Spotlight multiple speakers in advance? Best practices for sharing a slide deck?

[estewardc3]

I have an important meeting coming up with several speakers giving a presentation and then a few panel discussions. Given our small staff, I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to ensure that the appropriate speaker is spotlighted as soon as they start speaking--regardless of whether they are the only presenter, or part of a panel at that moment. I don't want to have to "spotlight for everyone" manually, in real-time, if we can avoid it as the meeting host will be busy advancing slides, etc. What is the best way to do that? Should I make sure the check box "see myself as the active speaker while speaking" is checked? Or is that only relevant to the user, not the audience? Any advice would be extremely helpful!!!

Also, I think the meeting host is going to use a laptop expressly for the purposes of sharing a slide presentation during the meeting, so that speakers don't each have to fumble with sharing and stop sharing their screen. We'll combine all their slides into one file, obviously. And then the host will grant them all slide control. Any experience with this approach and any recommendations or tips to share? Thank you!! Tension is high. 🙂

[Ray_Harwood]

@estewardc3  – When is your meeting? This might take a while to work out. 

First question: Is this a Meeting or a webinar?

I’ve done this in Webinars – spotlighting speakers, showing their slide decks, etc. Having them control the decks remotely is possible, but isn’t as easy as it sounds. You need to force Attendees to see Speaker mode for this to work.  It’s also doable in a Meeting, but you can’t force attendees to use Speaker mode there. 

My biggest advice: set up a practice event with a few people that know Zoom and test, test, test … and document the process. 

[estewardc3]

Hi, Ray. It is a Meeting--due to the size of the crowd. And the meeting is on Thursday....yes, practice planned for Monday and Tuesday, but maybe I'm making this more complicated than need be.  Appreciate the perspective. Thank you.

[chrismenard7]

I agree with Ray. Practice session which you already have set up. One person driving the PowerPoint is a great idea. Stick with that. Before the meeting, I would make sure participants know how to mute and unmute. Sounds crazy after two years of COVID, but some people still do not know how to mute/unmute. 

I would also make one or two other people that know Zoom, Co-host. You can only make someone a co-host after the meeting starts. Pull up the participant panel, right-click a person, and select co-host. Also, you need to enable the co-host feature in the Zoom setting on the web. Here is a video I created on co-host in Zoom. https://youtu.be/ITiK00SytIw

With people muted, and multiple speakers, Active Speaker may work better than Spotlight. That is something to test.  I would decide are questions allowed during the presentation, or after a speaker is done presenting? Do the questions come in the chat or do you want people to ask them by unmuting? Make sure you record. I would record to the cloud. Make sure the resolution on the shared screen is easily visible. I usually do 1920x1080. Make sure desktop notifications are turned off. You don't need an email popping up every two minutes during the presentation. That is all I have. I hope this helps. 

[estewardc3]

Thank you, Chris! I wonder about Active Speaker--I can't force all participants to see the active speaker on their view, correct? It depends on their settings? Using Focus Mode also occurred to me, as it would seem to force folks to only see the co-hosts (all the speakers are my colleagues so I trust them with co-host status). 🙂 Thanks again. Really appreciate your suggestions.