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Why You Should Thank Oprah

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Posted by Ken Molay
February 15 2008 1:30 AM EDT

 14 comments

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Confession: I really don't pay much attention to Oprah Winfrey. But that doesn't mean I'm culturally deaf and blind. The woman has an absolutely massive multimedia empire and a recommendation from her can directly translate to unimagined success for a designer, entertainer, author, actor, or politician (well, maybe... that remains to be seen).

What does this have to do with an article about webinars? I'll tell you. Oprah is hosting a 10-week webinar series and it is shaping up to be the most significant single event our industry has ever seen.

Oprah's latest book club selection is "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle. From March 3 through May 5, Oprah and Eckhart will host a live interactive webcast every Monday night to discuss the book and its concepts.

Yesterday's press release said that in the two weeks since announcing the webinar series, they have received more than 250,000 registrations. I decided to sign up as well and found that first I had to register as a member of Oprah's book club, respond to an email confirmation link, and then register for the event itself. So much for "Extra clicks act as barriers to registration!" To be fair, I assume that most registrants were already members of the book club, in which case registration for the webcast is quick and easy, with no additional signup questions or required surveys.

I'm still trying to find out which technology provider is supplying the services for the event. There are all kinds of interesting questions about planning and staffing to handle a webinar of this size. I saw that the pre-event installation instructions load a media player from Move Networks, which handles TV episode rebroadcasts for quite a few networks. They may be handling the entire series end-to-end or they may just be supplying the underlying video stream mechanism.

Now, why should you thank Oprah for this little exercise in cross-media promotion? The answer can be found in a blog entry I saw on someone's personal journal when I started rooting around for more information on the event. Kelly starts off her article with the following paragraph:

As I was watching the Oprah show this afternoon, I learned about a concept I had never heard of: the webinar. According to Webopedia.com, a webinar is a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Internet. What makes Webinars different from webcasts are their interactive elements. Webinars allow participants to give, receive and discuss information, while webcasts are one-way transmissions of data without interaction between the presenter and the audience.

And she ends with:

I might have to sign up for this webinar just to see what it’s like!

Do you have any idea how powerful and important that statement is? In the course of a few months, Oprah is about to raise awareness of webcasting and web conferencing as a viable communications and collaboration medium in a way that the combined forces of WebEx, Placeware, Microsoft, and Citrix couldn't do with years of marketing and PR.

We have all been "early adopters" so far, trying to impress a new and unfamiliar communications process on our prospective viewing audiences. And now Oprah is telling those audiences that this is a good and trustworthy way to get information. This is a tipping-point made clear.

Of course I'm assuming a few things. The first is that the event will truly be an interactive "webinar" rather than a glorified YouTube streaming video. I love the fact that neophyte Kelly grabbed the difference in the concepts. I'm not really sure how interactive you can get with audiences of more than 100,000 people, but I'd sure like to see them make use of the unique capabilities inherent in the technology. The second assumption is that they will provide a quality experience, unmarred by technical problems that turn people away.

Oh, and for all the Lake Superior State University types complaining about me using the word webinar, you'll have to take it up with Oprah and her viewers now. That's a battle I wouldn't want to fight. I'll leave the final word to a commenter on Kelly's blog:

A Webinar seems like a much better way to go than Blackboard for distance education. Thanks for blogging about this new medium!

The medium may not be new to regular readers of this blog, but the rest of the world is getting ready to join us.

Tags: Webinar, oprah, a new earth, eckhart tolle

  

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Comments:

  • Ken--great post here. No doubt the Oprah effect is about to happen in a big way. (disclosure: I admit it, I am a big Oprah fan myself.) For us at iLinc, this is a fantabulous occurrence, and like you, we are anxious to see the success of the webinar and the Oprah effect at work. You're absolutely right that we in the web conferencing industry are so incredibly close to it. Now that devoted Oprah watchers, including soccer moms and retired folks across the US, will experience their first webinar, there is no telling the impact that will have on making online learning and collaboration more mainstream. Appreciate your continued insight... -Kathy Sacks, iLinc Communications

    Posted by Kathy Sacks, iLinc, http://www.ilinc.com
    3 months ago

  • I agree that unless there is a myriad of technical issues that plague this event, (and I feel that is very unlikely), this will be a huge boost for our industry. I myself am not a big Oprah watcher, but my wife is and it trickles down through the house of course. I will be attending to see the level of interactivity, and technology implemented in this event. Anthony

    Posted by Anthony Russo, Great America Networks Conferencing
    3 months ago

  • Might Citrix be powering it? After all, they did the Dr. Laura webinar with their GoToWebinar service.

    Posted by JR
    3 months ago

  • My wife told me about this, and as soon as she did, I knew it was going to be huge for our industry. Hopefully it will be a positive experience for the hundreds of thousands of people that will participate. Getting everyday people to start talking about it is a huge step in the right direction. Thanks for the updates as always Ken, keep them coming.

    Posted by Jeff Baker, HighRoad Solution, http://www.HighRoadSolution.com
    3 months ago

  • This is a very exciting thing for the industry as a whole. It will certainly open more eyes to the use of this technology.

    Posted by Allen Drennan, WiredRed, http://www.wiredred.com
    3 months ago

  • This will definitely be an interesting event as it marks the possible mainstreaming of this technology. Considering the huge number of attendees, it will be interesting to see what type of streaming technology/provider is being used for this series. Will we look back at this as a defining moment for webcasting, streaming media, and other similar technologies? Maybe. It will be a fun ride.

    Posted by Cece Salomon-:ee, ON24, http://www.ON24.com
    2 months ago

  • Too bad they underestimated the attendance..it was unwatchable and useless

    Posted by Bill
    2 months ago

  • too bad it did not work well. I really wanted to watch it. If anyone can fix it - it will be Oprah.

    Posted by susan
    2 months ago

  • It was really frustrating after anticipating this for so long. By next week maybe Oprah will have the kinks worked out.

    Posted by Mary Ellen
    2 months ago

  • It's a little like every one in a mid-sized city flushing their toilets at the same time. Not to sure even Oprah can handle this one.

    Posted by William McKee
    2 months ago

  • After being disappointed many times with webcast/webinar events that just couldn't handle the number of attendees, I was hoping that if anyone could pull this off it would be Oprah, but her first webcast brought the Internet to its knees. I guess the illusion of worldwide connectivity is still just that, an illusion. What a disappointment on many levels.

    Posted by JR Malin
    2 months ago

  • What a flub. With people all hyped up and excited all over the planet, the show sputters and stalls then finally fades to black.So many disappointed people.

    Posted by PK Robinson
    2 months ago

  • I was so excited for the first 10 minutes. Then the technical problems started. Stall for 20 seconds, live action for 3 seconds, back and forth. I thought it was my connection. I tried another computer and no luck. I'm afraid Oprah has a vision that isn't yet supportable by the current Internet workings. Sad. It will be interesting to see how she'll deal with it.

    Posted by m. griffin
    2 months ago

  • I am relieved to see that many others had problems too. I had read Chapter 1 and completed the workbook and listed my favorite quotes. Just after 7:30 pm, I "took my seat" for the pre-show which ran rather smoothly. I would have been truly surprised for this first run to be problem free, but it was still a huge disappointment to have the video and audio freeze 10-15 minutes into the live event. I sure hope the situation is resolved for the next 9 weeks, but I am skeptical that a site can accomodate 700,000 people at once. Not to mention, anyone that went to www.oprah.com was able to join the webevent even if they hadn't pre-registered. I get that Oprah wants to share the book with anyone who wants to listen, but if those extra new viewers resulted in the meltdown for those of us that did read the book and pre-register, that is even more discouraging. Does anyone know if any company has successfully pulled off a live webinar for 700,000 plus people from around the world?

    Posted by LB
    2 months ago

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