11:00 am ET - Virtually Speaking: How to Inspire When Your Audience is Not in the Room (Judith Humphrey, Author and leadership communications speaker)

Today leaders have a new challenge: reaching teams and partners who work remotely and speaking to them in such a way that they feel engaged and inspired. Meeting this challenge requires a new set of communication skills that this session will explore. Choosing the best medium for communicating is only the beginning. A speaker must also set the “stage,” develop the right kind of script, speak with a strong presence, shun slides that can act as a barrier between speaker and audience, and deliver in an interactive and audience-centered way (even though the audience is not in the room). The goal should be to overcome the “distance” created by the digital divide, and turn others into believers.

12:00 pm ET - Community Building in the Virtual Sphere (Logan Ouelette, Community Builder at Germany's CodeControl)

CodeControl's mission is to support a community of over 650 top digital freelancers from all across Europe by enabling them to realize fulfilling work. Keeping an international community of freelancers engaged and feeling connected both to their core team and each other was already a considerable task before Covid-19, hence the crisis brought about its own unique set of challenges.

But innovation is born out of necessity, and this period also provided them the opportunity to experiment with new tools and engagement formats.

In this talk, Logan will share some of his learnings on creating spaces for online interaction as well as community building in times of social distancing, with a focus on how to deliver value for all your stakeholders.