Ever Attended a Webinar?

Michael here, with just a year of web industry experience under my belt, I recently attended my first Webinar. The presenter was CrossTech Partners and the topic was Business Strategies for Content Management, Part 1: Evaluating Web Content Management Solutions. As I mentioned, I had never attended a Webinar before and wasn't entirely sure what to expect. For those of you in the same boat, perhaps a brief summary of my experience may help you decide whether you'd be interested in attending your first as well.

After I had registered to attend, I received a few helpful reminder emails in the days immediately preceding the event. For some, this may have the same effect as SPAM, but on this occasion it helped me stay on track.

Once I had entered "the room", I was presented with two scenes. Off the left were the CrossTech presenters (TJ and Mark) and off the right was a large view of the slideshow they'd be taking us through. Once the Webinar began, the attendees were able to follow the slides and the presenters simultaneously exactly how you would in a traditional seminar.

On the day of the event, I received an email with a link to the Webinar. All I had to do was click it and my browser handled the rest. No software was needed to install, and the Adobe automated setup process took just seconds to complete--web-based applications performing at their finest.

The Webinar lasted about an hour and 10 minutes--a bit long for me, but included valuable information and was presented in a professional manner. Attendees had the ability to submit questions to the presenters through a chat box which were answered in real time during and immediately after the formal Webinar.

Some positive elements of my Webinar experience included: 

• the reception of informative and valuable information delivered through the internet to my computer 
• seamless boot of the web-based presentation software
• a format which encouraged productivity by permitting its attendees to multitask.
  

The one area where I felt the presenters came up short in was the lack of motion throughout all elements of their presentation. Both presenters sat behind a table, hands folded, remaining relatively motionless while the slideshow shambled along at a fairly slow clip. The most exciting part of the presentation was when they switched to a screencast of their propietary software (a way of accentuating the allure of their product perhaps?). By adding more activity to the screen, I believe the presenters could have held the attention of their audience much better.

All in all, I'm glad I took a chance on one of these "Webinars." It was an interesting way of receiving information pertinent to our industry and at the very least provided me with a sense of what to expect in the future.