Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, so it’s good to go over the basics. You may think you understand your event Internet requirements and how to ask for them, but a quick glance through the new short-and-to-the-point guide from IACC might surprise you. Take terminology. By now everyone should be familiar with Wi-Fi boosters and upload and download speeds, but have you heard of a “contention rate”? If you don’t know what the worst-case scenario number of users’ connection speed is called, you might have a hard time asking a venue about it.
IACC’s Guide to Conference and Meetings Internet is designed so that meeting planners can ask the right questions and provide the right answers to meeting venues, including two questions to consider before narrowing down a list of venues. There is also a chart to help planners submit a brief list of their organization’s needs to the venue upfront, and other visuals to help them determine how much bandwidth they require (sending email or streaming video?) and whether those activities can be undertaken wirelessly or need a dedicated, wired connection. Notes for venues can help them ask the right questions and avoid disappointing a client. Maybe a hotel meeting room has free Internet for meeting attendees to pick up their email, but that does not mean it will support 300 audience members using iPads to live stream a presenter speaking remotely.
If readers realize they don’t know a lot more than they thought, the guide includes links to dive deeper into the subject.
