Customer Counseling: A Creative Burst with In/Visible Talks

In the everchanging COVID-19 era, creativity is a must. So many aspects of our lives have changed since the start of the pandemic, which has forced us to come up with creative solutions to serious problems. In/Visible Talks, a conference for creative professionals that celebrates the art of design, has been a loyal customer of SlidesLive since 2018.

SlidesLive spoke with Arianna Orland, co-founder of In/Visible Talks, to learn more about the organization’s transition to virtual events and how SlidesLive has played a role in that adjustment. The organization’s mission is to bring people together to discuss the process, inspiration and challenges behind the creative practice. SlidesLive, as a video production company, teamed up with the organization to help them make the most out of their virtual event experience.

“First and foremost the level of support, responsiveness, professionalism and patience the SlidesLive team had was just incredible,” Arianna said. “A lot can go wrong with live events, and with virtual events there’s an additional layer of overcoming technical hurdles. The SlidesLive team was there every step of the way with answers and a very calm demeanor which inspired a lot of confidence.”

When transitioning to virtual events, SlidesLive helps organizations feel confident that technological problems will be taken care of. Event planners and organizers have enough to worry about. SlidesLive covers the technological aspects and offers support and practice runs throughout the process.

“In terms of features, the tech support and run through calls were invaluable,” Arianna said. “And the suggestion to use vMix helped us deliver a more interesting format.”

Audience members don’t want to keep looking at a Zoom screen, and the In/Visible Talks team knows that. Arianna and her team wanted a variety of different types of presentations to keep the event moving at a steady pace.

“With so much Zoom fatigue, we wanted to make sure we mixed up the modalities of our content and kept a fast pace,” Arianna said. “For our event this year we did six 20 minute talks with 5 minutes of Q&A after each talk and something we called Creative Bursts. The Bursts were under 10 minutes and were either short videos or live performances.”

SlidesLive helps organizations keep their events interesting in the virtual world with features like Q&A sessions, parallel livestreams, sponsor loops and more. Arianna also took advantage of the dry runs SlidesLive offers. With dry runs, event organizers can make sure all of their speakers are comfortable with all of the technology and are ready for the real event.

“During our dry runs we learned we ordered the wrong adaptors for our computers and got those replaced, we checked the lighting at different times of the day and made a plan, we got comfortable with the latency and which screen to look at, we got comfortable with muting and unmuting and it made all the difference on the big day,” Arianna said. “We also took advantage of the rehearsals SlidesLive offered us and familiarized ourselves with the technology and made a plan with the team about how we’d communicate on the day.”

Arianna emphasizes practice when it comes to virtual events. There’s always some sort of technological problem that can emerge at any moment, so it’s important to prepare your team and get as familiar with the technology you’re going to be using as possible.

And it’s likely that virtual events won’t end when the pandemic does. Although many organizations are looking forward to hybrid events, that means that there is likely going to be some sort of virtual component to many future events. Arianna and her team at In/Visible Talks realize this, and are excited for the future of the event industry.

“Going virtual made us realize the magic is in bringing people together near and far and by opening up an even broader conversation about design,” Arianna said. “Our hope for 2022 is that we’re able to offer a blended experience that brings folks together who are able to join us in person and welcomes folks from everywhere with a virtual offering.”