Your Ultimate Guide to: Live Events 2021
It’s not WriteOnCon without live events! We have 42 live events lined up for attendees this year, open to everyone with Full, Extended, or Time Traveler Admission. These take place in real-time and attendees are encouraged to interact with the speaker by submitting questions or comments. This Ultimate Guide will explain how to attend Live Events specifically; if you haven’t done so already, please check out our guide to accessing all events for general conference instructions.
Overview
Live events are accessed through our Live Events page, or by direct links found on our schedule. Only Full, Extended, and Time Traveler Admission attendees can access live events (though everyone can see the event previews). You will need to be logged in to your WriteOnCon account in order to view the events.
Attendees are encouraged to leave a question or comment for the speaker using the comments section on the event page. These will be collected by the event moderator and presented to the speaker; the moderator will filter out inappropriate content/language and may combine duplicate questions.
COMMENTS ARE LIVE-LOADING – you don’t need to reload the page after submitting a comment, so it won’t interrupt your viewing of the event.
If you missed an event while it was live, don’t panic! All live events — both video and text — will be archived for you to catch up on later (you just won’t have the opportunity to interact with our live speaker).
Q&A Events
The post for the event will go up 30 minutes before the event itself goes live. We invite attendees to arrive early and leave some questions to kick the event off.
If you have the event page open, the live event should begin playing automatically. If it does not, please hit play and/or refresh the page as needed. Events will start promptly at their assigned times!
Leave comments on the event page to ask your questions. The moderator for the event will be watching, ready to pass them to the speaker. You’re welcome to ask as many questions as you’d like!
Events run for about 50 minutes. At the end of the session, the speaker will sign off. Some speakers may talk longer or stick around to answer questions in the comments, if they have the time available; however, many of our speakers are squeezing their event into a busy schedule and must vanish once their event is done.
The video will remain up after the event is finished, and you can watch it at any time. If you missed an event live, you can visit the page later and the archived video will be embedded there for viewing. Comments left after the event may or may not be answered by the speaker.
Live Blog Events
These events function much the same as Live Q&As, except that instead of a streaming video, speakers have prepared a blog post on the topic they wish to speak about. This blog post goes live promptly at the assigned event time.
Speakers will be present for the 50 minutes following the start of the event and will answer all questions left in the comments section as they come in, in realtime. Answers will be in the form of written replies left within the comments section itself. Speakers may also swing by again later in the conference to catch any late questions.
Workshop Events
These live events function similarly to live Q&As, with an embedded video that streams automatically at the scheduled start time. However, instead of an open Q&A session, these are short lectures with interactive elements. They will usually begin with the speaker presenting material on the event topic, followed by an opportunity for attendees to try their hand at the elements just taught. Attendees will be invited to share their work with the speaker via the comments section of the event page; the speaker will offer feedback on some or all of the submitted work. Some speakers may choose to do one short talk followed by an extended work period, while other speakers may opt to break the lecture into sections interspersed with shorter work periods to focus on each element discussed. Questions are also encouraged.
Some events may have special instructions for participation; in such cases the instructions will be posted on the workshop event’s page. These pages will go live 30 minutes before the event begins, so you have plenty of time to collect anything you might need, settle in, and be ready for the start of the event. Workshop events run for 50 minutes total.
A Note on Pitch Events
In previous years, we have run pitch events as part of our live event lineup. This year we have opted to record these events in advance and include them among our prepared content – the materials available to attendees with General Admission. We have renamed the pitch events as Feedback Sessions; you can find them on the main conference page or access them directly from the conference schedule.
