Managing WiFi for an event or a conference is a difficult job indeed, especially when there’s a clear lack of plan, objective and systematic organization.
You, as an event planner must realize that WiFi can make or even break an event if the connection’s not set up in the right way. Therefore, it becomes mighty important for you to have an organizational approach to setting up an event WiFi.
WiFi for Events and Conferences
Here are a few tips that you can use for setting up the perfect WiFi connection for your audience.
Know Your Audience Well
How many people do you expect to see at your event? You need to get that answer first and then plan your connection accordingly.
To be more specific, I should say your initial estimations should consist of two major types of questions that are:
- How many people do you expect to see at the event and how do you expect them to use the WiFi? Will they use it for just communicating among themselves or for uploading/downloading images, videos etc. to social media?
- How many devices do you think your attendees will likely use? The more the devices, the more is the load (it’s basically a no-brainer).
Your connectivity plan should shape up only on basis of the answers that come with the aforementioned questions.
Prioritize Traffic
Making the best use of your resources is something that you need to do to maintain an effective WiFi connection in events and conferences.
So how can you do that to perfection? Prioritizing traffic is a tactic that can come in handy for you especially in such circumstances. For example,
You can prioritize traffic for web browsing in comparison to file sharing and transfers. That’s definitely an effective way of managing scarcity of resources in the best possible manner.
Make Conservation the Key Especially at the Beginning
You do know the number of your invitees well. But are you sure that all of them are going to turn up in due time?
No; nobody can predict that. In fact, in most cases you’ll find the final number (of the ones who had turned up) to be quite less in comparison to the number of your initial invitees.
Since there’s no surety, it’s better to start conservatively on your approach. For e.g. start with a 100kB/s bandwidth and then slowly increase to 200kb/s with the increase in the number of your audience. Now that’s what I call effective resource management.
Remember Operational and Technical Challenges
You will be facing a host of technical challenges while setting up the perfect WiFi connection for your event. You have to pin point them carefully before the start of the event itself and then plan accordingly. These negatives are:
- User density can quickly get out of hands if you haven’t prepared for the same. This might result in tremendous loss of bandwidth.
- NOONE can predict the type of devices. Your audience can very easily bring in their personal iPhones, iPads or even laptops to our conference. Different devices may result in different consumption of bandwidth. So do accordingly.
- Last but not the least, there’s the problem of increased load that can heavily affect your bandwidth. So your preparations must be based on that.
Technical challenges are followed by operational challenges. Some of these are:
- In case there’s a break in the network, it will be immensely difficult for you to fix the same especially during the ongoing of the conference or the event.
- Wireless backhauling becomes immensely difficult or expensive in such circumstances.
So do you have the resources to turn these problems into a part of the solutions? The key to doing that is to have a backup plan ready. To be more specific, I should say “preparing for the worst.” A plan like that can go a long way indeed.
Use Social Media to Great Effects
Social media has unlimited power. You will just have to know the right way to use the platform to your advantage.
You can ask your audience to report any WiFi related technical issues to you on social media itself. Create a unique hashtag and ask your audience to include the same in their posts. By doing so, you will be able to detect their problems in a jiffy.
Simple, easy and convenient; there’s simply no doubt about it.
Setting up a flawless WiFi connection in events and conferences is a difficult piece of business indeed. But with a little bit of planning and organization, you will definitely be able to achieve the same in no time.
WiFi Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “5 Most Well Guarded Secrets of Setting Up WiFi for Events and Conferences” was first published on Small Business Trends