Bad audiovisual is sort of like bad food at a meeting. But while substandard AV won’t make you physically ill, the taste left in your attendees’ mouths can sour their appetite for whatever messaging your organization planned to serve up.
Adding to the difficulty are expectations that have risen as attention spans have decreased. You may only have one time per year to gather the troops and focus on objectives, so you need to make it matter and it has to be executed flawlessly.
“The bitterness of low quality will last longer than the sweetness of a low price,” says Midori Connolly, principal of AVGirl Productions and frequent speaker on the meetings industry circuit. “I’m not kidding—people lose their jobs when things go wrong.”
Connolly has one foot planted in the meetings and events world and the other in audiovisual, having once owned her own AV business and getting an events tutelage via her mom’s catering company when she was a child, and later helping out when her mother became a corporate planner.
The first entry on her tech resume was logged when she worked for an educational software company that specialized in adult distance learning. Starting out entering data, Connolly found the company’s database lacking, so she took the initiative and fixed it, which led to developing a training course and hitting the road to facilitate it.
“I was 19 or 20 years old,” she says. “I was in college and was the only student I knew who had a company-issued laptop and traveled for work.”
Connolly entered the AV staging industry via marriage, and eventually grew the company, and also co-chaired the ASTM audiovisual production standards, writing a best practices paper.
“I loved the pace of the business,” she says. “So I was in the events world again, but this time it was technology.”
It also found her in between two worlds, with the meeting planning profession being dominated by women and the audiovisual industry being overwhelmingly male. Connolly now serves as a conduit between these two worlds, understanding the needs and personalities in both.
“This isn’t anything I’m making up about women and girls being left behind in math and science. I know it’s an issue—I lived it,” Connolly says. “Being in a predominantly female industry, my goal is to empower those women so they feel comfortable.
“I have women come to me after a session and say ‘You changed my life,’—and it was just about webcasting,” she jokes.
Connolly’s primary piece of AV advice for meeting and event planners is to know who their go-to person is, establish effective communication and create a firm set of commitments. This is especially true in the current business environment, with many facilities seeking to standardize their AV offerings.
“AV has sort of been commoditized a little bit by hotel providers, and with that comes a difference in service,” Connolly says. “When you work with a company over and over again, you know who to go to if you have a problem. It’s really important to have a go-to person, to know who that person is ahead of time and have a conversation with them….Start that dialogue early—before you get on-site. Who is my project manager? Who is my lead technician? I want to know who that person is and make sure they’re in the pre-con.”
Another important tip is to comparison shop for AV; always have two, if not three, bids, and if they’re dramatically different, show them to each provider and ask why the bids are so different.
And in the end, perhaps the most-important piece of advice is to not sell your AV needs short.
“Skip dessert—don’t skimp on your audience being able to hear the message,” she advises.
