Conference Guide. Tutorial for organizers, speakers and exhibitors to make their virtual show conferences successful.

Guide des conférences : Comment créer l'événement sur votre salon ?

Complete tutorial for the organizers, the speakers and the exhibitors regarding the organisation of virtual trade shows

Giving a conference is the art of giving a speech in front of an audience on a specific thematics. On trade fairs, conferences gather one or several expert and passionate speakers, facing an audience usually composed of the exhibition’s attendees.

On virtual trade shows, dedicated tools are used to plan online conferences. The core principle of video conferencing remains the same as traditional conferences, but the first one is not subjected to some obstacles such as geographical distance or financial and ecological costs related to the trip. It is thus much easier and faster to create a video conference.

But why organize a conference on your event?

 around leading figures and their preferred thematics. The well targeted conferences remain the better way 

 and make sure of the promotion of their businesses by involving the exhibitors through the opportunity to let them speak during the conference or submitting them specific themes. Within the framework of virtual trade shows, the number of visits to the exhibitors' booths is up 

Target the themes that mobilize attendees to your show.

An organizer who wishes to plan conferences, must identify and then class the relevant themes for his target audience. Subjects linked to 

 are usually the most interesting on trade shows. 

 can sometimes captivate the audience and it could be interesting to look at themes famous during previous editions of the fair or on competing events in France or abroad.

Identify the personalities and the key opinion leaders for your community

The organizer must identify and then enlist influential and important persons for the target audience. Their contributions as speakers 

reinforce the fame and the attractiveness of the trade show

 and it increases the standing thanks to the speaker’s network and advertising.

You can directly identify, among the exhibitors, the experts who will make your event a success story.

In conclusion, don't forget to honor the exhibitors by promoting their know-how.

What is the best conference format for your event?

There are several conference formats that can arouse interest among your attendees. For each conference, it is up to you to select the one that will fit in the best way the subject, but also the expectations of your audience. We present the four methods that work best at trade shows:

several speakers invited to share their points of view

 on a given subject. A team leader leads the discussion by asking prepared or spontaneous questions to the speakers, with the aim of balancing the speaking time.

Round tables can be broadcast live and end with an exchange phase between the audience and the speakers, which makes this format especially appropriate for this type of event.

Pitches are short presentations (a set time of a few minutes not to exceed), which contain a maximum of important information. It is an exercise that requires being impactful while being concise. The pitches generally follow one another and allow to highlight a company, a service, a product or even a concept. Speakers are invited to present the issues of their topics, in order 

to convince their audience, within a set timeframe

To motivate speakers to participate, some organizers present the pitch session as a contest, which offers some interesting opportunities: 

This is a short presentation made by a selected and skilled speaker which will deal with the topic 

. Contrary to the pitch, this type of presentation isn’t time limited and allows you to share your message while creating a real interaction with the audience. Experts' contributions usually come along with 

They are particularly interesting for the attendees looking for testimonials of experience and trainings on different topics.

They gather a few participants with a leader around a question. Each participant has 

How to create the conference program of your event?

Creating a conference program for your trade show is a real task of organisation and communication. It is about planning different types of conferences, on different themes, throughout the fair.

Start by defining the subject of each conference in collaboration with the speakers in order to stay within the general theme of the trade show. You can list the available conferences, classify them according to their themes, as well as by order of interest for the attendees. The key lectures given by your headliners should be at the beginning of the show or be spread out at a rate of one per day to maintain a certain balance. Each day of the exhibition can have a specific theme, in order to segment your attendees. 

If you don't have enough conferences to run the entire show, concentrate them all on one day.

To attract the maximum number of attendees, your conference program should be ready and published as soon as possible. When you organize a hybrid or virtual trade show on 

, the conference program appears on the form as the organizer validates it, which makes it much easier to create the program.

Each lecture confirmed has to lead to a promotion to the invited community on the event and potential attendees. It can take the form of 

 to highlight the speaker, while informing potential attendees of this news.

In your posts, don't forget to mention the speaker's account, his brand, the hashtag of your event as well as all the information that will make visitors want to attend.

How to organize a videoconference in Ultiplace?

Simplicity and automatisation in Ultiplace.

Ultiplace is a virtual trade show platform that chooses automation. Power is in the hands of the user, allowing him to create and manage his virtual exhibition independently. The exhibition creation process has been simplified and made intuitive for both the virtual exhibition organizer and his exhibitors.

The posting of the conferences in Utliplace.

In the Ultiplace metaverse there is a 3D building, which is called the "Conference Center". It contains as many conference rooms as there are conferences scheduled during your virtual trade show.

Creating a new videoconference in Ultiplace.

There are two possibilities for creating a new conference:

Each validated conference is included in the exhibition program on the virtual trade show page of Ultiplace.

The fields in the form for creating a new videoconference in Ultiplace.

The form to create a new conference in Ultiplace is very easy to fill in. It only contains the following fields:

In Ultiplace, it is possible to create live conferences, sometimes available in replay, but also pre-recorded conferences. Here are some explanation about the given advantages of each solution and how to implement them.

To organize a live conference, you need to create a new event on your favorite video conferencing tool, then extract a connection link from it. Choose tools that do not require you to create an account for visitors or install a plugin. You can also choose to use the most popular tools on the market. The easier you make your conference accessible, the more successful it will be with visitors.

If your conference gathers different speakers, we advise you to bring them together before the start of your event, to remind them of the rules of the game and brief them on the speech to be given.

Remember to set up your videoconference by switching off the microphones and cameras of visitors as soon as they enter the video conference room.

If you are willing to offer the attendees the possibiltiy to use the chat room of your solution to interact with the speakers, consider appointing a moderator to keep track of the discussion.

Finally, if you want to increase the number of views of your conference, we recommend you to make it available to the visitors of the show in replay. To do so, you just have to record the live conference in video format, then host the video online, on a dedicated server or on a specialized site such as Youtube or Vimeo.

Please note that some videoconferencing software requires a subscription to be able to use the features recommended in the previous paragraphs. Find out more before making your choice.

If you have an already recorded conference, it is possible to broadcast it in the same way as a live conference. To do so, you just have to paste the URL of the video in both the "Live video stream url" and "Replay url" fields of the conference form.

Tutorials for the main online meeting tools 

How to program an online meeting on Google Meet: 

https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9302870?hl=fr&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

How to record your meeting on Google Meet: 

https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9308681?hl=fr

https://www.microsoft.com/fr-fr/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software

How to program an online meeting on Microsoft Teams: 

https://support.microsoft.com/fr-fr/office/planifier-une-r%C3%A9union-dans-teams-943507a9-8583-4c58-b5d2-8ec8265e04e5

How to record your meeting on Microsoft Teams: 

https://support.microsoft.com/fr-fr/office/enregistrer-une-r%C3%A9union-dans-teams-34dfbe7f-b07d-4a27-b4c6-de62f1348c24

How to program an online meeting on Zoom: 

https://support.zoom.us/hc/fr/articles/201362413-Programmer-des-r%C3%A9unions