Speaker Stranded and Can't Make it to your Meeting? Skype to the Rescue!

Recently I had a conference here in Austin that had multiple speakers from all over the US. The day before our conference started, a large storm hit the northeastern US and several of my speakers were unable to fly out of their destination. Rather than scrambling to replace them on the program, we met with our onsite AV team at the hotel and arranged to Skype them in. We already had large screens, laptop and an LCD projector in the room. It simply required wired Internet access in the meeting space, and a couple of additions to the AV Equipment order. The AV technician had a Skype account and each speaker had a Skype account. We made sure to Skype the night before to make sure it worked on both ends and to iron out any kinks in advance. It was a lifesaver and so easy to do!