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I’ve done considerable work with online
seminars. I’ve given them, and I’ve consulted to clients who were interested
in giving them. Here’s a quick compilation of some of the things I’ve learned.
Computer-mediated meetings are very different from in-person meetings in many
ways. An exciting and successful in-person seminar does not translate directly
to an online seminar…it must be redesigned and reworked so that it fits the
new medium.
First, unless you have the bandwidth for full duplex live videoconferencing,
and all of the attendees in your meeting do, too, you can’t be seen. If you do
set up videoconferencing, it is different from the way you are seen on stage
in a meeting room or in a hall. You are a tiny little picture on a box. Think
about what that means to “stage presence.”
Most online seminars work using a seminar or meeting client, like Placeware or
Webex, or their several competitors, and a conference call audio link. You can
either use one provided by the meeting client provider, or provide your own
conference call linkup. Obviously, the success of the seminar revolves around
how good your link is, and how clear. This is essential for multinational
seminars, where the quality of telephone service may not be as good in some
places as it is in North America.
The seminar client is set up to emulate a conference room, with virtual
“seats” and so on…and “emulate” is right. You cannot see the presenter,
normally, nor can you see the other attendees. Conversation with them, and the
presenter, is often done by typing into a "chat client". Often, attendees are
not familiar with the rules, and how to use the tools, and this can be a
problem, too.
Most of the visual cues that keep and direct the audience’s attention are
missing…and you, as presenter, cannot tell when somebody puts you on hold and
goes to the bathroom.
I’ve evolved some specific techniques for taking an in-person seminar and
converting it to “play well” online. Some of these include making your points
clearer, making your slides simpler, and finding electronic analogues for
those gestures and facial expressions your audience cannot see.
One of the most important of these techniques is to increase the level of
interactivity in an online seminar from that normal in an in-person seminar.
In many seminars, people sit in the dark listening until the Q&A period. You
cannot run a web seminar that way. People will begin signing off. Or they will
leave the screen, or they will start doing something else, and “sorta be
listening” to the audio. You’ve lost them.
I’ve even been able to take a complete neophyte client, who had no online
experience other than email, and teach him proper online seminar techniques.
We started out by looking at his business model, and deciding what sort of
online seminars he wanted to do. Then we looked at the meeting client
providers, and selected the one best suited to his business model. Then I
reworked his presentation with him, slide-by-slide, comment-by-comment, and
point-by-point so that it fit the online seminar medium. Finally, I sat in
with him on his first several seminars doing the technical effects and being
able to “rescue” him if he got lost. Now he regularly does online seminars on
his own.
Online seminars can either be the most boring, kiss-of-death, horrible time
wasting thing you can do to your staff or your clients…or they can be vibrant,
immediate, participatory, and community-creating tools to further your
business, online.
It is all in how you do it.
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Walt Boyes -- MarketingPractice Consultants
walt(at)waltboyes.com
21118 SE 278th Place - Maple Valley, WA 98038
253-709-5046 cell 425-432-8262 home office
fax:801-749-7142 ICQ: 59435534
"Strategic marketing, sales and electronic
business consulting for the small and medium-sized
enterprise: http://www.waltboyes.com"
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