Thank you for being a part REA2021 and helping make this a great meeting for all our participants. We know that our online platform, Run The World, will be new to most of you. We’ve held two sessions to introduce our speakers to Run The World, if you missed them, here is a video from one of those sessions (sorry about the poor lip sync).
The most important things to remember about Run The World are:
- You must use Google Chrome as your browser. Really. Run The World insists on Chrome and as a speaker you will not even be able to join your session with any other browser. You must also give Google Chrome permission to record your screen if you plan to do any screen sharing. In some cases, you may have to restart Chrome after giving it recording permission for that permission to be effective.
- Please come to your session 15 minutes early. There will be a host from REA at every session and we want to be sure that everything is working well for you. If your audio or video are not working, it can take time to troubleshoot. Please give us the time we need by coming early to make sure everything is working.
- Make sure you are in a quiet place. Unlike Zoom, Run The World does not screen out background noises or let you show a virtual background. Plan ahead so you will be in a quiet place for your presentation. Also, please mute your microphone when you are not speaking. In fact, while another speaker is presenting their paper, you may want to mute both your microphone and your camera so that you become “invisible” on stage.
- Upload any videos you plan to share to Run The World. The best way to share a video is to upload it to Run The World. You can visit your session any time, even days ahead of time, to upload any video you plan to show. Do not leave this till the last minute since video files are large and may take some time to upload. Go to the session list on Run The World, find your session and click the “Preview” button, then look for the “Share Video” tool along the bottom of the Run The World window, click it and then click on “Add” to upload your video.
- Practice screen sharing before your session. Screen sharing is a bit different than on Zoom, so give it a try before your session. Go to the session list on Run The World, find your session and click the “Preview” button, then look for the “Share screen” button along the bottom of the Run The World window. You can share your entire screen, a single window (usually the best choice), or a Chrome tab (which is the only option that can also share your computer’s audio, if you click the extra little checkbox to enable that feature).
- Make sure to “Go Live” so your audience can see you. When you first arrive in your session you will be backstage with the other speakers. You will be able to see and hear each other, but your audience will not be able to see you. In order to be seen by everyone, you will have to click the “Go Live” button at the top of the Run The World window. When you go live, please also ask Run The World to record the session so we can share it with participants in other time zones later. Please do not share the sessions live on Facebook or YouTube.
- Consider alternatives to polls. You cannot prepare polls ahead of time in Run The World, so it can be a bit awkward to use this feature. Consider asking your audience to use the “clap” button along the bottom of the Run The World window to say “yes” and the “laugh” button to say “no” when you want a quick read of the room.
There are a lot of features of Run The World that we did not get into during our brief introduction. If you want to get fancy, feel free to explore the other tools available to speakers in The Speaker Experience video from Run The World, or on their run through of all their interactive features. You might also want to review their speaker troubleshooting advice before your session.