Town Hall Meetings That Work

A new definition in a time of Social Distancing

Social Distancing and work from home policies related to the Global Pandemic of 2020 have propelled the Town Hall Meeting into the spotlight of organizational communications. Once an occasional meeting hosted by executives to showcase the year’s accomplishment, Town Hall Meetings have gone online and their importance has become critical.

Today’s Town Hall Meetings go beyond hotel ballrooms and company cafeterias. They use cloud based software, networks, computers, cell phones, tablets and, in some meetings, complex A/V systems to create a virtual environment that interactively connects everyone. While companies like Microsoft, Cisco and Zoom all have products that can support online meetings, the key to supporting virtual events is to plan all the aspects of a normal in-person meeting in a way that uses technology to enable it. No software and no service does this. For example, a large in-person Town Hall meeting often includes audience registration, a concierge welcome table, microphones or “mic runners” to help attendees ask questions, food service and presenter support teams to ensure that presentations are seen clearly by audience members. Great virtual meetings include attention to all of these important Town Hall Meeting attributes that go well beyond Zoom and Teams services.

Our team can be your Town Hall Experts, working with meeting organizers and your IT professionals to create and host a Professional Grade Virtual Town Hall Meeting. To put your ideas into your next meeting just contact us. As you begin planning, consider our recommended Top 5 Reasons to Host a Virtual Town Hall Meeting and what we see as the Top 5 ways to Engage your Virtual Town Hall Audience.

5 Best Reasons to Host a Virtual Town Hall Meeting

• 1. To connect employees and stakeholders to the organization while they work independently
• 2. To synchronize the vision and objectives of dispersed teams with organizational goals
• 3. To provide a regular organizational heartbeat for personnel that are geographically disconnected
• 4. To create a forum for employees to see, hear, listen and interact with executives and one another
• 5. To provide a trail of progress by creating an online library of Town Hall Meetings for easy review

5 Ways to Engage your Virtual Town Hall Meeting Audience:

• 1. Allow continuous Live Questions from the Audience either with moderated Q&A or Live Chat
• 2. Create dynamic presentations with video clips of people and projects known to the audience
• 3. Encourage the audience to connect with the meeting on their terms, with PC’s, Tablets or Cell Phones
• 4. Use engaging tools such as online surveys with audience voting or word clouds throughout the meeting
• 5. Follow up the meeting with brief video clips of the key elements of the session to reaffirm important topics

Town Hall Meetings - putting the pieces together TKO decodes the technology so you can focus on the message

Our team of in-person and online meeting experts can help you consider how to engage your audience and, most importantly, how to support your presenters. We strive to support energizing and fulfilling meetings for your audience and we can help you manage the meeting flow and presentations. To do this, we focus on key areas of engagement that will help ensure your Virtual Town Hall Meeting is a Success. Contact Us