On Feb 12th, I was invited to conduct a webinar by the PMI's (Project Management Institute), Mumbai Chapter. The topic I chose to speak on was Humanizing Technology for Project Stakeholders.
This was my first experience of speaking at a webinar. This one had around 25 participants. The biggest difference I found between a seminar speaker and a webinar speaker was the participants. At a webinar, you are talking into thin air and have no idea that anybody out there can even hear you.
More important, because the interactions are limited and typically at the end of the session, during Q & A, there is no way to modify your presentation or what you;re saying based on the reaction of the participants. To encourage a little more interaction, I had inserted 3 surveys during the presentation. At the time of planning I had thought that this will allow me to decide the direction of the next part of the presentation.
I had no idea at that time, that it was these surveys would be the saving aspect. At periodical intervals of 20 minutes it allowed me to see that a large number of the participants were still awake.
The webinar was scheduled for around 90 minutes and went on for almost 2 hours. So I guess, at least some of the participants really participated. And surprisingly, many felt that the surveys added a lot, since it seemed like they had the same problem I did. They had no idea if the guy at the other end knoew or cared that they were participating.
I guess that given the savings in cost and time and the convenience offered, webinars are likely to be the future of seminars and conferences. Whilst I don't think they will completely replace them in the near future, I do feel that they will substitute for a large number of them and seminars will be reduced to the important ones to be conducted infrequently.
You can view or download a copy of the webinar presentation here.
Along with this, I shared with the participants 2 e-books on project management that I found interesting. You can download them and have a look.
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