Earlier this year, 1,044 employees supporting Sharp’s B2B business in the U.S. logged on to Microsoft Teams to attend the company’s annual kickoff event, remotely. The annual event is traditionally an opportunity for Sharp employees from around the country to get a chance to hear from top leadership about the company’s successes of the previous year, priorities for the coming year, as well as re-acquaint themselves with colleagues from across the country. This year, due to COVID-19, Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America decided to hold the event virtually, and while it would have been difficult to do the type of in-person networking that a regular event of this kind would normally have, Sharp wanted to at least make the two-hour virtual event as close to an actual in-person event as possible.

Sharp’s media team, who worked hard behind the scenes to ensure that virtual attendees received the best experience possible, gave some tips to help pull off a successful online meeting of this scale:

  1. Keep it Lively: Instead of simply showing PowerPoint slides on a screen, intersperse a B-roll of employees showing off cool aspects of their home offices or doing a bit of show-and-tell about how they are able to stay productive outside of the office. When the main presenters show PowerPoint slides, have them give the presentation in the meeting room, just as if they were at an in-person conference. Keeping employees engaged is the key to making virtual meetings interesting.
  2. Keep it Spontaneous: Although it was tempting to pre-record the entire two-hour meeting, pre-recording or pre-rehearsing would have taken away some of the spontaneity of an in-person event. The Media team set up their “studio” in the middle of Sharp’s huge atrium, and as each speaker’s turn came up, they stepped in front of the camera on the stage. “Keeping it live provided an immediacy to the event that a pre-recorded event would not have had,” said Media Production Director James Campion. “All of the presenters knew that they had to be on by noon and that they were going to be interacting.” James added that having a moderated panel talking through some of the topics that were on everyone’s mind, such as when we were going to come back to the office, was also key to keeping that live feel.

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SOURCE Sharp Electronics Corporation

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