Recently I presented a session at a great virtual community event. The event team did a fantastic job of organizing a free event with over a dozen tracks of awesome content and over 1,000 registered attendees! That’s an amazing feat and frankly something that would be nearly impossible for a free community event to pull off in person. For my part, I put together a new session that I’d been wanting to do for a while on parsing data structures in Power Automate.
As I was getting ready to join the Microsoft Teams Meeting for my session I noticed they were recording the sessions. Immediately I asked the organizers to please not record my session. It was brand new and I was hoping to tweak it and submit it elsewhere, so I really wasn’t ready to have it recorded. They obliged without hesitation and my session ended up going well I thought.
Then it struck me, it really is a huge disservice to everyone for sessions to be recorded for free virtual events. I very much urge these events to not record the sessions and I urge speakers to ask that their sessions not be recorded. I want to be clear; I’m not criticizing any event or pointing fingers. Recording sessions sounds like a great idea and it’s so easy to do. I just think we need to understand the full impact of what that means.
You may think I’m overreacting (I mean I NEVER do that), but please give me a moment to try and explain my thoughts on why you should not be recording these sessions.
It hurts the speakers
As speakers, we typically have 4-5 sessions that we can pull out and do at a moments notice. In most instances we’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating these sessions and many of us have hopes of presenting our sessions at major events like Microsoft Ignite or other major paid for events. Many times, speakers will use these free events to try out new content to see how they land with attendees and to help make sure we always have fresh content they can submit.
So, how does recording these sessions hurt speakers? Well, if the session that these speakers have put so much time and effort into are suddenly available for free for people to watch whenever they want, why would any conference (especially conferences that charge for attendance) choose that session for their event? They simply won’t. Why would a typical attendee pay a premium to attend a conference when a large part of the exact same content from the same speaker is available online for free?
Recording sessions at free events drastically reduces the chances that another event will choose that session. In fact, some of the conferences I submit sessions to even ask if the session is available for free online. I expect more conferences to start asking this question.
Recording sessions at free events devalues the speaker’s intellectual property.
It hurts the community
Part of the greatness of these free community events is that you get to interact with the community, build relationships, and grow in your career. However, when you record all the sessions for the event it enables people to register, NOT participate in any way and still get all the content.
Virtual events are becoming more and more prolific, and people are getting used to watching these recorded sessions at some point after the event. After all, there’s a lot of content! You don’t want to miss anything! Plus, work gets in the way and maybe you can’t attend all the sessions you were planning to. So, recording the sessions and watching it may sound like a no-brainer?
However, by allowing people to watch these sessions later, it means they aren’t active during the event. They aren’t asking questions. They aren’t meeting people and they aren’t engaging at all with sponsors. Sponsors are having a hard enough time trying to figure out how to get the most bang for their buck in this new virtual world, enabling people to not engage in the event is only going to make it harder for sponsors and we’ll start to lose them.
Do not record your sessions at free events.
It hurts other events
But wait a second! If there are 14 tracks there are going to be SO many sessions that I want to attend but can’t?!? That’s not fair! Well… maybe you can get a refund… oh… wait…
By recording all of the sessions, that means attendees are less likely to attend other events that are offering a lot of the same content that they can watch recorded for free… whenever they want. Why sign up for another event? Well, if you DON’T record your sessions that encourages the attendees to attend OTHER free virtual (or paid) events that are offering the content they missed.
So, if you do miss one of those sessions, look for the next event. There are a lot out there and they are virtual!
What about recording sessions at paid events?
I’m totally okay with sessions being recorded at paid events. The attendees actually paid money to attend these events and they SHOULD get something extra for that payment. In addition, the potential number of people watching these recorded sessions is much smaller so the content is not getting saturated online for free. It doesn’t create the same problem at all.
Just don’t do it
Yes, I know we have the technology to easily record sessions now thanks to amazing tools like Microsoft Teams. It literally takes the click of a button. Yes, attendees clamor for recorded sessions and will complain when they can’t get them, but some attendees will always complain about something.
Before you click on that record button though, think about the larger impact it may have. Organizers, if you plan to record sessions, I implore you to add a question to your session submission forms “Is it okay if we record your session” and respect the speakers’ wishes. Speakers, I encourage you to request that your session not be recorded when you are presenting at one of these free virtual events. Don’t devalue your content!
The growth of virtual events has been one of the few silver linings of the pandemic and they are opening up so many doors of learning to so many people that didn’t have these opportunities before. It looks like virtual events aren’t going anywhere soon, but let’s do what we can to make sure these events can survive, thrive, and that the content and speaker’s efforts are properly valued.
11/16 Update
I’ve had a lot of tremendous feedback and conversations about this blog post on both Facebook and Twitter (isn’t it strange that no one actually comments on blog posts anymore?). Anyway, a lot of great points have been brought up so I wanted to capture them here for posterity.
New speakers vs experienced speakers
Overwhelmingly it seems that “seasoned” speakers agree that these sessions should not be recorded, whereas those who don’t speak much or are new to speaking don’t mind at all. This actually makes sense to me. Those of us who speak a lot and have a “brand” would like more control over our IP while those who are trying to get their name out there or who don’t really place an emphasis on speaking and opportunities may either not care if sessions are recorded or even want them recorded to increase their exposure.
Microsoft and sponsor sessions
Microsoft speakers and sponsors want their content out there and in front of as many eyes as possible. Plus, Microsoft wants to make sure their sessions can reach people in other time zones. Makes total sense
There is a happy middle
Everyone seems to agree that regardless the content shouldn’t stay around forever and become stale. One option would be to “time box” the session recordings and make them available for a limited time so that attendees can replay sessions or catch sessions they missed. I do like this with the caveat that only people who actually registered for the event have access to the content.
Another option would be to provide the recordings directly to the speaker so that the speaker can upload those videos to their YouTube channel or some other location to share the video from and provide that link to the event. This allows the speaker to “own” their IP but still allow the events to promote it.
A couple of sensible options.
No matter where you stand on the issue I do encourage you to give speakers the option of having their session recorded or not and speakers think about requesting that your session not be recorded (or request that the recording only be available for a short time) if you value being able to own your IP or present the session at other events.
Thanks so much for all the great feedback!
Love the update! I totally agree with setting a timeframe to the recordings. A must is the registration and the interactions within the session. Most do take it for granted since the session will be recorded.
Always stirring up trouble, Mark. 😉
I agree that speakers should be given the option to have their session recorded or not. A session recording is like sharing your slide deck: sometimes you’re happy to share it, other times you want to hold onto your IP for a while. Had this discussion with several ESPC20 speakers — since it was a paid event, registered attendees have access to the recordings for a limited time (I think 120 days). For a paid event, exclusivity of content is critical — otherwise why pay for anything? I believe the program team is reaching out to speakers to ask whether they would like their recordings to become available after that lock out period, with about half of those I spoke with against having their session recording shared publicly.