the housekeeping and include that on every event. How can people interact with the platform? How they can interact with the presenter or the speaker and then also lay out the format of the event. This is pretty key. And then it sets out your presentation. The audience knows what they're going to expect. Have the main part of the presentation and then flick the Q&A or discussion at the end. So we design our business skill series around 45 minutes. And because as you guys know, we're leading up to lunchtime. We want to make sure that there's a 15 minute gap from the end of this session so you can grab a coffee, grab something and maybe run up the door to another meeting. That 45 minutes might not work across the whole spectrum of events because you do have events and a lot of events that we help run are continual professionals of element. And you might need to hit that one hour to get that one point. Or you have any beginning point to 75 of a point for a 45 minute session. If it works for your audience, great. If it doesn't, look, it's all a bit trial and error in the beginning when you're looking at doing a program. But moving on past that functionality. So we did just speak about the fact that you can change it up and you can look at different things. 51% of our respondents for this year's Redback report have said that they believe that the best functionality of the room setup is still slides with a video feed. And that is around the webinar side of things. And that is a webcam. This can be a bit different when we're looking at what we're doing today. It was a video only with a PDF document next to us. So just because it works for some people doesn't mean it's gonna work for every single event. Now my favorite and the one that I talked to most about with our customers is presenters. And I think presenters really can they need to make or break a series. So again, this year, our audience has said 81% of them have said passion and enthusiasm is the number one most valued thing in a presenter. So what are some of the either trials and tribulations when you've worked with presenters over the years, Cass? I think when presenters stretch out their content, participants pick up on that. They also pick up on energy as well. So ensuring that your presenter is confident, they're excited, and you can hear it in their tone of voice when they're excited to be there and wanting to present that topic. Absolutely, Miranda, with presenters, what are some of the things that you've seen? Yeah, I mean, I think great presenters always keep remembering to engage their online audience and whether it's just saying, oh, I can see so-and-so said this. So it's nice to sort of reference the online audience throughout, not just at the end for Q&A, but during the session as well. Harris, being delivering majority of the webcast for the business and looking at actual presenters at the physical events, do physical event presenters mean that they're great and they're engaging? They've got that conference audience in front of them. Are they gonna be a great webinar presenter or a studio webcast presenter? I think being a good presenter is part of people's makeup, it's part of who they are. And it's because they're in a different format, they might be sitting in an office or they might be presenting from home. We're just trying to remind them to always be themselves. They've got that personality, they've got that energy about them. The difficulty when you're doing a webinar is trying to bring that out on camera or just on the phone. So again, exactly, but again, it's a part of who they are and it's just about being able to bring them out or bring that personality out of them even though they're sitting at home or if they're just presenting on a phone, just reminding them, letting them know, look and doing a run through, getting them on line early, letting them practice and rehearse again is key. So letting them get comfortable with that different surrounding. And I would definitely say, just because someone's presenting at a conference and has that live engagement straight off the bat, doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna be great. In this format, it is a very different experience presenting to a camera that has no one there and still trying to have that energy level. So one of the things when you are looking at presenters because that is the number one thing that's gonna make your series memorable is get them on the platform beforehand before you commit to them, and actually get them to do a little demo to you. Get them to rehearse some of their content just so you can see it because there's nothing worse than having a really engaging presenter that's a face-to-face presenter and then getting them into a live environment and then them just completely phrasing up and being very robotic and they're trying to figure out the functionality and what stuff does, they can make for really bad experience. So just because they're great face-to-face doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna be great on digital. Cool. So let's look at our third session section which is post-digital event. So we're gonna split up into two things. We've got our hosting component and we've also got marketing. So Miranda, so the digital event's been delivered. Everyone's very happy. Are you not done with that event? Is that the end of that whole lifespan of that content or what do you do next? Yeah, I wouldn't have thought so. I guess the benefit of webinars, webcasts is you've then got a piece of content that you can keep repurposing for as long as that content's relevant. So the idea is that not only do you run a great event, you then have that content which you can have on your website in a member's area or you chop it up into sort of small components by topic as sort of grabs of information on social media pages on your website as a bit of a hook to then advertise the subsequent webinars in that series. Yeah. Nice. Cass, I'm gonna throw it to you because you did make a really great point at the beginning, which is that whole participant journey map. So you've journey mapped all the way to the live event. You've got your live numbers. Now, how do you map out the on-demand?  Yeah, so yeah, back onto marketing. Instead of once the digital event has concluded, just instead of a thank you email or a follow-up email, include the recording in that particular email, include the recording for previous events and also link it to the registration for your next event. So not just a plain thank you for attending but what's next or what has happened before. Yeah. And utilize some of those feature, the reporting stats that you got from your event. So polling results or anything, use little hooks like that that are gonna get people to watch the on-demand. Harris, I'm gonna do a lot of talking with you on this one and it's hosting and it's such a broad topic, but it is something that everyone's now realizing that they really need to get hammered in at the beginning and they need to make sure that this is working. So let's talk about hosting options for our audience. Yeah, well, whether it's a webinar webcast, you're still going to end up with IPC content. Yeah. Again, putting a lot of thought into what you're going to do after each event specifically, but then how you're going to package that series up as a whole, where you're going to host that and then what you also wanna track and measure out of those recording. Getting the live metrics, the stats for the live event is one thing, but then you'll got a whole nother content piece where you're seeing who's logged in, how many views and you may end up getting more hits to the recording than you would on the live. So what does that mean and then how does that also then tie into your next event?  And you have two different people logging in to the recording than you would on the live. So again, tying into the marketing piece, what are you gonna do with this? It's key and people sort of learn as they go, but having a plan in mind on how you're going to develop each episode as you go, it's key. Yeah, and as Miranda, I'll throw back over to you on this one because we did speak about the beginning. It's knowing the end goal, any series and how you're measuring it and a lot of people put a lot of focus on the live. And if that live number is where we forget that you've got a piece of asset at the end, that is gonna be reportable. So you wanna be looking at your numbers there. So as Harris just said, you've got a bunch of people that came live and then you can now report that some of them have come back from the live to watch the hosting and then you can track brand new people. So how would you, in a series environment, how would you start promoting the on-demands as a unique piece of content themselves? Would you be doing throughout the series to say, hey, this is the whole content list. What are some of the things that you've seen customers do? To promote, sorry, to promote the whole program? To promote the on-demands side of the program. So maybe after doing three events, they've sent you out a dedicated email saying, hey guys, have a look at our library content. I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm not really understanding the question. So the question would be around, okay, our whole digital program, we've been concentrating on getting people to the live and then we've been talking about getting people to attend the on-demand one. Would you say that there's value or have customers promoted through maybe at the court, maybe three months in, it's like, hey guys, here's our library of on-demand and doing a dedicated email just to that? Oh, definitely.   You're hitting a whole different market. So in the beginning, you would have been aiming for attendance, live attendance. But then again, three months in, things have changed, content has changed. You're looking at a different set of events, essentially, with those recordings. So you're hitting a completely different market. Those who watched them live, again, are looking forward to the next events in your series. But then people who wouldn't be familiar with that series at all can then now and go in and watch those recordings, all available in a single place. It looks like they're still a part of the series as a whole. And then again, you're pointing people, if they're watching the recordings, back and how to register for the next event. And there are other ways that we haven't really touched on right now, which is that whole other passive side. So there are the social media ways of promoting the on-demands, but also start utilizing your presenters. So maybe edit out a five minute clip from the webinar and using that to promote that on-demand a couple of weeks after or to promote the on-demand. There's a lot of unique things you guys can do. And I think it just comes down to, as Castle was talking about, map out that whole journey, see where you've got little gaps of things missing and adding other little touch points that are unique that isn't the same content constantly going out. Great, so look, we've covered off a lot of stuff so far, which has been great. And we've got a lot of questions coming through. So everyone, please keep sending your question through the ask a question button in the bottom right-hand corner. But I'm just gonna start off with some of them now.  What are my options to make both parties happy? Cass, you've dealt with this a lot. So I'll throw this question to you. Yeah, I think this happens a lot when customers may want the presenters to be on camera, but the presenter might not be so comfortable or confident. Have a mixture of both. You can have the camera on maybe just at the beginning and the introduction, and then have them on at the end as well. This way you're keeping parties both happy and it also depends on the topic. If the topic is maybe content heavy, for example, an educational video, it might be distracting to have them on camera the entire duration. So keep it to slides and audio, but you do have that flexibility working around that. Nice. It doesn't make it easier for a lot of presenters not to see themselves on screen as well because that can be quite distracting. So have them on for the intro, have them on for Q and A when they're not focusing on their content, that way they can focus on just the written stuff that they've got in front of them. But as I would say, not all platforms allow for that functionality. So you do need to test out what you have. Correct. So I know with not trying to plug or anything, but with our right back platform, it is very easy to switch those on and off, but some other ones might not be. So again, as we talked about at the beginning of this practice trial that I've rehearsed the technology, see what you can do that's gonna make for a really good viewing experience. Okay, Michelle has asked, how far in advance should I advertise my digital event program or series? Miranda, let's throw this to you.  Because right now that's quite broad and you're talking about everything, I will say to you, okay, how far in advance should I advertise my digital event program, the passive marketing? So that's getting everything on the website. So how far in advance should people do that? The passive marketing, I mean, some people have an annual newsletter that might be saying, what are we doing the next year? I'd even start marketing the idea that we're gonna be running a webinar series as soon as you even have the idea in your mind. As soon as you have the idea, as soon as you have the presenter, anything, start mentioning it on your website, newsletter, the social media, and then when you actually do the direct email marketing campaign, I used to say three weeks, but these days people are doing about two weeks, I'd say, would be the optimal time. Anything much earlier than that, people are just reluctant to commit and you find anyway on the last chance to register email that goes out maybe a few days beforehand, that's when you get the majority of people registering anyway. So, yeah, I'd say two weeks for the actual dedicated campaign. Cass, what is our preferred timeframe? I think we even do smaller than that for our customers. Yeah, we normally recommend about 10 to 12 days because it is online, it's more accessible. So having that shorter timeframe is okay for your direct marketing. Well, yeah, they're not registering for a face-to-face event, they're not having to change their travel plans, you are trying to get people to commit to either just from their desk or their mobile device. So the shorter the timeframe, the better because you don't want to give them too much freedom. How many emails should we be sending out for promoting an event? I think an invitation and a reminder to register is key. So just the two, you don't want it to be bombarding the participants in boxes, but I think at least two, just the initial invitation and just a friendly reminder, hey, if you haven't had a chance yet, sign up. Yeah, and there's also more in the suggestion as well about that last chance to register. That's the harder language, trying to get people to join on, I think is quite good. Harris, this question's got your name all over it. Zach has asked, my conference venue only has Wi-Fi. What are my options for streaming? Always a trick you want to deal with. Again, it's 2018, we should be getting the NBN in all these big venues across the major capital cities. However, you do find the odd venue here and there that doesn't. Again, do what you can. We liaise with the venues, always try and insist on a wide connection where possible. If it's physically impossible they don't have one available, then there are options out there for you to look at wireless technology or 4G, 4G-based systems that will allow you to get into that connection in there, but always check it out beforehand, do a thorough test, simulate what you would be doing live within that venue and then try and simulate the same sort of timeframe where the traffic would be in the building at the time of the event so that you can see what sort of Wi-Fi or 4G signal you have. OK, so if you did go over, so for a lot of webcasts out there, you have a primary and secondary stream. If you went over just Wi-Fi, do you lose your secondary because that generally is the secondary option? Pretty much. Again, you're relying on a primary on 4G or wireless and a secondary as well. We do run a few different providers, different 4G systems with different providers as that backup, but it is relying on whatever's out there and you're at the whim of the provider. Yeah, and those costs wouldn't necessarily be quoted at the beginning either because this is an afterthought when you find out you don't have the internet so that can change how much you were expecting to pay for that event and that stream. Now, Miranda, you've had a lot of success with customers over the years and this question is absolutely perfect for you, so Paul's come through and asked, can I make money for my digital events? Yeah, absolutely. So any content that you would charge for in a physical conference setting, we would actually recommend charging the same price for in an on-demand or live webinar setting. Some people will charge either exactly the same or they might deduct a little bit from the price if it doesn't include a gala dinner or something like that. We normally add that into the price for a live event. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. So when you are looking at your webcast, specifically like a conference or a seminar or anything, and you are streaming that out, do remove the social element of it. That's the only thing that the online participant will have different from their experience. So if you can actually put a dollar figure to everything that's happening on that program, then you remove those, charge for exactly what it would have been, just minus those two things.  We do have some customers who charge the exact same dollar value for people not traveling because they are, they're not flying to the conference, they're not having to pay for accommodation. You're saving people a lot of time, a lot of effort and making it very convenient for them to have a similar, almost exact experience. You know, so make sure you're not cannibalizing any live attendancy that it's not like, oh, I can get this half price online. People are still obviously encouraged to attend place to place with them. To add onto that piece as well, I think it's thinking of their series and thinking about your on-demand content. You got a price for the live event, but you also now have a full conference recording as well, available to your audience. And like you would think about in your live sessions, you can charge it per session, or you can charge it to view the whole conference. Some people do member non-member pricing. I'm even a reduced rate to view the recordings only. So you do have those options, but again, planning ahead, how am I gonna package up this for their recording conference style and how am I gonna break that up and release that on the mom? Absolutely. And that's really about how to make money from the digital events of the webcast side of things for your conferences and so forth. When you're looking at your webinar programs, that's slightly different because of the people that are generally charging for webinars are CPD, correct, Kaz? So continual professional development, a lot of people that offering these points, these are tax deductible, you're giving them great content. How many CPD events a year do you think we would be running for our customers? Oh, I probably couldn't even count. Yeah, there's hundreds of events. Especially when it comes around to March end of CPD season. So yeah, we do get quite a few of those. If you look in the Redback Report right now, and Paul, this was a great question, scroll down through, we actually have a metric in there about what our audience is willing to pay for their digital events. And I think in the past years, I think five years ago when we originally started this Redback Report, it was zero that people were willing to spend. I think that's gotten up to $50, but depending on who you're providing these points to, how they're, I was not gonna say how they're paying for it, but depending on the level, so like if it's a doctor, a lawyer, whatever, there are lots of different brackets out there. As long as they're actually gonna be able to use those points, definitely charged. We have a lot of customers with very successful digital programs doing that. And they do charge for live and on demand. Yeah, it's just a lot more accessible these days, whereas it would be more difficult. Five years ago for people to access recordings and on-demand programs or just your webinars in general. You got access to tablets, phones, you know, laptops, computers, everything. No matter where you go, you're always on the internet connected. Yeah, it was not surprising. Yeah, exactly. I was surprised to see people getting more involved in the webinar webcast space because of that technology. Nice. So I'm gonna take this next question and Andrew's asked, where can I find good webinar presenters or digital event presenters? Look, that's an age-old question. There are speaker associations or speaker groups out there that you can go to, but those are generally designed as keynotes or they're designed for conferences. And as we said before, they're not always gonna make the best digital presenter, but a lot of them are getting more and more. For us with a business school series, we actually meet a lot of our presenters from networking events, from social gatherings, or even just reading articles on LinkedIn and saying, hey, I wanna speak to that person. It comes down to brief or having that first call with them online, call with them on the phone and getting them online to see what they'd be like with the technology. A lot of people are really keen to be webinar or webcast presenters these days because they're creating digital content of themselves. It's building their brand. So a lot of people want to be presenters. The only ones out there that potentially got a charge are ones that you are generating money from. So those are your CPD presenters, professionals and so forth. So, Harris, I'm gonna now throw the next one to you. Rowan has asked, what is the recommended technology for delivering webinars, webcams and mics? What should I be buying? Yeah, plenty on the market out there. There are a whole bunch of different HD cameras, but as long as your camera can produce a 720p image into your laptop, that'll be more than sufficient. Is that for a webcast or for a webinar? For a webinar. For a webinar, start with, VoIP headsets, again, plenty out there, but again, something simple, something with a mic cover so you're not getting that wind sound in the background and won't be too affected by what's going on around you. And then if you've got some lighting, again, lighting is key. Having a light either in front or just behind the presenter just to keep it nice and balanced and keep the camera focusing on your subject. Nice. Perfect. Trial the technology. You can just use a webcam on your computer when you're starting off, but it's gonna be really bad quality and people right now, you've only got a first impression to get someone to come into you so you don't really wanna skimp out on that. Okay, so Sarah has asked, my live attendance numbers are declining every webinar. What can I do to increase them? Before we answer this, and I'll throw over to Miranda because we've worked with a number of customers who have done this, I'm gonna ask Sarah, can you please type in how are your on-demand numbers doing? So while you're doing that, let's throw over. So your live numbers are declining. What do we do? Yeah, obviously then, it's key to remember the fact that, as I mentioned before, you really only get, say, 35 to 40% of people actually attending live. So you've still got 60, 65% of people that are interested and you wanna make sure you make it really easy for them to attend the on-demand viewing. And you also then wanna make sure you're actually tracking those that are watching the on-demand viewing that you're seeing. Ideally, you have a situation where they just need to register into their registered email address. And so you're capturing how long they're in for, how many people are viewing the on-demand in addition to the stats you've got from the live event rather than just publishing it on your website. You don't know who's watching it or sending it out in an email. You don't know who's watching it. And that way you can say, actually, X amount of people have joined both live and on-demand as opposed to just looking at the live stats. So often you find clients are actually, when they look at how many people are actually joining their on-demand content, they're realised they're actually doing quite well. Yeah, nice. Katz, with you, I'm gonna ask a similar question, but like, so her live attendance numbers are dropping. What can she do? Is it potentially she's doing it the wrong day in time? Yeah, I think Michael Harris touched on a really good point before. Review the content. See what's relevant. See what's not. Adjust that to the next event. And also don't be afraid to ask for feedback. Send out a survey to your participants. See what you've done well on. See what you can improve on. Always ask for feedback during the series as well, just so you can always improve. Even ask them and say, hey guys, we've been running them on Thursdays because everyone thinks Thursday is the best day to do it at lunchtime. And in the redback report, if you scroll down, you'll be able to see those stats as well. But that might not work for your audience. We've worked with a lot of people in different industries, and especially in the healthcare profession, you can't do anything during the day. People do not attend. It has to be done after hours. So if you are delivering your events at the wrong time for your audience, your live numbers will always be bad. And they'll tend to get worse because there's things that are gonna interfere with them joining. So as Cass just said, go out to your audience, survey them, what do you like? What are the formats? But what's the day and time? Whatever you do, though, do not give them every option for the day of the week as well as all different times. You wanna give them maybe three options. Say, do you want them on Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but mid-morning, lunch, or after work. Just give them more of a focused timeframe that way you're not having to cater for absolutely everything out there. So Sarah's come back in and she says her on-demand numbers are growing regularly. So that's great. So you actually are measuring them correctly. I think just people, as Miranda said, put too much emphasis on the live and not the on-demand. Yeah, I think the biggest shortfall is they forget to actually measure people registering on the on-demand. Yeah, I think that we just get really tunnel vision we're looking at, oh my God, I only got 30% to this. This isn't a success. It actually is at the end of the day. And if you are measuring that on-demand content from one month, three months, six months and seeing the growth in it, go back to the business because you spent money on that first event. You're actually getting more return over the period of time if you're reporting on it correctly. Okay, so, Harris, I'm gonna throw this one over to you. David has asked, paid versus free hosting platforms, what do you recommend? There's always pros and cons of both. Again, mainly with the free ones out there, they limit the functionality back down to bare minimum. So you'll get a YouTube email-type service where you can upload your content. It is public. There's no sort of way of locking it down or sectioning off the access. Some videos for some viewers, other videos for others. But with that paid platform, you've got full customization. You can load them up into that platform, section some by content, by presenter, by topic, whatever the sectioning that you wanna do. You can go ahead and do that with that platform. You can also add a payment portal. And you do get more in-depth metrics. The paid hosting platforms out there understand the value of reporting and how valuable that is as a part of your series. So they wanna make sure that clicks, if you're in time, at what point in the presentation they're dropping off at. So you do get all those metrics and that will add into the success of your program as a home. Nice. Look, guys, we are about to be wrapping up in a moment. And before we do, there are more questions coming through it. And I do apologize that we haven't been able to get through all of them. I do just wanna throw it to everyone. And I'll start with Miranda. What's the number one thing that you want people to walk away with? Looking at the whole program now, marketing, technology, presenters on demand, that's gonna help them with their series journey. Yeah, I guess the main thing is you've just gotta give it a go, really. I think that people can sort of build up for this.  Yeah. But actually, when you actually do it, people are more often than not very surprised with the demand that they've had for the sessions and actually how little time it takes compared to when you're organizing a physical event and down the line, you can even start to do more online and less events where maybe you weren't getting the attendance numbers and some of these more rural and remote areas that you're hoping for. So we're flying less people around. And yeah. It isn't an expensive way of reaching a much wider audience. And you get to report on that cast through the same question to you. You've been speaking to the audience today. What is the one thing that you wanna leave them with that's gonna help them with their digital event series? Yeah. I think definitely plan, review, and also just keep in mind all the different touch points. Like we said before, mapping it out. It's always important to keep on top of things and be organized. Yeah. I think that's a big thing. No, look, it's almost similar as mine, but I'll go last. Harris, what do you wanna leave people on? Keep it consistent. Again, in your technology, delivering with the marketing and communication and the frequency of those pieces is sending out to the audience, keep it consistent. You wanna keep the audience informed and they also wanna know what they're gonna expect either via an email, via a login screen, via the actual platform when they log in. Keep it consistent and you'll keep them coming back. Nice. And for myself as well, look, it is all about at the end of the day. It is knowing where you wanna end up with the series. So as Casas said, we really, you need to map everything out and you need to know, understand your participant journey, how people are being communicated to you, how you're trying to get new users or new participants to join each time. But it is keeping that at the very beginning knowing exactly where you wanna end up and then take it piece by piece throughout the whole process, tweak it as you go, but make sure you use the features and functionalities in a consistent way, as Harris said, so that you can have really good analytics throughout to make sure that you're gonna meet that success or that measurement. So look, before we leave today and I'm so happy that you could all join us, I'm really excited about the panel we've had today. I thought we got a lot out to the audience, but I do just wanna remind you all that there is a button to provide us with your feedback. We do value your feedback so we can make these a little bit more pleasant and enjoyable and hopefully provide you the best content that we can. Another reminder as well that there's a lot of resource documents in the resource folder. So there are white papers on everything that's gonna help you build a successful program. And if you wanna contact us, there's a contact button on today's page. So if you wanna ask us any questions or if you need help with your digital program, please reach out to us. We'd be more than happy to help out. Once again, thank you so much for joining us today. Hope you have a great day.


Thank you all for coming, so my name is Denny, I've been doing Python development for a couple of years now, mostly web development and some tooling and CLIs. I also do a lot of sysadmin DevOps stuff and I like to automate as much as I can. I work for a small Python shop, you probably already use a full-blown VM like virtual box and possibly vagrant and stuff like that. The most important thing to me is that containers are fast, so starting a container is measured in milliseconds, most of the time you can start hundreds and hundreds of containers and that's all because there's a minimal overhead because containers share the same kernel and therefore it's much easier to access resources like disk network, etc. Also images aren't copied for every container that we run from them, rather like I said containers only save disks to disk, this is due to a technology called UnionFS. So all of this should make it easy to run your whole production stack locally and you should do that because it's very important for everybody on the team, for every workstation to have the same versions of libraries and databases and everything on every workstation and this goes all the way down to C libraries. So how do we run a container? We use the Docker run command, we say with the tflag which base or parent image to use and we supply a command to run. The iflag denotes that we want to run it interactively so we don't want the process to go into the background whereas if we supply the dflag we are going to run the container in the background and notice that we didn't have to supply a command here because the command was baked into the image and it's only overridden if user supply is another command you can also use tags to have different versions of your images for example to denote versions of your database and so on. So you would use Docker PS command to list all the running containers that you have on your machine that shows you among other things the container ID which you can then supply to the logs command to get the logs that your service is writing to standard output. You can also use stop kill and start commands to restart the container, stop it or kill it. By default the stop command sends a term signal to the process inside the container but it has a default timeout after which it sends the kill signal. So that's a little bit about containers. Now we are going to talk about images. Basically you can build images manually and when I talk about images I don't mean base images like the Debian image that we saw before. I mean your images that are going to be based on a parent image like image for Postgres or a cache or something like that. So you would run a bash prompt interactively from a Debian image for instance. You would type in your commands to install your services, configure them and what not. Then you would grab the ID with the Docker PS command and then you would commit that container to a new image. So the commit command creates a new image. You can then use the Docker command to tag that image with a version perhaps or something else. You can also rename it, give it another name. So the username prefix is important for pushing to the central hub. So as I said a hub is a hosted central repository of private and public images. The images that aren't prefixed with a username are images maintained by the core team. Images done by the community are prefixed with a username and you need to, before you can push an image to the central repository to be able to share it, you need to log in to the hub. So that was a way to manually build your images. A better way is to use Docker files. So it's a small DSL that you would use to describe what files to add to the image, what commands to run and what ports to expose. Also you supply the baked in command to run if no other command is supplied via the command line. And you just use the Docker build command to point it to the directory where the Docker file is located and you name your image and it will build the image for you. So most of you are probably thinking about what do I do on a Mac because Docker requires a Linux kernel. So a Docker is, it consists of a Docker daemon which is basically just a HTTP API and the Docker CLI, the command line interface that I just showed just talks to the HTTP API. Having that in mind, there's a helper application called boot to Docker which is the official way to run Docker on Mac which basically uses virtual box and sets everything up, basically uses virtual box and sets everything up on your Mac so you can use the CLI to communicate with the Docker process running in the virtual box instance. Okay, so those were the basics of how you would use Docker to manipulate images and containers but how does that help you in your development environment? It's really important to run services and the same version of services that you run in production locally so that way you always know if something works on your workstation that it should work on production as well. So you eliminate a lot of bugs, not just between workstation and production but between two workstations. So what we have here is an instance of running an example of running a Postgres database. So we exposed default port that the container exposes and we map it to the same port on the host so we can connect to it from the host. If we didn't supply a host port, Docker would generate one for us and configure all the port forwarding and whatnot. Also, containers themselves are ephemal which means that when you start a container, you write some files, then you stop it and run another container from that image. The changes that you did in the last container are gone. This is because the image itself is immutable and you just started the new container from point zero. This is troublesome if we want to run a database because we want to save our tables and our database data and the way to deal with this is to use volumes and we tell it to mount the host directory inside the container in the place where the database is going to write the data. So every time we run another container, we will still have our database data retained. There's another slightly more portable way which is to have one container for your data which doesn't even actually have to run for this to work. So one container for your data that exposes a volume and then we use the volumes from flag to mount that folder, that data folder inside the running container that actually runs the Postgres process. I like the host version more for my development environment at least because I like to run the clean command a lot so I delete most of the stopped containers and this way I don't have to worry about deleting my test database data. So I've shown examples of how to run services in a container but what's the benefit of running your web app in a container? So basically you simplify the runtime a lot. You make sure that everyone on the team uses the same version of all the dependencies. This is something that a virtual end should be for in the Python world at least but this isn't true for C libraries. As everybody knows that's ever tried to compile, install the Python imaging library so you mostly saw warnings at the end that told you that some image formats aren't supported and basically this eliminates that problem. So you don't have stuff working on one workstation and not working on another because of missing C libraries. Also an added benefit is that you can use links. Links is a feature that Docker provides for letting containers talk to each other in a way so you would start, you would name and start your Postgres container and you would use the link flag to link that Postgres container with this name inside your web app container which basically allows the Django app container to be able to communicate with the Postgres container via the host name provided here. Also it exports a lot of environment variables, ports and IP addresses and what not so you can use that to bake those environment variables in your Django settings file or what not. So how do you automate all of this? Because presumably not everyone on the team needs to know how to run Docker. I use make files a lot so I built a lot of targets or make commands for running each service so just a one-liner command to run a Postgres database or a queue or what not. And I also have commands that can bring up the whole development environment for that particular project. But sometimes best scripts and make files aren't enough. So remember I said that the Docker daemon is just an HTTP API so there's a project called Docker Pi, it's the official Python wrapper for that API. It's available on PyPI and it lets you do I think all of the things that you can do on the command line interface and there are other wrappers in other languages but to my knowledge this is the most complete one. I could be wrong but I think it's so. So it lets you, you could write in pure Python your whole script for bringing up your whole development environment. So but what if you use Ansible or Chef or Puppet or any other of the provisioning tools? You can basically use both of them together. So an Ansible example would be that you could use a Docker file to just bootstrap the environment that Ansible needs to run and then run your playbook to provision a database inside that image. Another option is to have Ansible or Puppet or Chef connect to the local IP address of the container but this is bad because for that to work you need to have SSHD or another agent running inside the container for the provisioning tool to be able to communicate with it and for that to work you also need some kind of supervisor which can be upstart or a system D or supervisor D which would allow you to run multiple processes inside the same container. This isn't considered best practice so Docker advises you to run one process per container so it's a lot easier to update just one component of your system or just not updated but possibly change it for another component. So for instance if you had SSHD in there, if there is an SL vulnerability you basically need to update that whole container which you might have which you possibly could avoid if you didn't have that process running in there. Also there's another project called FIG. The best way to describe FIG is as vagrant for Docker so what vagrant does for virtual box in my mind FIG does for Docker you can describe you use YAML syntax and you can describe how to build your images, what ports to expose to which container to link your web app container. It also supports automatically downloading images from the central hub and with one command you can basically have a swarm of containers running without the rest of the team needing to know how the internals of how this works. Also I read like an hour ago that FIG is becoming part of Docker so there's probably going to be some interesting development there. It was announced on their blog. So in summary I hope I've convinced you that you should run your production stack in development environment because Docker makes it easy. Not all of the team need to be able to install all these services on their workstations. You use the same environment everywhere, not just workstation versus production but on all of the workstations and it should make your upgrade process more easy because you can easily easily rip out one part and change it with like an updated version or a different process and this all happens transparently to your team. They don't need to know that a new image has been pulled from the central repository. It just works. Also I didn't talk about deployment in this talk because I don't have enough time but using Docker in this way really simplifies deployment because it enables you to bring in new team members on a project more easily so imagine that you or your DevOps person have set up the production using all of these images and all you need to do to be able to bring a new person up to speed well set up their development environment is supply them with the images that you're already running in production and they don't need to do any other setup. That's it. Thank you. We do have a few minutes for questions and there's the microphone at the back if you want to walk up to it. Hi, thank you. As you're doing Django development, I was wondering do you include the Django application code inside your Docker images or do you keep it separated? So it depends on the project. Some projects aren't run inside a container because they're simple by themselves. We just use the supporting services in containers like a database, a queue but other projects have a Docker file committed in the repo and on deploy you just rebuild that Docker file to have the latest version of your source repository inside an image. Okay, so you include the code inside the Docker image? Yeah, you use the add command in the Docker file to include the directory with the code inside the Docker image. Great, thank you.   So you would use volumes for that so you can mount your working directory inside a running container in a known path so when you edit the code on your local machine it's automatically visible inside the runtime inside the Docker container. That makes perfect sense. Another question usually you can't use the central repository for anything other than public stuff. What do you do with your own builds or with your own applications? Can you somehow put that into a custom or your private own private central repository? So the hub does allow for private repositories but it's not a free feature. But there's an open source component that's called the registry which you can install which is which is Python powered. You can install on your server and you can use that for pushing your private images. Also sometimes if it's a small image maybe you don't need to have it deployed on a central hub but you can just rebuild it and deploy. It depends on your use case. Yes the problem is for example with European regulations you wouldn't be allowed to trust the Docker central repository with quite a few of what you would want to put there. Thank you. Thank you. Hi quick question. Do you have any tips about automated deployment from continuous integration? Like you have always your master branch which is deployable and then you deploy automatically from to production from that master and do you have any tips like build images or not build images just do it on the fly on the servers? What's the best practice for that? Because I'm struggling with that right now. How to do it like perfectly? I'm not sure there is a best practice yet. So how do you do it? Because there's a lot of solutions that don't necessarily work the same way in the sense that you can if you get tired of one that you can use another. That's something that the Docker team is trying to fix I think with an introduction with a new library. But the most simplest way I think that you can accomplish that is basically just have a deploy trigger on GitHub or whatever if the build passes to trigger the server to just rebuild the new image with the new tags or the latest version. And then you switch your load balancing software or proxy software like nginx or whatever to point to that new image. That way if it doesn't work you can just switch back to the old one. Okay so spawning new one new Docker container if it's fine then okay persistive and the other ones like going down. Cool thanks. Thank you. I think that's unfortunately all the question time we have but you can find Denny outside if you want to ask him. If we can just thank Denny again.


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