Here are some tips and tricks that you can use for your own events:

• Create a lobby. The lobby can be a chat pod where participants meet and greet each other before the event begins.

• Use PowerPoint animations. Appropriate use of PowerPoint animations can bring an event to life with motion and sound. Don’t add so many, however, that the animations become distracting.

• Incorporate polls into your event. Polls give you instant feedback so you know if your message is getting through and provide an easy way for your audience to actively participate in the event.

• Leverage video assets. If you have appropriate video files, add them to your events. You can publish the video file as FLV from Adobe® Premiere® or After Effects®, open the video in Flash authoring, Sorenson Squeeze, or Flix Pro, and convert to Flash 6 or 7 (Flash 8 cannot be used yet).

• Coordinate carefully between co‑presenters. You can create a presenter-only area, including such items as an agenda with notes and moderated Q & A with no chat among attendees. Consider giving presenters “enhanced participants rights” versus “presenter rights.”

• With all content preloaded, do a dry run before the event, at the same time of day you intend to give the event (network traffic differs by time of day). Use the exact hardware and network connections you plan to use for the real event.