A global all-hands looks simple from the audience's side — leadership talks, slides appear, people watch. Behind it is a specific sequence of things a producer checks off well before anyone joins the call. Here's roughly what that list looks like.
Before the day
- Confirm which segments are live and which are pre-recorded, and lock the wording on anything scripted
- Test every remote presenter's camera, audio, and connection — not just "can you hear me," a real check with notes
- Confirm the slide deck arrives as a clean feed, not a shared screen someone might accidentally cover with a notification
- Test the connection and backup path at every physical location involved, including satellite offices
- Rehearse handoffs between presenters, especially any remote-to-in-room transition
On the day
- Arrive early enough to fully re-test everything that was checked in advance — connections change
- Confirm the Q&A intake is live and being monitored before the broadcast starts
- Do a final audio check with every presenter, including anyone joining last-minute
- Confirm the backup recording is running independently of the live stream
- Brief the in-room host on timing, remote hand-offs, and what to do if something goes wrong
During the broadcast
- One person dedicated to watching connection health and stream quality, doing nothing else
- One person moderating and curating incoming questions
- A clear, quiet way for the producer to communicate with presenters without it being visible or audible to the audience
- A rehearsed fallback for any remote segment that's flagged as a risk — a phone line, a pre-recorded version, or a plan to skip and return to it
After
- Confirm the recording saved correctly and is accessible for the archive
- Pull any clips or highlights while the context is still fresh
- Note what worked and what didn't for the next one — every broadcast makes the next one better if someone writes it down
The takeaway
None of this is complicated in isolation. What makes an all-hands broadcast reliable is doing all of it, every time, rather than assuming the parts that went fine last time will go fine again without checking.
See town hall live streaming for how we run this end to end.