After years of running audio boards at festivals, managing tours, and troubleshooting every kind of live production crisis imaginable, I thought I'd seen it all. Then the world went virtual in 2020, and I realized I had a lot to learn.

Here's what four years of producing high-stakes virtual events for financial institutions, insurance companies, and global corporates has taught me.

The technical and the human are inseparable

In live audio, the gear is everything. A great desk, great speakers, great cables — if it works technically, the show works. Virtual events are different. You can have a flawless technical setup and still have a bad event because someone didn't rehearse, or the client didn't fully communicate their vision, or the presenter panics the moment their slide deck isn't advancing.

The best virtual event producers are part engineer, part therapist, part stage manager. You're solving technical problems and calming nervous executives simultaneously, often on the same call.

Redundancy isn't paranoia — it's professionalism

Every experienced live production person knows to carry spares. In virtual events, that principle goes deeper. I now build redundancy into:

  • Internet connections (primary wired + mobile backup)
  • Streaming encoders (vMix on primary machine, backup encode ready)
  • Audio paths (hardware and software fallback)
  • Communication channels (Teams, Zoom, phone — never just one)

A client once asked me why I brought "so much gear" for what they assumed was a simple webinar. An hour into the event, their office internet went down. We switched to mobile within ninety seconds. They've been clients ever since.

The pre-show is the show

The event isn't the event — the preparation is.

Every smooth virtual event I've produced was smooth because of what happened in the two weeks before it. Thorough run-of-show documents, technical rehearsals with every presenter, platform check-ins, and a dry run the day before. Events that feel effortless to audiences are usually the result of intense preparation behind the scenes.

Virtual events aren't going away, and neither are the lessons that live production taught me about serving clients under pressure. The technology changes; the fundamentals don't.