What a wonderfully interactive audience yesterday at the presentation I did about webinar presentation delivery.  What follows is one of the Qs I didn’t get to during this well-attended event.  To be fair to readers, a number of these answers assume you were there, so you might check out the recording. 

Suzanne K. wrote, “Is text Q&A distracting to the presenter?  Is it something you get used to?”

Yes/no, and yes.

Remember that our context for this presentation was the “one/few-to-many” type of presentation.

Here are a couple thoughts:

You’ve got more hands that go up in the audience than you can get to.  Text Q&A is awesome for managing that.  In smaller audiences, audio Q&A might be the right thing for you, to be sure.

Distracting?  Certainly it’s a new way of managing your presentation, so it might be (which, unfortunately, too many take as license to take NO questions until the end of the presentation).

Like any new tool, it takes some getting used to.  But remember, if we watch our audience and glance at our notes (versus the other way around), it should be no more distracting than if you see hands go up or someone blurts something out in the middle of a presentation.  You learn to deal with it, if not use it to your advantage.