
Anna Jones interviews Sky UK CEO Stephen van Rooyen after his opening keynote at Streaming at Scale, Sky’s Technology Summit. September 2016
7 Things That Make For A Great Event
Great events don’t just happen. In our experience they are the result of seven key ingredients:
1 Effective planning
- We will work with you to create an event plan which sets out::
- The purpose of the event and its aims
- Who you are aiming this at (the audience), and who you want in the audience (specific individuals and organisations)
- The story you are planning to tell (themes, key messages, tone), and how this flows throughout the entire event
- Planned memorable moments and key audience takeaways
- Post event audience actions (what you want the audience to do next)
- Who is responsible for everything during the planning stages, and on the day
2 Appropriate venue
- Criteria:
- Size – seating capacity; you may need an exhibition space
- Location/ convenience
- Flexibility
- Overall tone
3 Appropriate Chair, Moderator, MC
- There are three types (we can recommend people who fit the bill):
- The professional media presenter
- The subject matter expert
- The ‘celebrity’
4 A well briefed Chair
- Working from script notes, or if necessary, a complete script (which we will write) – printed on branded cue cards

Prof Brian Cox keynote interview with Ray Snoddy, IBC 2014
5 Relevant speakers
- We will brief speakers on the event purpose and aims as well their individual session, and the key points/ messages we want them to get across
- We can help secure excellent speakers, including celebrity speakers
- We can speakers with their presentations
- We can write speeches (including keynotes)

Set for IBC Leaders’ Summit 2014. Chair: Andrew Neil
6 High production values
- Effective staging
- Professional and fully briefed AV team, who are working from a production schedule (we will produce this)
- Clear branding at the event
- High quality AV materials (slides, audio, video, sound effects, music)
- We recommend you have a bespoke animated ‘sting’ to settle the audience at the beginning of each session (we can produce that for you – here is an example)
7 Overall ambience
- The room is easy to find, clearly signposted
- The wi-fi is easy to sign into and works
- The Twitter hashtag has been created, and the timeline has been pre-populated
- Refreshments are what you’d expect