Welcome to The Connected Convening Playbook
From first idea to final replay: a step-by-step planner for building engaging virtual events
Since 2010, I have hosted or co-hosted virtual events for educators and mission-driven organizations around the world. For many years, I partnered with Steve Hargadon to produce the Global Education Conference and related online events. After 2019, I continued this work independently and launched GLOW, the Global Learning for an Open World Conference, as a reimagined version of the original global education events I co-founded with Steve.
GLOW was followed by the Education Expert Exchange, Thrive, and other virtual gatherings for partners such as the Charter for Compassion. Each event has had its own purpose, audience, and personality, but all of them have been rooted in a shared set of values: accessibility, collaboration, inclusion, and professional generosity.
Back in the early days of these events, we wanted to create a low barrier to entry for both attendees and presenters. We were not trying to build exclusive, highly curated conferences where only the already-recognized voices had a place. We wanted people to be able to show up, contribute, learn, experiment, and connect.
Anyone could present, regardless of their level of experience. Anyone could attend because we generally made the events free. That openness mattered. It created space for educators and others to share ideas before they had polished keynote bios, major platforms, or institutional backing.
Along the way, we learned a great deal about how to structure online events so that people could participate meaningfully. We also watched presenters grow professionally and develop a new sense of confidence after successfully presenting to a global audience. We saw people meet in virtual conference rooms and later collaborate on projects, publications, partnerships, and professional learning opportunities.
Professional generosity fueled these events. People gave their time, shared their work, encouraged one another, and made connections that would not have happened otherwise. It was pure joy to watch these events come to life.
Why This Playbook
This series of posts will be paywalled here on Substack, and I eventually hope to shape them into a book. This effort is my attempt to document the lessons I have learned and the processes I have developed through years of designing, launching, ad producing virtual events.
Virtual events are usually not as wonderful as being together in person. I will be honest about that. There is something irreplaceable about hallway conversations, shared meals, travel, and the energy of being physically present with other people.
But virtual events can still be memorable, useful, empowering, and deeply human when they are designed with care. They can help people gather across geography, time zones, institutions, and financial circumstances. They can make room for voices that might not be heard at expensive face-to-face conferences. They can reduce barriers to participation for people who cannot travel because of cost, caregiving, disability, workload, visas, health, or distance.
I still believe virtual events matter because people need accessible ways to gather online to learn, share, organize, and solve problems together. Not everyone can afford to travel to polished, expensive, face-to-face conferences. Not every worthy presenter has access to those stages. Not every organization has the budget to convene people in person.
Virtual events are not second-rate by default. Poorly designed virtual events are second-rate. Thoughtfully designed virtual events can promote equity of access, surface new voices, build community, and extend learning long after the live sessions end.
Who This Series Is For
The Connected Convening Playbook is for anyone interested in hosting virtual events or refining an existing virtual event model.
It is especially for:
Educators and professional learning leaders
Nonprofit organizations
Consultants and independent professionals
Conference planners and program committees
Community organizers
Association leaders
Schools, districts, colleges, and universities
Mission-driven organizations trying to convene people across distance
My own work is generally education-related, so many examples will come from professional development, global education, teacher learning, nonprofit convenings, and cross-sector events. However, the principles can apply to many kinds of online gatherings.
This series is not intended to be read only in order. Eventually, it will become a fuller playbook that readers can use in pieces. Some people may want help with calls for proposals. Others may need presenter training templates, volunteer roles, platform setup guidance, sponsor planning tools, or post-event follow-up ideas. The goal is to create something practical enough to use, not just inspirational enough to skim.
What Is a Connected Convening?
A connected convening is more than a livestream, webinar, or online meeting. It is a thoughtfully designed virtual gathering that brings people together around a shared purpose, creates opportunities for learning and exchange, and leaves behind relationships, resources, recordings, and momentum.
A connected convening is designed to:
Clarify a shared purpose or challenge
Bring together people with relevant expertise, lived experience, curiosity, or commitment
Create space for learning, dialogue, collaboration, and reflection
Showcase ideas, practices, projects, and resources
Support presenters, participants, volunteers, and partners before, during, and after the event
Extend the value of the event through recordings, follow-up resources, and future opportunities
At its best, a connected convening is not a one-time broadcast. It is a catalyst for community, learning, visibility, and action.
What This Playbook Will Cover
Here is the basic outline I will use as this series develops.
1. Clarify the Convening
Before choosing a platform or announcing a date, hosts need to define the purpose of the event. This includes identifying the audience, desired outcomes, event model, access and pricing approach, staffing needs, budget, and measures of success.
2. Design the Experience
A strong virtual event is designed around the participant experience. This includes themes, strands, session formats, live and asynchronous options, networking opportunities, sponsor visibility, accessibility, and the overall journey people will have before, during, and after the event.
3. Build the Program
This section will focus on calls for proposals, proposal forms, review rubrics, rolling acceptances, presenter self-scheduling, session formats, public schedules, and program balance. This is one of the most important parts of a participatory virtual event.
4. Prepare the People
Virtual events depend on people, not just platforms. This section will cover conference committees, volunteers, moderators, presenters, sponsors, partners, and communication rhythms. Clear roles and expectations prevent confusion later.
5. Set Up the Platform
The platform should support the event’s purpose. This section will cover platform selection, registration, landing pages, agendas, session spaces, exhibitor or partner areas, networking tools, recordings, replay access, and attendee testing. I will include a dedicated section on RingCentral Events because it is the platform I use most often for larger virtual conferences.
6. Launch and Produce the Event
Launch week and live production require clear systems. This section will include attendee instructions, presenter reminders, command center planning, run-of-show documents, stage production, breakout monitoring, troubleshooting, no-show plans, and daily debriefs.
7. Extend the Impact
The event does not end when the final session closes. This section will focus on recordings, replay access, thank-you emails, certificates, sponsor reports, evaluation surveys, analytics, lessons learned, content repurposing, and future community-building.
The Seven-Phase Connected Convening Framework
The playbook is organized around a seven-phase framework:
Clarify — Define the purpose, audience, outcomes, format, access model, staffing needs, budget, and success measures.
Design — Shape the participant experience, including themes, session formats, networking, accessibility, sponsor visibility, and live or asynchronous participation.
Build — Create the call for proposals, review submissions, approve sessions, manage presenter scheduling, and develop the public program.
Prepare — Support the people who make the event work: presenters, volunteers, moderators, committee members, sponsors, partners, and attendees.
Set Up — Configure the virtual event platform, registration system, event pages, agenda, session spaces, networking tools, recordings, and replay options.
Launch — Open the event, communicate clearly, produce live sessions, support participants, manage problems, and keep the event moving.
Extend — Share recordings, gather feedback, thank contributors, report results, repurpose content, and carry the momentum forward.
A Note on How I Am Writing This
In the spirit of transparency, I want to note that I am using generative AI as part of my writing and development process for this series and eventual book. The ideas, examples, experience, and point of view are my own, grounded in years of producing virtual events. I am using AI to help organize my thinking, polish drafts, speed up the development process, and turn years of informal knowledge into a more useful and readable resource.
I see this as consistent with the spirit of the playbook itself: use the available tools thoughtfully, keep the human purpose at the center, and make the work more accessible to others.
What Comes Next
In the next post, I will start with the first phase: Clarify the Convening. Before building a schedule, recruiting speakers, or setting up a platform, every host needs to answer a few essential questions:
Why are we gathering?
Who is this for?
What should people leave with?
What kind of event can we realistically produce well?
Those questions sound simple, but they determine almost everything that follows.
I hope you find this series useful, whether you are planning your first online gathering or refining an event model you have used for years. I look forward to sharing what I have learned, including what has worked, what has not, and what I would do differently now.
Virtual events can be frustrating, messy, and imperfect. They can also be generous, accessible, creative, and powerful. When designed well, they help people find one another, learn from one another, and build something that lasts beyond the live event.
That is the promise of a connected convening.
AI transparency note: I use generative AI to help draft, polish, organize, and sometimes create images for this series. The ideas, lived experience, and final editorial choices are my own.