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The formal starting point of every project is the kickoff meeting wherein the VirtualEvents365 and organizer teams meet to review the project scope. A number of essential meetings are then scheduled, namely best practices, platform orientation, timeline review, and, of course, a weekly status meeting. The best practices blog can be viewed here: Part 1 and Part 2. Today I’ll be discussing the importance of orientation.

“Orient” is defined by Merriam Webster as 2 a : to set right by adjusting to facts or principles b : to acquaint with the existing situation or environment and this is exactly what’s required at the start of your event project. While the organizer’s business sponsor, having sat through sales demos, is usually familiar with the events platform, often the core events team – the people responsible for the event operations – are not. To this end, a “platform orientation” meeting is booked at the end of the kickoff meeting and the full events team is encouraged to attend. The sales team often participates as well.

The orientation meeting provides an introduction to the client-side platform by looking at the event features and functions from an attendee’s perspective. We review the registration page and microsite pages, the event navigation, branding and sponsorship opportunities, halls, webcasts, and booths, design, chat, and all of the functionality that will help make this event unique and appealing to visitors. The goal of this discussion is to ensure that all of the key organizer stakeholders have a firm understanding of how the platform looks and works. It gives them the knowledge they’ll need to reply to vendors, speakers and other stakeholders’ questions and helps to maintain uniform terminology which avoids confusion. In short, the orientation meeting is the first step in ensuring a cohesive working relationship between the event service provider and the organizer’s team, and an essential preliminary project component.

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