With another successful Security Field Day event in the books, it’s always important to look back at what was top of mind for the presenters during the event. We focus on the slides and the questions and the way that everything looks on the published videos. However, there is more to Tech Field Day than just Powerpoint and presentation skills. What did our presenters think about the other parts of the Field Day experience that matter?
Impact of the Interactive Format
Tech Field Day isn’t your average webinar or technical briefing. It’s a unique experience that gives the delegates in the room the opportunity to ask great probing questions and help the presenters tell the best version of their story that they can.
For Jason Dover of Kemp, the value of the format is the feedback that the delegates can give in real time. If you’re presenting to a passive audience that isn’t really engaging, it can be hard to tell if the message you’re trying to deliver is landing as you want. With the delegates at an event like Security Field Day, you get immediate feedback about how the demo is going or how clear the messaging is around a specific topic. You don’t have to hope that the audience is getting it because the audience will tell you.
Chris Kent of HashiCorp was a big fan of the experts that make up the delegate group at the event. Because the delegates are invited guests that have to meet specific criteria, you can rest assured that the faces that you see in the live streaming video represent the best and brightest in their fields. You don’t have to worry that they don’t understand the technology or that they aren’t going to see how things look through the mind of a practitioner. The experts that ask the best questions are there because they know exactly how it works and how it needs to be presented.
Making Content Work for You
The amount of content that gets created during an event like Security Field Day has a significant amount of opportunities to be used by a presenter. Some enjoy sharing the videos with their community and helping potential customers see the journey that technology can enable for their users.
Kate Adam of Juniper Networks has another great use for the videos that are created during the event. She shares that they use the videos from Tech Field Day events as internal training resources for their field engineers. Not only does the highly technical discussion help the people in the field understand what’s being launched, but the questions that the delegates ask are often the same as those that might be asked by potential customers. This is especially true given the delegates’ nature as practitioners at customers or partners.
Break Out of the Mold
One of the biggest highlights of Field Day virtual sessions over the past year has been the post-presentation breakout sessions. The opportunity for the presenters to get direct, honest feedback from the delegates cannot be underestimated as a tool for improvement, both in presentation skills or product features.
Kate Adam really enjoyed the feedback session, finding it to be the highlight of the entire session. Even when you think you know the delegates you can learn so much more about them when you get to see them off-camera. Chris Kent loved the honest feedback and the opportunity to hear what everyone thought about their product direction.
Bringing It All Together
Each presenter at Tech Field Day events has something that they like to take away from every presentation. Whether it’s the value of the breakout sessions and honest feedback or how the interactive format allows presenters to shine, Tech Field Day events are special with special people involved. Make sure you check out all the great information about our upcoming events in 2021 by heading over to our website at http://TechFieldDay.com.
