Organize an Online Conference Single-Handedly with Automation

When was the last time you organized a party? Even with friends, you need schedules to be synced; games acquired; and food cooked, bought, or brought. Music has to hit all the right notes (bad pun intended), too.

That's a fair amount of stress and effort—and just for friends, too. Now instead of this friendly shindig, imagine organizing a five-day online conference, with over 50 speakers.

Ryan Robinson, a content marketing consultant, and Steli Efti, founder and CEO of Close.io wanted to interview the best minds in sales. From best-selling authors to CEOs, Ryan and Steli created the Inside Sales Summit. Kicking off on November 13th, the online summit brings together over 50 sales experts. Interviews will cover lead generation, customer motivation, and sales process strategy.

To make this virtual conference a reality, Ryan had to coordinate calendars, schedule interviews, and edit videos. The manual work piled up. But with app automation tool Zapier, Ryan found a way to connect his apps, save time, and put the focus back on the summit.

Automatically Create and Add Video Meetings to Your Calendar

Scheduling interviews is a time vortex, where productivity disappears underneath the surface. First, your interviewee has to agree to an interview. If they're game, you move on to coordinating calendars. And after you both find a time that works, you have to create a calendar invite. And if your interview is recorded? Now you have to add a Zoom link.

Productivity, meet the vortex. Vortex, meet productivity.

Ryan found his way out of the vortex with a few apps. They were already using video chat tool Zoom to record the interviews. With scheduling app Calendly, Ryan's team sent interviewees a link to his calendar. The interviewee then picks a time for their call. With the back and forth cut out, now Ryan needed to connect Zoom and Calendly.

With Zapier's automation, Ryan built a Zap—a bridge between two or more apps—to save hours every week. When an interviewee selects a time in Calendly, Zapier creates a Zoom meeting instantly.

Now Ryan needed a way to add that new Zoom meeting to the interview event. With another Zap, Ryan creates a detailed Google Calendar event every time a new Zoom meeting is made.

With these two Zaps, Ryan and his crew removed the manual process of creating events and meetings. If you spend any time at all scheduling meetings, give these Zaps a try.

Upload Videos to Wistia Instantly

As Ryan conducted the interviews, he saved the videos to Google Drive. To edit and prep the raw recordings for release, Ryan chose Wistia to host the videos. With Wistia, they could edit each interview, add effects, and give the videos a home ahead of the summit.

Instead of manually uploading each video from Google Drive to Wistia, Ryan again looked to Zapier to automate the process. Every time they upload a new interview to Google Drive, Zapier immediately sends it to Wistia. Once in Wistia, Ryan's team puts the magic touch on each one.

Whether you have an interview, a skit, or a product highlight, Zapier will do the manual work for you with this Zap.

"These Zaps save us anywhere from two to four hours every week," Ryan says. With all that saved time through automation, Ryan expanded his outreach, bringing more experts to the Inside Sales Summit.

Presented by Close.io, the summit is free to attend and is happening from November 13th through November 17th.

All images courtesy of Inside Sales Summit.