I’ve been a PR professional and journalist for decades, working with words and ideas to communicate important, often complex, ideas to my fellow humans.

Never in a million years did I think I’d be producing, running, and hosting virtual programs, sometimes as many as four per week, that would be attended by hundreds of on-line participants. 

But that, my friends, is exactly what happened.

Problem: In March 2020, as the director of public programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum, I was looking forward to a full year’s schedule of in-person author talks at the historic house museum – a writer’s home, and a home for writers, as I dubbed it.

Solution: When it began becoming clear that COVID-19 would make it unsafe and unwise to continue offering those talks in person, I made it my business to teach myself to move the author talks to a virtual platform. On April 13, I became one of the first in the Connecticut arts and culture community to host, and manage, a virtual program on a platform other than Zoom. 

Since then, I’ve run and hosted nearly 150 virtual events. Most have gone smoothly; one or two have been nightmares! Very few have proceeded without at least a minor technical hiccup. But they’ve all been fun and exciting and rewarding, and they helped keep the museum in the public eye during a time when it wasn’t able to offer its signature guided house tour – its major revenue source, and its primary way of interacting with the public. The virtual programs I staged kept the museum’s existing audiences engaged, attracted new audiences from all over the world, and yielded tens of thousands of dollars in donations to the private, nonprofit organization.

I’m very proud of the virtual work I did for Mark Twain and his house before I left in December 2021 to launch Jennifer LaRue Communications. And I’d be proud to help you with your virtual programming, which, even as we move past the pandemic, will continue to play a vital role in our personal and professional lives.