You will speak at the Local News Fest : here’s the how-to !

You are one of 70 media professionals who honor us with contributing to the FIL program this year. We thank you for that ! In order to make your Festival week as enjoyable as possible and to approach your speech online with confidence, we have prepared a manual for you.

Before your intervention, you will receive a link to connect to a videoconference. By default, we’ll use Google Meet (in order to display subtitles for the french speaking attendees. If you cannot access this platform, please let us know.

During this video conference, you will be in communication with the organizers (and other speakers if some cases). Attendees will follow the videoconference live on the Festival site. They will be able to ask questions on the Fil’s private Slack, to which you will be invited from September 14.

First tip: read this text to the end! This is the best way to make your Festival a success and avoid last minute surprises! And we apologize for the highly questionable quality of this translation.

Schedules and duration of interventions

Like last year, we have put together a dense and fast-paced program, which obliges us to strictly adhere to the set times. Each talk should therefore start and end at the specific time of the program, in order to give us 5 minutes of beating before the next talk.

Duration of interventions:

• Experience feedback: 20 minutes + 5 minutes of questions and answers

• Conference: 45 minutes + 10 minutes of questions and answers

• Debate: 60 minutes + 20 minutes of questions and answers

• Workshops: 60 minutes of discussion
  

The content of your talk

Remember, you are speaking to an expert audience, information professionals who will appreciate seeing you “lift the hood”.

Here are a few questions, among others, that we invite you to answer during your intervention.

• How did you manage to mobilize your teams on this project?

• How much did this operation cost you?

• What are you most proud of?

• What went wrong?

• What are the next steps ?

• What collaborations have we put in place to carry out this project?

• What if you had to do it again, would you do it differently?

• How inspiring for media from other sectors (radio, news sites, print media, TV, etc.)

By the way, we love the template of Solution Set

Remember: 20 minutes goes by very quickly.

Q & A

Attendees’ questions will be asked on the FIL Slack. We will relay them live to make things easier and save you from reading them on Slack. You can count on us to initiate discussions if necessary.

The lectures and feedback will be recorded and available in replay after your intervention, on the same page as the live.

Continue the discussion

When you have finished your intervention, we thank you for remaining available on Slack to extend the discussions with the participants. You can also share additional resources there, or even if you wish, launch a videoconference with a few selected participants, to exchange more confidential information.

It is on the Festival Slack that all exchanges, contacts, questions, debates will take place … It will be accessible one week before the start of the FIL. Please feel free to use this space to fully enjoy the event.

Your support

You will need a medium to back up your point. Plan a few slides but do not overload them with text: prefer phrases and keywords, and images. You will have the possibility to share more complete documents or to send additional links on Slack.

We’ll let you turn on screen sharing to support your support. However, do not deactivate your webcam! The audience also needs to see you to keep their attention on what you are saying.

For safety, we ask you to send us your support the week before the Festival (before September 16). We can broadcast it from our control room in case of a problem on your side.

If you wish to present one or more videos during your intervention, please let us know and send us the video files or the upstream links. Our management allows us to distribute them in a higher quality than that authorized on GoogleMeet.

Webcam, microphone, framing … a few tips

Since the COVID-19 hit us, we have become accustomed to the uneven technical qualities of videoconferences, and have sometimes taken bad habits. Here are some technical tips to showcase your words and keep the attention of festival-goers from afar.

On your computer, close non-essential applications. Turn off notifications. But keep the festival Slack open.

Keep your phone near you (in silent mode) and record the phone numbers of the organizers (which we have sent you by email). If your connection is cut, we will call you. Our control room allows you to integrate the sound of a telephone conversation, and we will take care of displaying your slides in the image, as well as your photo.

The sound

If you use the internal microphone of your computer or webcam, it will be sensitive to surrounding noise. In this case, it is best to avoid open spaces. Conversely, if you are in an empty room, the echo will be heard and make it difficult to understand what you are saying.

To avoid these problems, ideally you would need a Lavallier microphone plugged into a usb sound card. You can also use a headset if it is compatible with your device.

The image

Your webcam needs a lot of light to transmit a good image. You will get the best light when facing a window (but not in front of it, which produces backlighting).

The ideal setting for a video conference is not a blank wall to stick your seat against. So as not to give off that prison feeling, leave some space behind. Do not hesitate to show your work environment (the open-space of an editorial office, a TV or radio studio, a view of the sea or of snow-capped peaks. Make us dream …

Also, be careful not to let “too much air” above your head. To avoid low dives, place your webcam at your eye level. If you’re using a laptop, you can rest it on a stack of books so that the webcam lens is at the correct height.

Let’s look each other in the eyes!

To capture the attention of people in a conference room, you know, you have to meet their eyes. In videoconferencing, if you are looking at your screen, it is the stomach of the other party that you are staring at. To look him in the eye, you have to turn to the lens of your webcam (which doesn’t prevent you from looking at his screen from time to time). It might seem a little overwhelming at first, but it’s so much more enjoyable for your audience.

Your internet connection

The quality of your internet connection will obviously have an impact on the quality of the transmission. Wifi is our friend, but there is nothing more reliable than a wired connection (RJ45 cables). If you still have this type of socket on your computer, do not hesitate to connect it to your box or your network wall socket.

Test, test and test again

We have sent you an invitation to test your connection and carry out technical wiring with you. Thank you for taking these 10 to 15 minutes to do this test with us.

Congratulations, you have read this entire manual (tedious like all manuals). Now the floor is yours ! We hope you will enjoy sharing your experiences!