Main Streams: How to Keep Virtual Event Participants Connected

Posted on: October 8, 2024

How does it feel to be a virtual event participant and have the stream you’re watch glitch or fail? Take a cue from home.

If you ever sat in your living room and suddenly the streaming show you’re watching goes wonky or fails completely, you know how you feel: frustrated and inconvenienced.

That streaming show? You can catch it at another time. But, the virtual event for which you’re registered? If you tuned in, you wanted to consume that content then and there.

Corporate and association hybrid events are now THE standard, and streaming content for virtual participants is routine. 

But technical challenges exist and can destroy an otherwise perfect hybrid event. Remote attendees will leave or feel excluded if connections are lost or tools don’t work the way they should. 

An event streaming protocol must effectively handle the dynamic, real-time nature of a hybrid annual corporate or association conference. To keep these problems under control, your team will need to plan with your event production partner.

Technical Issues

Say you’re holding a large international hybrid conference. Technical issues can arise, creating unique challenges due to the scale, geographical diffusion, and potential language and cultural differences. 

Conferences of this type, with thousands of participants, means a good percentage will be online. Such high traffic can cause network congestion. Here, poor audio or video quality leading to buffering, pixelation and, worst of all dropped connections, can hinder the attendee experience.

Disrupted streams can also occur from unreliable internet connections at the conference venue or among attendees, as well as equipment failures, such malfunction of cameras, microphones, or other hardware.

Finally, disruptions can come from issues with the streaming platform itself, such as crashes or errors. It’s here where your planning should begin.

Streaming Requirements

There are a variety of streaming protocols your event production partner is familiar with. But before diving into specifics, you’ll need to outline the unique requirements of your conference, such as:

Working in Real-Time

Several streaming protocols commonly used in virtual events, including HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH). 

There are pluses and minuses with these, but the protocol Stage Right, Inc. relies on is Real-time Transport Protocol (RTMP). It’s ability to deliver high-quality video streams over IP networks has several advantages.

Many of our productions include interactive elements, such as Q&A sessions, live polls, and virtual panel discussions. Using these are enhanced by RTMP’s low latency capability (a minimal delay between the time a signal is transmitted and when it is received).

In context of streaming video, it means that the time it takes for data to travel from the source to the viewer is kept as short as possible, delivering these crucial benefits:

Optimally, RTMP can handle high volumes of concurrent users and delivers a smooth, interactive experience regardless of the number of attendees. 

The Unexpected

Of course this goes without saying, but we’ll say it any way: Plan for technical failures or other unforeseen issues.

To mitigate these challenges, careful planning, testing, and redundancy are essential. It’s also crucial to have a dedicated team to monitor and address issues as they arise.

Ensure your venue has robust internet so you don’t lose connection. Run tests with your software to flag any potential malfunctions and have plans in place for any emergency tech issues. Your audio-visual equipment should be up-to-date and prepared for the day’s demands.

And, down the pipe to the receiving end, it will help if attendees have a strong Internet connection.

By carefully selecting and implementing the appropriate event streaming protocols and considering the specific challenges, you’ll keep your virtual guests engaged and connected.