AV Planning Is Important For Your Conference Event

Be seen & heard

When you are planning a conference, the Audio Visual (AV) setup will likely be a major consideration. It’s what will ensure your delegates can see and hear what you have to say and so it’s important to get it right.

Creativity In Audio Visual

When shopping for an audiovisual provider, you traditionally seek service, price, and reliability. All are good measures of a quality audiovisual company, but to truly do justice to your event, creativity needs to be a central part of their product offering. Advances in projection and event lighting technology mean that the old business model of simply hiring out and operating gear for a client is no longer an adequate level of service. The main driver of this conceptual shift in the market has been technologies such as projection mapping.

Your Vision & Share It

Having a clear vision of the aesthetic feel and tone of the event is crucial at this stage of pre-production. Storyboard your event like a movie director, discuss themes and images with your key staff and audio visual team. Don’t get fixated on what you have seen done before or know to be possible; a good audio visual company should be able to take on board any creative idea you have and translate it into a practical suggestion.

Sound Your Event

The event sound system employed to deliver it should match the content. Important things to look for are adequate coverage of the room to ensure all attendees get crystal-clear speech as well as the full impact of any musical material. If you are employing high-energy music or cinematic sound effects ensure the system can replicate the full range of sound. A minimum of two subwoofers needs to be in place to maximize the impact of any low-end effects or bass lines. Have a look at our blog post on how to get the best sound at your event for a more in-depth understanding of the importance of sound.

Thinking Digitally

Discuss with your Audiovisual company about methods to digitally enhance your event. Can they digitally brand your conference with projections and then successfully transform the same space for a gala dinner? Entire ballrooms can be changed into another world, and the walls of an auditorium can ripple at the arrival of a new product. Custom-built set design can be transformed into a living, breathing animal. Pretty much anything is possible, and an in-depth conversation with a design professional is invaluable to help direct your thinking in the planning stages. Understand what design and creative support the audiovisual company offer and whether the in-house designers have the skills to shepherd you through the concept creation, implementation, and delivery of just about anything your imagination can conjure.

Get Mobile

Almost everyone now carries a video displaying, networked computer a.k.a. ‘Smartphone’ in their pocket. This makes them capable of not only absorbing your content but also interacting with it. An audiovisual company should have a lot of fresh ideas on how to make this work for your event, extending your theme and offering greater engagement with your audience.

Key technology for presenters are apps to enable snap event polling of audience members and instantly display aggregated results on the main screen. For attendees, important information such as timetables, maps, and key messages should be easily accessible from an app or network.

Question Your AV Team

Questions about the technical details are excellent for getting a sense of competence and good organization. Is the PA suitable for speech reinforcement only or can it deliver loud, exciting music if you need it? What combination and numbers of lighting fixtures do they usually use – LED, moving lights, wash lights? Again, it’s not necessarily the specific information that you need, but the assurance of their confidence in answering. If you’re satisfied with that, then ask them what they recommend, or better yet, what they have always wanted to do given the opportunity. You’ll soon establish whether you’re in good hands.

More Than Just Numbers

Your audiovisual budget now has the potential to deliver results way beyond the date of the event itself. All of your customers, employees, and/or delegates are broadcasters, sharing their impressions, images, and videos across their networks. Devoting time and creativity at the outset of your event planning can now pay off almost in perpetuity. Get to the heart of your message, envision the best possible shape it could take, and invest in bringing it to life in the most effective way.