Create documentation with specific instructions
After hosting about 300 events myself, I realized that to create a consistent product, and to REDUCE STRESS, it is better to have a step-by-step guide to host a webinar instead. Never rely on your memory.
So, I created a basic checklist of what I need to do, including things like “open Slack, paste event name into channel, tag Josh”.
I would print off the checklist, and go down the list each time I hosted a webinar, and checked off the step as I completed it.
An example of one portion of a checklist:
☐ Check Calendar invite & click Request Details link to airtable.
☐ Copy request record details, paste at top of this doc, and SAVE AS w/ pasted title.
☐ Open Teams and create new Teams thread using airtable request record details, tag Josh
☐ 60 min prior: Message on Teams thread: logged-in
Go to Airtable record and click
☐ In streamyard, Edit, add new destination, Custom RTMP
☐ Open WEBINAR link, add “?gamma=false”
☐ Open WEBINAR – join as observer if needed.
☐ Confirm “Stream” icon on bottom. Click on it.
☐ Copy stream URL, paste in streamyard
☐ Copy stream key, paste in streamyard
☐ If SY is asking to authenticate facebook/youtube, go to settings on Right, click Guests, then unclick authenticate
☐ Create nickname “company_date”
The purpose of this checklist is two-fold:
Ensure I didn’t miss a step
Be able to hand it off to someone who has never done this.
We host different types of events using multiple platforms (owned platform, streamyard, slack, airtable, adobe creative suite), so I segment the webinars into the main recording platforms being used. The differentiating factors determine what platform is being used. For example, a regular webinar might only use the owned recording platform, while a premium event uses 2 platforms at once. These have different steps involved, so they require a different list.