Overcoming Travel Restrictions by Offering Online Attendance

• Application: StageToWeb and OPTiMA Services
• Industry: Association
• Impact: 3,500 Member Organizations, 1,100 In-Person, 300 Online Virtual Attendees

Overview

The Society for Range Management (SRM) is the professional scientific society and conservation organization serving members concerned with studying, conserving, managing and sustaining rangelands.

Their Annual International Meeting, Technical Training & Trade Show provides a venue for SRM to offer continuing professional education and development to their members.

SRM membership includes federal, state and local government employees, and many have lost budget for travel.

Challenge

SRM needed a way to accommodate an audience who could no longer attend in-person. Diminishing travel budgets had the potential to significantly impact SRM’s attendance for their three-day meeting in Orlando. Having never before incorporated an online component, they needed a partner to help plan and produce their live event to accommodate the new virtual audience.

Approach

With omNovia OPTiMA services, SRM was supported beyond exceptional webcast technology. Project Management services guided SRM through discovering objectives, planning requirements, sourcing and supervising AV team and equipment and providing on-site support to ensure everything ran smoothly. Creative solutions were implemented when some presenters were unable to attend in person.

The omNovia solution provided them with the ability to pre-record presentations with audio that could be played in the live event room as well as the virtual meeting space. This was followed by a hosted Q&A session for all attendees. Having mp4 recordings of the sessions was crucial as a way for SRM members
to access the information through the SRM member portal.

Result

The addition of the online component was seamless for those who attended both live and online. Audience feedback was overwhelmingly positive, “This is a great way to participate – thanks much. Now that most of us don’t have any kind of travel budget (haven’t for years).”

Organizers were happy they could meet the needs of their members and had a resource to work closely with to ensure every detail was covered.

The solution for SRM included:

• Planning and coordinating with SRM employees, event speakers, and local AV team in Orlando.
• Customizing meeting room layout, branding, and registration along with managing and uploading speaker presentations in the online event room.
• Producing the event on-site with a dedicated omNovia resource and closing out the event with recordings of their sessions to use on the SRM website.

Download the complete Society for Range Management Case Study