Webinar Wire

How Do First Timers See Web Conferencing?

Alison Hall at MeetingsNet has written a long piece introducing the concepts and applications of web conferencing for meeting planners and organizers. It is an overview of the industry, so she covers quite a bit of material in many different areas.

She quoted me several times in the article, but despite my brilliant insights (boiled down to one-sentence sound bites, as is usual in such pieces), that's not the main reason you should read it. We in the industry need to see how the concepts are understood by and presented to the lay community.

I think she did a nice job of getting lots of input from a variety of vendors and users, with pointers to applications of the technology in several areas. Take a look!

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Do Your Webinars Stink?

Doug Sohn at the American Management Association sent me a link to a fantastic article in the current digital issue of Chief Learning Officer. Allison Rossett, Ed.D. has written a long article entitled What Stinks About Webinars?

Allison asked two "webinar addicts" to track and report on their impressions of many different web presentations over the course of several weeks. The women pointed out the benefits of being able to get a quick, convenient overview on a topic of interest.
But they both found that the majority of the webinars they sat through were poorly created or delivered.

They said that some webinars seem to exhibit no planning or organization. Others relied on monotonous recitation from a script. Some did not deliver the promised content. They wanted more interactions, more time for Q&A, and more human empathy in the presentation. They also related difficulties in accessing recorded versions of events.

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Conquering the Fear of Public Speaking through Webinars

Americans are more scared to speak in public than they are of dying. In fact, public speaking is the number one fear for most Americans, surpassing even the fear of death.

According to the book, “Confident Public Speaking,” approximately 75 percent of people suffer from the fear of speaking in public, which negatively affects careers and success in life.

Many speakers find it difficult to calm their nerves enough to smoothly deliver a message in front of an audience. However, an overlooked, but effective solution is Webinars.

A 2007 survey by Frost & Sullivan found that nearly 50 percent of executives rarely or never use any type of conferencing. But when asked if their company is equipped with a group or conference room system, over 70 percent of respondents reported they had one.

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The Fourth Part of CAPP - Provider

Last in a four part series:

Ok, we’ve almost made it to the end of mastering CAPP. Let’s now spend some time talking about service Providers and what you need to know before choosing your platform.

Google the words webinar or web meetings and you’ll get plenty of vendors showing up in your search results. The vendors at the top and right side of the page paid the most for the search term you entered, and while they occupy desirable real estate in your browser, it doesn’t mean they are the right webinar solution for you.

While many webinar providers exist, the good news is that means the business is a vibrant competitive space. Competition drives innovation and price... That’s good for all us users. But it can also make the decision of which solution to use a daunting one. Here we’ll summarize some of the key things to consider and I’ll give you a recommendation based on my own experience. But you should also ask colleagues and other associates if they use a provider and get their feedback.

The top of the consideration list should be ease of use.

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Time Is On Our Side

"I'm hoping our culture changes to the point that we all recognize the value of time and do more virtual collaboration."

That's from an article in Computerworld, written by John Halamka, the CIO at CareGroup Healthcare System, CIO and associate dean for educational technology at Harvard Medical School, chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network, chair of the national Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, and a practicing emergency physician. Think using his time effectively might possibly be a concern?

He used the quote in context with requests to give presentations for education, communication, and collaboration. He said that a conference call, WebEx meeting (genericizing that term... watch out!), or videoconference is a great use of his time, while sitting in an airport for half a day because of a canceled flight is not. Hey... your flight doesn't have to be canceled to waste a half day, what with shuttle buses, security lines, gate delays, and hub-and-spoke routing. The time spent tangential to "wheels up" time is likely to be more than the flight time anyway!

We're seeing some interesting confluences of pressures legitimizing and rationalizing remote conferencing for people that previously shied away from it. It's not just a question of time... Now we have convenience issues, frustration/annoyance issues, privacy issues, cost issues, and ecological issues passing the tipping point for many businesspersons.

I haven't seen independent research or statistics on the subject, but my anecdotal experiences and chats with contacts at many web conferencing providers indicate that we are seeing a spike in business across the board. And that's just my familiarity with the US market. International use has nowhere to go but up. Wainhouse Research today put out a press release summarizing their study on conferencing futures for the Asia Pacific market. They see opportunities for another $6 billion in audio conference revenues and $1.3 billion in web conference revenues.

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The Third Part of CAPP - Presenter

3rd in a four part series: 

In our previous article, we discussed how to get your Audience to attend and the importance of keeping them engaged during your webinar. Now let’s turn our attention to the next component of CAPP, Presenter.

Attention all presenters…remember the three fundamentals of adult learning…tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them.

Presenters need to own the show. It’s a good idea to script out your opening and closing remarks so you get off to and finish with a strong webinar performance. Presenter confidence and delivery can make the difference very early on if your attendees stay on or drop like flies. All presenters should rehearse on their own and then as a group so that everyone is comfortable, the delivery is crisp and the transitions from speaker to speaker are seamless. Everyone must know their role, content and any navigation in advance.

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Webinars As A Career

I just saw this job listing on Monster.com for an International Webinar Manager. Very cool. This is the first time I have seen a job title and description focused solely on management and production of corporate webinars. And by coincidence, the company is about a half hour drive from my home! If only I needed a new job...

Have you seen enterprise job openings for webinar professionals? Are you a dedicated webinar professional yourself? I would love to profile a business professional who works full time on web seminars for his or her company. Write to me through Webinar Wire.

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Presence on Webinars

Webinars are weird things. The attention of the participants must be held by the speaker with no visual reference. Speakers cannot know if participants are asleep, bored or enraptured. They cannot make eye contact to hold the attention of their listeners; they cannot emphasize with their body language and hands; they cannot build excitement with their posture or props.

What can they do? Speakers still have their most important tool at their disposal - their voice. Webinar speakers have to learn how to use their voice to capture the attention of their listeners. Inflection, pitch, articulation and rhythm are all important considerations when conducting a web seminar.

Thankfully there is help. There are voice coaches out there, like Jennifer Thomas, who will help you refine your voice to help capture your audience and keep their attention. This is critical, as nothing is more boring than listening to a speaker drone on as they read directly from their slides.

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How To Promote A Webinar

Now there's a topic I can heartily recommend! How to promote webinars and drive attendance is one of the most common questions I get asked. ReadyTalk just announced a free public webinar on the subject, with guest speaker Shannon Cherry ("The Power Publicist"). I am unfamiliar with Ms. Cherry and her work, but I plan to watch on August 6 and see if I can pick up any new pointers. As they said in Animal House... Knowledge Is Good.

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The Second Part of CAPP - Your Audience

2nd in a four part series:

So you have compelling webinar content that will create value for your attendees and leave them better off having attended your event.

Now you have get attendees, your audience TO your webinar. This is all about marketing. Remember, your potential audience isn’t sitting around hoping you’re going to come up with a great webinar they just have to attend. There are lots of ways to promote your event from you website, direct mail, newsletters and so on.

It’s a good idea to use a variety formats so you can message in different ways.

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