In the early days of web seminars an early-adopter client of ours was IBM.  The beautiful thing was that their events were great exposure for our little business, because they’d draw an audience of a couple hundred people, most of whom had never seen web conferencing before.  Inevitably after every event we’d get a phone cal or three from someone stunned that from across the world they could see someone else’s desktop demo in action.  “I need that in my business” was the best lead generation we had.

But let’s be clear.  The mystery and wonder of being connected is rapidly disappearing.  Even in the places where it’s still occurring, you should count it serendipity at best, here-today-gone-tomorrow at worst.

The power of a live event is dialogue.  Content can’t be ignored, but consider this.  If content alone is the draw, why use a web seminar instead of (fill in the blank)?  Some media are mobile, some are portable, some have better reach.

Web seminars uniquely give an audience an opportunity to dialogue, individually or as a group, with a presenter.  And vice versa.

Think about any classroom type education experience you’ve had.  Sometimes the part of the hour that makes the whole thing valuable isn’t the presentation material, it’s the one question you got to ask that made the material relevant to you.  Or the one your neighbor asked that drew additional content and context out of the presenter.

The power of a live web seminar is dialogue.