TheCorporateCounsel.net

Doug Chia recently blogged his thoughts on how to build a perfect virtual annual meeting. The best thing about the blog is that Doug doesn’t just tell us what he considers best practices for virtual meetings, but also includes screenshots and links to the meetings he highlights so we can see the examples for ourselves.

Many companies are likely to continue with virtual meetings this year, and Doug’s probably attended more virtual meetings as an observer than anyone else I know. So, if you’re working with a company that’s interested in improving the user experience at its virtual meeting, I’d definitely spend some time with this blog. On the other hand, if a company isn’t looking to improve the VSM user experience, well, it probably should be. That’s because Doug says that average virtual annual meeting is pretty from ideal:

Unfortunately, on the whole, the quality of VSMs hasn’t gotten much better since the VSM tsunami of 2020. They continue to be short (average duration has been dropping at a steady clip to well under 20 minutes), perfunctory, and boring. They are almost always audio-only (percentage of companies that used video in 2022 was still in the single digits), with minimal use of imagery or multimedia content, bland management presentations containing no new information, and limited Q&A.

After three years of VSMs, this kind of “let’s just mail it in” approach to them seems to be a missed opportunity for companies to provide a positive engagement experience to a large number of shareholders.  Even if your company can’t afford the technological bells & whistles necessary to achieve VSM perfection, the blog may give you some ideas on how to improve your shareholders’ experience.

– John Jenkins