Planning a Livestream: The Checklist for Congresses and Conferences

A livestream is essentially a television station for a day. It has a programme, a production team, broadcast times – and an audience that will not politely wait through poor performance, but simply click away. The good news: almost everything that causes streams to fail can be addressed weeks in advance. This checklist takes you through the four stages of preparation – with the questions we ask our clients before every stream.

Six weeks before: The foundations

Define your purpose and audience. Is the stream a substitute for unavailable seats, an added benefit for registered guests or a separate platform for people who cannot travel to the event at all? The answer determines everything else: production requirements, camera work, presenting segments and pre-recorded inserts. A stream that merely shows the room bores online viewers. A stream designed for an online audience gets its own camera angles, inserts and introduction.

Choose a platform. Publicly on YouTube or Vimeo, accessible only via a link, behind a registration page, with or without chat? For internal content and confidential figures, we recommend a protected area. To maximise reach, a public stream with a well-crafted title and thumbnail is the better choice. Also establish early on who owns the account you will be streaming from – access to it on broadcast day is a surprisingly common stumbling block.

Set out the programme minute by minute. Every speaking slot, every break, every changeover, every insert – with start times and durations. Without this schedule, the production team is flying blind. Ideally, the team receives the running order in the same format as the presenter, so both work from the same document.

Clear the rights before things get awkward. Can all speakers be shown and recorded? Is there music, video or presentation material subject to third-party rights that cannot be broadcast? Music played over the venue's sound system, in particular, can cause a public stream to be automatically muted or blocked. A short consent form for everyone appearing on stage saves a great deal of discussion later.

Two weeks before: The technology

The connection is the stream. Check the upload speed at the venue – not the download speed. A stable Full HD stream requires a sustained upload speed of at least 15 to 20 Mbit/s, measured at the time of day the event will take place, not on a Sunday morning. A dedicated connection that is not also serving three hundred guests browsing on Wi-Fi is worth its weight in gold.

The fallback plan. What happens if the connection fails? The sequence is: keep recording locally, switch to a second connection (bonded mobile data or a second provider), display a message for viewers. If you have rehearsed this beforehand, you lose seconds rather than minutes when it matters.

Establish the audio sources. Ideally, audio comes as a clean feed directly from the sound engineer's mixing desk – not from a microphone picking up the room. Check with the event technicians: what outputs does the desk have, who is responsible on the day, and what happens when someone in the audience speaks? Audience questions need dedicated handheld microphones or a presenter who repeats the question. If needed, we are also happy to liaise with the sound team in advance.

The production running order. Who introduces each segment, who switches sources, who keeps time, who communicates with the presenter? Give each person a sheet stating what they do and when. It sounds basic, but it is the difference between a calm stream and a frantic one.

One week before: The rehearsal

Test the equipment at the venue, not in the office. Camera positions, cable routes, lighting at the actual broadcast time, an audio feed from the actual mixing desk, an upload test using the actual streaming account. Half an hour rehearsing in the room saves three hours of troubleshooting on broadcast day.

Run a full rehearsal with a real programme segment. Do not just test the equipment; run through an entire contribution: introduction, presentation, audience question, pre-recorded insert. This reveals things no spreadsheet can show – the speaker who wanders away from the microphone, the slide that is illegible on the stream.

Have inserts and graphics ready. Title graphic, holding screen, name captions, the countdown before going live. Anything that still needs rendering on broadcast day is a risk.

On broadcast day

Arrive early enough. Setting up, cabling, positioning cameras and checking audio all take time, ideally before anyone is walking through the cables. As a rule of thumb, the team should have all cabling complete before the first guests arrive – at congresses, that often means two to three hours before the start.

Go live before the programme begins. The stream does not start with the first presentation, but ten to fifteen minutes earlier – with a holding screen, music or a countdown. This immediately reassures every viewer that they are in the right place and gives the team a buffer for final adjustments.

Record alongside the stream. Always record locally, independently of the connection. If the stream drops out after forty minutes, the morning's content is still safe – and full-quality footage is available for post-production.

One person for queries. During the broadcast, someone must be available to spot issues and authorised to act – in the chat, on the phone or in the control area. This person should not be presenting sessions or operating a camera.

After the stream

The stream is rarely the final product. The recording provides the real marketing assets: a highlight film, individual speaker clips for social media, and the complete recording for internal documentation. Plan these edits before the event – that way, the team will already be capturing the shots they need on the day.

Review the figures. Viewing times, watch duration, devices, drop-off points. If half the audience leaves after twenty minutes, the programme was too long or the opening too slow. This is the best foundation for the next edition.

Say thank you and deliver the material. Speakers and partners appreciate having their own clips – and share them. Send the material within a week and you gain free reach.

The five most common mistakes

1. Thinking about sound too late. Viewers will forgive a slightly grainy image, but not unbalanced sound with echo and feedback. If you can prepare only one thing, make it this. 2. Not measuring upload speed at the venue. Your office connection tells you nothing about the conference room. 3. No fallback plan. No second connection, no local recording, no message ready for a disruption. 4. Forgetting the online audience. A stream showing only the room camera feels like CCTV footage. 5. Planning nothing beyond the stream. The most expensive day of the event produces material that can work for a year – if someone has thought ahead.

Conclusion

A good livestream is not a technological miracle, but the result of four weeks of thorough preparation. Clarify the purpose, check the connection, secure the audio, rehearse the running order, establish a fallback plan – then very little can go wrong on broadcast day. And if it does, the recording is running alongside it.

Planning a congress or conference with a livestream? Send us your enquiry – we will work through this checklist with you.