How quickly can you plan an online conference? Three months? Three weeks?
What about 10 days?
Since February, organizers across all industries have been forced to postpone or cancel planned annual events as federal and local government leaders advise the American public to practice social distancing and stay safe at home. Without these conferences as a vehicle to connect with new customers, many small businesses have had to get a little more creative in rethinking their marketing plans for the foreseeable future.
For many, the cancellation of these events have inspired virtual alternatives. When the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) canceled its conference due to COVID-19 concerns, Jessica Putnam-Phillips and Kevin Phillips, the husband-and-wife team behind popular online pottery studio ClayShare, reacted quickly.
In just 10 short days, they planned, promoted, and produced a five-day virtual event for their audience. Here’s how they did it.
Based in Vermont, Jessica Putnam-Phillips and Kevin Phillips have spent the past few years building a loyal, close-knit community of ceramics enthusiasts through ClayShare’s virtual pottery classes, which are powered by Vimeo OTT. Jessica leads the instruction in front of the camera, while Kevin handles all of the technical, behind-the-scenes aspects of the production.
As a ceramics educator, Jessica has been a regular NCECA conference attendee for many years. More recently, she’s been taking an increasingly active role during the event, conducting live demonstrations for vendors, giving vendor tours, meeting with potential ClayShare partners and sponsors, and connecting with followers.
“NCECA being canceled was a huge deal for basically the entire ceramic world,” says Kevin, a longtime marketing analyst. “If I lose my biggest marketing push of the year, I now have to either accept reduced demands for twelve months, or I have to increase my advertising spend, which is going to reduce my bottom line. If I don’t find a way to solve this, I know I’m looking at twelve months of diminished profitability.”
Amazingly, the couple planned and executed ClayShareCon in just under 10 days.
By the time NCECA had been canceled, Jessica had already worked out a series of five or six demos that she had planned to do at the conference. At first, Jessica and Kevin thought they’d just start with those and make the broadcasts free for everyone to watch. But then, as NCECA reached out with its blessing and they started hearing from vendors who were interested in pushing their NCECA deals and promotions through ClayShare’s broadcast, the couple decided to go all in.
They began reaching out to all of the distributors and vendors that would have been at NCECA to invite them to take part in ClayShareCon. The response they received, says Kevin, was incredible. Companies started sending samples for Jessica to demo during the live broadcasts, and some vendors who don’t typically offer discounts were even willing to do so for the virtual event. Dozens of sponsors came onboard to showcase their products and ClayShareCon was able to give away more than 80 prizes over the span of the conference.
While Jessica focused on creating the content and broadcast schedule, Kevin made sure they had their business side and all their “technical ducks” in a row. He immediately started testing what was possible with their current broadcast set-up in regards to camera gear and computers, and began identifying and acquiring any equipment they’d need for additional support. Taking into account the various sponsorships and the fact that they’d have a lot more eyes than usual on the live broadcasts, they wanted to make a more “polished” product, Kevin says.
Once he set up the new rig, he tested it all again, preconfigured and scheduled all the broadcasts, and contacted the Vimeo support team to make sure all the settings were correct for the simulcast.
“Then at noon on Day One, we switched it all on and just did it,” Kevin says. “It’s like, ‘Damn the torpedoes, go!’”
In the end, the five-day virtual event included 17 hours of live content (including two segments featuring a remote guest), all streamed out using Vimeo’s live streaming tools and encoded using Vimeo’s Livestream Studio 6. The broadcasts were filmed using multiple cameras and simulcast to ClayShare’s Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels, as well as embedded onto their website.
Having experience with ClayShare’s usual live broadcasts, Kevin also made sure to prepare for a high degree of audience participation. He set up individual tablets that were connected to different channels — one to Facebook and one to YouTube — so that Jessica could read the comments coming through and answer them in real-time. Meanwhile, Kevin monitored comments coming through on the Vimeo channel and on the ClayShare website and forwarded those questions over to his wife.
“Really, in a lot of ways, this is what we do with ClayShare every day, every week,” Kevin remarks. “We just paused the regular ClayShare cycle and accelerated the ClayShareCon cycle.”
ClayShareCon saw so much success that Jessica and Kevin are hosting another one in the fall. (One sponsor even contacted Kevin afterward to report that they’d had higher sales, at better margin, during ClayShareCon than they’d ever had at an on-the-ground conference!) After that, they’re planning for it to become an annual event going forward. But instead of 10 days, they’ll have several months to put it all together — not that having mere days to organize an entire conference was a problem for them the first time around. After all, they both hail from the military, says Kevin, so they’re used to being in high-stress situations in which failure is simply not an option.
“We decided we’re going to do it in 10 days. Literally, neither of us will spend one second worrying about how it could possibly not happen. We just start on Day One, and say, ‘OK, here’s our action list that we need to accomplish to make it happen.’”
As for others who may be wavering about taking their conferences online, Kevin says the best advice he can offer is to just do something.
Keeping communities connected virtually
Based in Vermont, Jessica Putnam-Phillips and Kevin Phillips have spent the past few years building a loyal, close-knit community of ceramics enthusiasts through ClayShare’s virtual pottery classes, which are powered by Vimeo OTT. Jessica leads the instruction in front of the camera, while Kevin handles all of the technical, behind-the-scenes aspects of the production.
As a ceramics educator, Jessica has been a regular NCECA conference attendee for many years. More recently, she’s been taking an increasingly active role during the event, conducting live demonstrations for vendors, giving vendor tours, meeting with potential ClayShare partners and sponsors, and connecting with followers.
“NCECA being canceled was a huge deal for basically the entire ceramic world,” says Kevin, a longtime marketing analyst. “If I lose my biggest marketing push of the year, I now have to either accept reduced demands for twelve months, or I have to increase my advertising spend, which is going to reduce my bottom line. If I don’t find a way to solve this, I know I’m looking at twelve months of diminished profitability.”
Knowing how much the conference meant to the ceramic arts community — and knowing they already had live broadcast capabilities through Vimeo and a built-in audience of over two million people a week across their social media channels — it didn’t take long for Jessica and Kevin to decide to organize their own weeklong virtual conference, dubbed ClayShareCon. “Our own ClayShare people were all seeing their local classes being canceled. They were all getting the shelter-in-place orders. We knew that this was going to go on for a while,” Kevin further explains of their thought-process. “Jess had the idea of, ‘Let’s do an online version to connect with people and keep them engaged with the world, and maybe make the start of this thing not be so scary — make sure everybody understands that we care about them and we want them to be well.”If I lose my biggest marketing push of the year, I’m looking at twelve months of diminished profitability.
Putting it all together
Amazingly, the couple planned and executed ClayShareCon in just under 10 days.
By the time NCECA had been canceled, Jessica had already worked out a series of five or six demos that she had planned to do at the conference. At first, Jessica and Kevin thought they’d just start with those and make the broadcasts free for everyone to watch. But then, as NCECA reached out with its blessing and they started hearing from vendors who were interested in pushing their NCECA deals and promotions through ClayShare’s broadcast, the couple decided to go all in.
They began reaching out to all of the distributors and vendors that would have been at NCECA to invite them to take part in ClayShareCon. The response they received, says Kevin, was incredible. Companies started sending samples for Jessica to demo during the live broadcasts, and some vendors who don’t typically offer discounts were even willing to do so for the virtual event. Dozens of sponsors came onboard to showcase their products and ClayShareCon was able to give away more than 80 prizes over the span of the conference.
While Jessica focused on creating the content and broadcast schedule, Kevin made sure they had their business side and all their “technical ducks” in a row. He immediately started testing what was possible with their current broadcast set-up in regards to camera gear and computers, and began identifying and acquiring any equipment they’d need for additional support. Taking into account the various sponsorships and the fact that they’d have a lot more eyes than usual on the live broadcasts, they wanted to make a more “polished” product, Kevin says.
Once he set up the new rig, he tested it all again, preconfigured and scheduled all the broadcasts, and contacted the Vimeo support team to make sure all the settings were correct for the simulcast.
“Then at noon on Day One, we switched it all on and just did it,” Kevin says. “It’s like, ‘Damn the torpedoes, go!’”
“This is what we do… every day, every week”
In the end, the five-day virtual event included 17 hours of live content (including two segments featuring a remote guest), all streamed out using Vimeo’s live streaming tools and encoded using Vimeo’s Livestream Studio 6. The broadcasts were filmed using multiple cameras and simulcast to ClayShare’s Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels, as well as embedded onto their website.
Having experience with ClayShare’s usual live broadcasts, Kevin also made sure to prepare for a high degree of audience participation. He set up individual tablets that were connected to different channels — one to Facebook and one to YouTube — so that Jessica could read the comments coming through and answer them in real-time. Meanwhile, Kevin monitored comments coming through on the Vimeo channel and on the ClayShare website and forwarded those questions over to his wife.
“Really, in a lot of ways, this is what we do with ClayShare every day, every week,” Kevin remarks. “We just paused the regular ClayShare cycle and accelerated the ClayShareCon cycle.”
ClayShareCon saw so much success that Jessica and Kevin are hosting another one in the fall. (One sponsor even contacted Kevin afterward to report that they’d had higher sales, at better margin, during ClayShareCon than they’d ever had at an on-the-ground conference!) After that, they’re planning for it to become an annual event going forward. But instead of 10 days, they’ll have several months to put it all together — not that having mere days to organize an entire conference was a problem for them the first time around. After all, they both hail from the military, says Kevin, so they’re used to being in high-stress situations in which failure is simply not an option.
“We decided we’re going to do it in 10 days. Literally, neither of us will spend one second worrying about how it could possibly not happen. We just start on Day One, and say, ‘OK, here’s our action list that we need to accomplish to make it happen.’”
As for others who may be wavering about taking their conferences online, Kevin says the best advice he can offer is to just do something.
“A lot of people are going to suffer from paralysis analysis — they’re going to overthink it. Right now with the situation we have, everything is moving very fast, everything’s unsure. If you have conferences being canceled, don’t worry about trying to make it perfect. Just get on there and do something to provide benefit to your audience,” he says. “They’re going to appreciate the fact that you did this for them to help them through this situation. If you have time and if you want to make it awesome, I would say get on board with Vimeo and get a good tool set.”If you have conferences being canceled, don’t worry about trying to make it perfect. Just get on there and do something to provide benefit to your audience
How ClayShare runs its online studio
