Five Tips for Better Webinars

May 8, 2009 By 4 Comments

As consultants and trainers, you probably conduct a lot of webinars. And I’m sure you’ve sat through your share of them too. They are great for training, communications, and marketing. But have you ever thought about what makes some webinars great and others, well, suck?

Joining me for this video is James Thacker. James is a corporate certification trainer. In other words, James trains other trainers on how to be better trainers.

James shares with me 5 tips to turn ordinary webinars into highly effective communication and training tools. They are:

  1. Use a co-presenter or moderator
  2. Utilize the interactivity tools
  3. Engage the 3 different learning styles
  4. Apply immediate application
  5. Facilitate – don’t present

Follow his advise so your webinars represent you in the best possible light, are engaging and effective, and don’t… suck.

Filed Under: Video, Webinars

Why you should record webinars yourself

March 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

On Tuesday, March 10th, 2009, Tony Karrer led a webinar on using SharePoint in corporate learning environments. I recorded and edited the presentation for him and it’s available from the LearnTrends site.

Why would you want to record your webinar? Or perhaps a better question is, why would you want to record your webinar when the webinar companies often provide this service themselves?

There are two main reasons why you should record the presentation yourself.

  1. Re-purposing can only be done if you have an original. Often times the file the webinar companies provide can’t easily be modified because they’re designed for streaming. They have reduced detail to cut down on the file size – they’re basically a lower quality. This is important to them if they end up streaming thousands of views. You want the highest quality available so you can optimize the file for different types of players and screens. So for example, if you want to make a portable version that’s available on iPhones, you’ll need a high-quality original to start.

  2. You may want to edit the file first. So for example, you can include opening music, credits, or simply cut out any mistakes. You can add pans and zooms to the video so it’s easier to view as well. All this give you more control over the final product – the final product that represents you.

I’ve embedded the Flash player version below but you can download the higher quality, navigation enabled QuickTime version (244Mb .mov) or the iPhone/iTouch version (93Mb .mp4) as well. To download the file, right-click the link and choose Save Link/Target As…

Filed Under: Audio, Webinars