Corporate awards night photos: consent, the big screen and the morning-after email

What makes awards night photos different?

An awards night is a work event that behaves like a party. The official photographer gets the winners on stage with the trophy. Everything else happens at the tables: the shortlisted team who did not win and cheered anyway, the CEO on the dance floor at eleven, the client who came as a guest. Those are the photos people share on Monday, and they are on a few hundred phones.

It is also an evening with a reputation to look after. Colleagues, clients, sponsors and sometimes the trade press are in the room, the screen behind the stage is very public, and by midnight not every photo is one you would put on it. So the questions are always the same three: how people agree to their photos being shared, who decides what is shown, and what happens next.

How do attendees consent to sharing their photos?

Before their first upload, every guest is shown a short notice saying exactly what will be stored and shown, and that record is kept with their contribution. Under Mosaikin’s Privacy Notice, a guest’s photos and messages rest on that consent, which they can withdraw. Attendees are not asked for an email address, are not given an account and are not signed up to anything. See What information does Mosaikin hold about me as a guest?

• Sharing is the attendee’s choice. On the upload screen, Make photo public is on by default. Turned off, a batch goes only to you and your moderators, not the shared gallery. See What does “Make photo public” do?
• The people in a photo have a say too. Every photo carries a Report link that works without an account, with a reason for exactly this: “It shows me or someone else without permission”. The report reaches your review queue. See I appear in a photo I did not want shared
• Location data is stripped from every photo before it is stored, and no facial recognition is used anywhere in the product.

What your organisation does with the photos afterwards, in an intranet story, a sponsor’s report or a recruitment page, is your own use, and your own privacy notice and staff policies apply to it. A line in the joining instructions saying the album exists and how it will be used is good practice.

Who decides what reaches the big screen?

The live slideshow runs on whatever drives the screen and shows each photo moments after it is published. Every photo passes a safety check first, and anything the check is unsure about waits for a person. For an awards night, add a second layer:

• Switch on Require approval. Nothing reaches the gallery or the screen until someone on your team publishes it. See What does “Require approval” actually change?
• Name an editor for the evening. Invite one or two colleagues as moderators, each with their own sign-in. They approve, hide and delete; only the event owner changes settings or billing. See What can a moderator do?
• Work the queue in batches. Tick up to fifty photos and approve them together; any photo the check flagged is left to approve on its own. See How do I approve or hide several photos at once?
• Hide is instant. A hidden photo leaves the screen at once, even mid-slide, and stays with you.

Put the winners first by pinning them. Up to six pinned photos sit at the top of the gallery and lead the highlight reel. See What does pinning a photo do? For the room, the venue and the hardware, a social wall without social media covers the set-up.

Who should be able to open the album?

For most awards nights, protected: anyone with the link is asked for the event access code first, which you print on the table cards. For an internal event, private opens only for you, your moderators and attendees who have joined with the code; the link on its own shows nothing. See What do the three privacy settings mean?

You can change it whenever you like, and the change applies at once, even to people who already have the link. A common pattern is protected on the night and private a week later. See Can I change the privacy setting after the event?

What goes in the morning-after email?

Mosaikin never emails your attendees; it holds no address for them. The morning-after email comes from you, to your own list, which is how a thank-you should arrive. Keep it short:

• One line of thanks, and the winners’ names.
• The album link, with the access code if it is protected, and an invitation to add any photos still on people’s phones. The album stays open.
• The highlight reel. On an upgraded event, an MP4 built from the published photos, led by the ones you pinned. Send it, or play it at the next all-hands. See What is the highlight reel?
• How to ask for a photo to come down. One sentence pointing to the Report link, or to you.

Before you send it, run Auto-Hide Bad Photos to clear the blurry and dark ones, check the queue is empty, and generate the reel. On an upgraded event, download every photo as one ZIP, cleaned of camera metadata, and the attendees’ feedback as a PDF, for the marketing team. See What is in the photo archive?

Each event is a single payment, starting at Premium £89, with nothing recurring. For several events a year or work for clients, see corporate events on Mosaikin and pricing.