3 Common Complaints from Attendees & Speakers About Telesummit & Virtual Event Hosts

by | Jul 23, 2010 | Virtual Events & Telesummits | 5 comments

Actual emails from attendees that I collected over the last few months complaining about the hosting duties of the person facilitating a telesummit.

Complaint #1: “Could you ask the host to let the speaker speak please?”

This is due to 2 things – nervousness and knowledge of the topic. The host isn’t sure how to facilitate the session, so they end up yapping for most of the session. Or, they know ALOT about the topic and want to show off their expertise.

The goal of hosting a telesummit is to form joint ventures for future projects. And one of my clients said to me that the side benefit of hosting a telesummit is that he gets to be a student too.

Complaint #2: “I go on stage in 5-minutes and I don’t have the call-in details.” (or “The host is so disorganized.”)

This one is a classic case of the host doing everything. She’s answering attendee emails, she’s hosting the sessions and she’s making the recordings available on the website.

You need help. You seriously do. Because when you have help, you can focus in on facilitating each session to your best. No more dividing your attention across various tasks. The last thing you need is for the speaker NOT to show up because you FORGOT to send him the access information.

Complaint #3: “Can you tell the host to stop using so many um’s (or giggling or saying you know’s)?”

Otherwise known as verbal clutter, the host begins saying these things in order to fill dead air. The real issue is a lack of confidence. The guest expert becomes silent after making his or her point, the host doesn’t have a clue how to segue into the next point (or has misplaced the questions or was focused on monitoring the Twitter feed) and then fills it with “Um”, “You know” or giggles.

I’m teaching a virtual course called Telesummit Host Tips. If you’d like to learn how to host your next (or first) telesummit with confidence so you don’t sound like a newbie, click here to learn more about this program. Registration closes July 29, 2010.

It took me 6-years to finally become a confident Telesummit Host, but you’ll learn these winning tips in just 2-hours. Because trying to figure this all out during your live sessions is too late. You damage future joint venture relationships with your speakers and you heighten refund requests from attendees. I have thousands of hours hosting and facilitating telesummits and virtual events and I’ll teach you how to host a telesummit in a non-rookie way.

If you’ve attended telesummits in the past as an attendee or speaker, what other complaints do you have about telesummit hosts and what would you offer as a solution to help them improve?

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5 Comments

  1. Roberta Budvietas

    Really useful for a projet I am working on- timely.

  2. Eleanore Duyndam

    Both the guest speaker and the host need to keep their ums, you know, and other strange sounds, to a minimum.

    One of the best ways to train yourself out of sloppy speech patterns is to spend some time editing an audio file of you speaking. Very enlightening indeed! I think most people would be surprised to hear how often they utter ums, and other distracting sounds.

    • Leesa Barnes

      I know that this is my problem and I catch it whenever I listen to the
      recordings. I tend to clarify my ideas when I hear my voice, so I
      often say um as I'm thinking out loud. But when I listen to the
      recording, that's when I catch my verbal clutter and I fix it for the
      next recording.

      I do agree that the guest should also be aware of gheir verbal clutter
      as well. Great reminder Eleanore.

      Thanks,

      Leesa Barnes, Virtual Event Expert
      http://virtualeventmanager.com
      Produce Profitable & Pain-free Virtual Events

      Sent from my iPod

  3. shannoncherry

    Oh my! I have a million complaints. How about these:

    1) Putting my name and photo (an old one at that) on their telesummit website BEFORE I even agree to speak!

    2) Is obviously doing something else BESIDES being on the telesummit call… like the dishes. (Seriously, it happened!)

    3) Asks a question that is so off base about the topic, I look dumb… or he or she does. (And If they do ask such a question, you better believe I will make sure I don't look dumb!)

    Ok, there are my three… ones that have actually happened to me.

    • Leesa Barnes

      Wow, these are some juicy ones. How could I forget these? We're now up to 6.