But…

As the saying goes, Sometimes the enemy of the best is the good.

Whatever it is…employee on boarding training session, sales demo, marketing presentation, team meeting, project plan review…web conferencing/webcasting/webinars add a powerful dimension to our bag of communication and productivity options.

Do it without a commitment to excellence, however, and you might be the one they’re tweeting about. Example: in recent history I saw a tweet that said, “Webinar: the new waterboarding.”

Time to Think Different.

Background
Recently my friend Mike Kunkle (@mike_kunkle) posted on Facebook “Just favorited ‘How Long Does it Take to Create Learning?’ on Slideshare.

Only half jokingly I commented, “A longer dang time than anybody usually wants to pay for…that’s how long ”

His wise response: “What you said. Even in past internal roles, I’ve often been asked to short-cut the process and favor rapid development techniques that lessen learning effectiveness (I should add that not *all* rapid-dev lessens learning effectiveness, before I am lynched by colleagues in the training community).”

The big problem
In a word, overcommitment.

What to do about it
This is not a self-aggrandizing note…I confess I’m the king of “yes,” even when it kills me. Here’s the problem…this last month I dealt with a life-threatening situation, and while I can’t say for sure that it was a result of working a LOT to meet my commitments, I finally, just this last week, did what I’m going to encourage you to do:

Honor the people that pay.

In other words, when I got a call to speak for a prestigious publication, and their offer price was (waaaay) lower than I found reasonable for what I put into a presentation, I explained thus:

“Speakers, like writers, are a dime a dozen. For every one that’s making a living, if not really kicking ass in their business, there are hundreds who will speak for free. Fortunately, I’m not there, AND YOU DON’T WANT ME TO BE.

Why? Because if I take this gig, I’m going to resent that you want me for nothing, I’m going to not want to put in the hours to deliver you the excellence I want to give (why you want me in the first place), and I’m going to take away precious time from projects where clients are paying me a fair price.”

What to really do about it
The reality is that we each have different situations, and like Mike’s comment above, sometimes you don’t have a choice but to do the best you can within the constraints imposed on you. You can explain, create spreadsheets explaining value, argue analogically that the real work “on the house isn’t putting up a frame and walls so it looks like a house, it’s the finish work.”

But not always. Sometimes you have a choice.

The bottom line
Excellence in the right things is what gets you hired and re-hired. “Good enough” is why the world has a lot of freakin’ noise. Yes, sometimes there are constraints and you do the best you can with what you have, but I’d argue even that is a commitment to excellence. Me? I’m lousy at saying no, but I’m going to get excellent at that, too.

The question is, “Do you know what you’re worth? Such that you’re not willing to settle for less if it’s within your power to do so?”

Views and Reviews
One thing I’ve not done a lot of of late is offer up notes about conferencing companies, but I’ve had requests to offer a few more insights there. In the coming days watch for a couple thoughts about Vidyo and Act Teleconferencing‘s new Teem product. Note that as usual I’ll focus predominantly on the user-experience analysis.

Upcoming webinars
I’ve vacillated on whether to try to post all my public webinars in the blog. I’d love it if you weighed in (blog comment or send me an email: roger at-sign 1080Group-dot-com). Here’s why I go back and forth: unlike many sites, I focus on a communication horizontally…some will be for sales people, others for HR/Learning/Development, yet others for Marketing. Marketing “wisdom” is to segment your list to avoid fatigue and irrelevance, but your RSS or email feed of this blog isn’t that selective. Let me know what you think. Example: next week I’m partnering with Ray Taylor of BI Worldwide to talk about the pragmatics of shortening sales cycles with web conferencing.

Tweetup?
Next week I’ll be visiting a client and vendor in New York City, followed by a private client workshop in Allentown, PA. If you’re in Allentown and have a few folks who might want to connect for food or beverages on the 4th or 5th in those locales (respectively), ping me.

Peace~

Thanks for faithfully making the virtual communications space a better place to be.

Roger

This survey will close soon, but so here’s a closing opportunity to both share (take the survey) and see the results of those who’ve gone before.

Down the road the analysis and report will be published, so stay tuned.

Don’t wait: share and learn why attendees leave webinars

Faithful readers know that I may have a spicy point of view sometimes, but I don’t rant.  I might teeter atop a soapbox once in awhile, but I don’t rant.

Not so today.

This post is the one you wish you could send to your boss.  Or even write in an email if you didn’t think IT was watching.

Dear Executive:

Your webinar presentations suck.

Please know this isn’t an edict about your personality, your ability to run a company, or reference to your mother.  You’re not a bad person.

In fact, despite your achievement, we’re sure you even still think of yourself as a learner. In many ways we’re sure you are.

Now it’s time to learn how to make better webinar presentations.

What your webinar producer wants to say to you:
Just because you can pull off a room in person doesn’t mean you can skip rehearsal. That audio issue you had? Avoidable.

What your design team wants to say to you:
Your slides suck. You used a bullet point to say, “Use digital storytelling with images.” ‘Nuff said. If you have to apologize and explain the chart, you failed.

What your audience wants to say to you:
Don’t tell me to be interactive and then talk at me.

Don’t use a speaker phone because you want to present from a conference room phone like when you have a team conference call. They sound awful, especially over VoIP.

Your energy sounds like you missed an afternoon nap.

And just because you can pull off a room in-person doesn’t mean you can just show up and do the same thing you’ve always done and expect the webinar to be great.  You should have listened to your webinar producer and designer.

Love,

Those who really do want you to rock your webinars

Okay, back to shiny happy Roger next time.  For now I dare you to forward this.

In this recent post, Fortune Magazine notes that the highest video call made to date was from 17000 feet…on Mount Everest!

Users are increasingly mobile

Mobile devices now outnumber PCs, and according to Fortune, total penetration is 76%.  The question isn’t if, but when, you will have webinar attendees joining you from something other than their laptop.

Devices will affect how you design slides and experiences

Quick question:  what’s the optimum font size for presentations viewed on mobile devices?  How will you manage Q&A?  Right.  We’re still working on it, too (but you can bet we’ll be sharing with you how!).

Attention spans will pressure how you develop content

Blah, blah, blah, blah, questions? That’s not usually the best webinar content strategy when you have a legitimate opportunity to spend an hour with someone, let alone if you think that this trend will continue as people increasingly consume content via their phones.

-TheVP

P.S.  Webex doesn’t mention it explicitly when they mentioned having a conversation with one of their own on Everest, but there’s still a big difference between someone attending and presenting from a mobile device.

Don’t webinars suck just like PowerPoint sucks?

Reality:  PowerPoint doesn’t suck, but it often gets used poorly.  Webinars are the same.  Blame for lousy presentations and presentation skills belongs to the presenter, not the tools.

Webinars are easy, right?

Reality:  Web conferencing/casting software service vendors (e.g., Webex, Citrix, Adobe, et al) have done a wonderful job making their software easier to use than ever.  However, managing a project (coordinating people, process, content, marketing, rehearsals), developing killer content, recruiting an audience, adapting learning exercises or creating new ones, and delivering/facilitating in an engaging way are challenging in webinars.  Hey, they’re a challenge in any medium.

Aren’t webinars just a broadcast medium?

Reality:  Start in analog.  Would you go to a seminar and expect never to raise your hand, ask a question, do an exercise?  You might not expect it from a keynote speech or something you know is a lecture, but that’s not most of what we do.  We expect real people connecting with real people.

“Webcasting” started as a broadcast medium and then as markets demanded it, moved toward enabling interaction.  Web conferencing started as a conversational medium (web conferencing added to audio conferencing).  We won’t go into details here, but they still have distinctions that make a difference when choosing a vendor.

Just because many people talk at you in webinars (a web seminar) doesn’t mean that’s a best practice.  Usually, talking at your audience instead of with them is an invitation to have them work on email or something else and give you partial attention…not an optimal way to deliver your message with impact.

All you have to do to engage an audience is push a poll at them, right?

Reality:  Not every person in an audience participates in the same way (in-person or in a webinar), but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not engaged.  The best way to engage people is to be engaging.  It’s your content, your visuals, your voice, your interactions…and the latter might include a poll, but then it might not.  Want to know your success rate?  Measure it by how many took the desired action after your webinar.

Do you think I should just create my slides like I’m going to use for Slideshare and use those?

Reality:  Slide design for on-demand consumption in a slide sharing site and slides for live, aural-visual communications are not the same.  PowerPoint (or Keynote or Prezi or…) can be used as a document designed to be read.  Even a very visual document.  Even a very visual document you post on your favorite social slide sharing site.  (And yes, I do know that Slideshare just launched they’re own conferencing service.)

In an aural-visual communication, sometimes a visual that’s just a picture without the words on it is more powerful.  Sometimes you want the audience to focus on what you’re saying verbally, your voice.  The aural and visual should work together in a complimentary way, and research shows that if someone’s trying to read something while you speak to them “cognitive load” increases and comprehension decreases (i.e., imagine reading a book and trying to have a conversation).

If you really want to make your slides the best they can be, ask yourself if these are to be read (it’s a document!) or heard and viewed (an aural-visual communication).  It’s not likely you can do both at the same time really, really well.  If you could, you’d see lots of bullet points and explanatory text in movies and television.  If you’d like to see how I tackle slide design specifically for webinars, join me here next week.

I’ve heard you can just put ‘em on auto-pilot and get wildly wealthy.

Reality:  “Build it and he will come” might be a nice tagline in a movie, but it’s a terribly industrial-age way of thinking.  Effective content marketing, distributed through multiple channels, targeted to the right audience(s), with compelling calls to action to drive your business has never been an auto-pilot money machine.

True enough, a webinar recording might be a very nice asset in your strategy, and hey, it might even be content somebody would pay to see.  But if you’re not already wildly wealthy because you’ve 1) figured out how to reach an audience who 2) wants something you’ve got with 3) a message compelling enough to 4) inspire action and pay you for it, then changing the medium of delivery probably isn’t going to get you from zero to hero.

What do you think?  Did I miss any?

Like other surveys of 1080 Group’s, this is a ‘share and learn’ opportunity.

Please take about four minutes to share, and you will get pre-release access to the resulting paper and recommendations.

Thanks!

I’ll write about it later, but in the meantime, you can grab it here.

You’ve seen and heard this for decades from many, many management and presentation gurus you’ve been subjected to.

Well, long ago I researched it and found that those ideas came with some pretty heavy strings attached. And the common usage of the numbers were candidates for snopes.com.

And I’m not alone.

In recent months I’ve been pleased to see a chorus of voices raised shouting, “Wait!  It’s a nice number, but it’s used out of context 97.3% of the time!”

(Okay, I made that last number up, but you can quote me if you want)

What joy, then, when I saw Olivia Mitchell‘s retweet (@oliviamitchell) of Colin McLean‘s (@presentationwks) blog post with a link to a brief interview with Doc M. himself.

Sorry, you’ll have to find different numbers now, but I hope you get 100% better sleep.