Gone are the days when a synchronous online conference was a rare event. These days it seems that everybody is doing it. From publishers to teachers associations, from companies to individuals, there are a host of online events that one can attend, from short one-hour online presentations (or webinars) to synchronous events spanning several days.
And long may it last! Attending an online event is fantastic for your own professional development. Better still, attendance is usually free, you can drink coffee (or a glass of wine) during it, and you can even attend in your pyjamas (as long as you keep your webcam turned off).
In the last two months, I’ve spoken at two online conferences, and these are my eighth or ninth online conference engagements of the past few years. Even though many of us do plenty of face-to-face speaking, we are often unsure about how to do it online. I thought it might be useful to put together a few tips and techniques for online presenters and for online moderators.
Let’s first check we are clear on the difference between an online moderator, and an online speaker. Basically, the online speaker, well, speaks, and the online moderator, ermm, moderates. In this post we’ll look at same tips for online SPEAKERS (and in my next blog post, for online MODERATORS). Hopefully that too will make the difference clear.
Tips for online speakers:
Tip 1: Keep it short
Don’t let the online conference organizers persuade you to talk for ages Try to NEVER talk for more than 45 minutes (and even that’s a lot). Even if you know how to keep an audience enthralled for hours on end face to face (unlikely), expect 50% of that kind of concentration at best from your audience online. If you think you have 20 pearls of wisdom to share with your audience, cut it down to 10 pearls. The best scenario for an online session is 30 to 40 minutes of you, plus 15 minutes for audience questions. Max.
Tip 2: Engage your audience
The first rule of face-to-face speaking is to engage your audience, so make sure you do the same when speaking online. Listening to you doing a monologue online for 45 minutes can challenge even your keenest fan. The temptations for your online audience to simply walk way to the fridge, to phone a friend, or simply to log off and go out to the movies, are huge. You can’t compete unless you make your talk interesting and engaging. How?
One way is to make sure that you integrate little activities that require audience participation during your talk. Here are some ideas that I have used (and that seem to work):
- At the beginning of your session, find out where your audience actually are. Right now. One of the fabulous things about an online seminar is that people are usually attending from all over the world, so get them to mark their location on a world map you put on the shared whiteboard (if there is one in the conferencing software). Or ask the audience to type their location, the time, and the weather into the text chat box. You could even ask them what they are drinking or eating at that moment (believe me, almost everyone is usually drinking something).
- Give your audience an overview of the session, and what you hope you will all have learnt by the end of it. If you are using PowerPoint slides, you could include a brief outline on your first slide. Letting your audience know what you hope to achieve, and where you’re all going, allows those who are in the wrong place to leave early!
- While talking about your topic, check whether your audience have heard of or done these things/used the tools you mention/have the same opinion of something, and so on. Do this regularly, not just once. You could ask a simple yes or no question, and get your audience to type yes or no in the text chat box. If the conferencing software has features such as indicating agreement or disagreement, you could get your audience to use those in response to a simple question from you.
- Get your audience to actually do something during your online talk. Ask them to type in a definition of a term in the text chat box, before you give them the definition you plan to work with. Or get them to guess what a certain topic/tools/concept is, by typing one line in the text chat box. Getting the audience to follow you by answering questions, or predicting content, will keep everyone engaged and busy (and therefore away from the fridge and glued to their computer screen).
- Make sure you respond to what your audience contributes in this way, by saying things like. ‘’Ah, Donna says xxx, great idea, Donna – thanks’’. This may mean you briefly pause during your talk while responses start to appear. Don’t be afraid to pause for a few seconds while waiting for audience to come back to you. They are busy, they’re engaged, and a few second of silence is fine. It is a good idea to move the focus off yourself and onto your audience like this at least every 10 minutes or so. There will be less snoozing in the audience.
Tip 3: Try stuff out
Don’t be afraid to experiment. If you’re talking about a new technology tool, for example, why not set up a demo account that your audience can go along to and try out during your presentation? You could set a very short (and achievable!) task for the audience to complete using the new tool/application during the session. Let everyone see that everyone else is successfully completing the task. Then pull everyone back into the main conferencing tool. I get people to type ‘I’m back’ to show when they have completed the task, and are back in the main conferencing room. I then solicit audience feedback on the task, or point out certain features that the audience have now personally experienced for themselves by doing the task. Don’t let this kind of hands-on task go on too long though, or your audience will lose focus – a few minutes is plenty of time.
Tip 4: Round up
Apart from providing a brief summary of what you’ve covered in your talk, round up with a short fun activity. This could be as simple as asking the audience to type in two adjectives to show how they feel about the talk. Or you could ask them to type one line summarising one thing they feel they have learnt from your session. Or they could draw a quick picture of the main point of your session on the whiteboard… The idea here is to pull everything together and to get an audience reaction and some informal feedback.
Tip 5: Say thanks
And finally, don’t forget to thank your audience! Remember that they could easily have logged off during your talk and found something a lot more interesting to do…. the fact that they are still there is worth you thanking them for 🙂
I look forward to any tips or techniques you might have for online conference speakers…
Nicky Hockly
The Consultants-E
November 2009
Fantastic advice, Nicky. Wish I’d had access to it before I did my first webinar (for Macmillan). At the time, the most important thing seemed to be to remember to look directly at the camera, rather than at your notes or laptop screen. Fortunately I had a trusty assistant who dealt with incoming messages (some of which he would copy on to scraps of paper and pass to me discreetly). The experience was enormously challenging, and not entirely satisfying, I have to admit. Nor was it a “cheap” alternative to a real conference, since I was flown over to London to do it. Seems to defeat the purpose a little, no?
Thanks for your comment, Scott – the very first on this blog, yay! Yes, completely pointless to fly you over to London to do webinar, far more sensible would be to have you at home in front of your webcam with your fluffy slippers on. I’ve only ever done web conferencing from my own home (sans slippers, I hasten to add).
The moderator dealing with incoming messages is an interesting point — and one that I will be touching on in my next blog post, which will look at the role of moderators in this kind of online event.
Scott,
I remember that performance, and it was very good – certainly didn’t notice the scraps of paper. But you’re right – flying someone to another country to do an online talk is a waste of time, money and ‘natural resources’ when they could simply do it from their own home.
You’ll remember the first online conference you and I did, back in the day when video wasn’t possible and it was simply audio and some slides? My memory isn’t what it used to be, but I’d say that was about nine years ago. Nothing like doing a conference with a bottle of wine to hand…
Gavin
Thanks for this Nicky, really useful advice and tips especially given the growth in online events – I also think what you saying is also be as would be if you were delivering the sessions face to face. Will certainly be pointing people towards this site for advice.
Thanks Shaun – yes, I think it’s a case of finding the way to make good f2f techniques work well online, but it’s not always immediately obvious how to do so. The online medium (even if the speaker has a webcam and the audience is nattering away in chat room) feels so very far removed from having a f2f audience…
Welcome to the blogosphere Nicky, although of course you’ve been around here for a long time. Great looking blog!
The only tip I’d add for online conference speakers would be the same for f2f conference speakers: make sure your slides or support material is visually engaging. With online speaking I’d say this is even more important. Give people things to do, but also nice things to look at or listen to.
So much easier now too with current platforms and image banks and so on.
One piece of vital information you omitted, Nicky, was this advice from Macmillan, in advance of my webinar for them: “Please avoid clothing with thin horizontal/vertical stripes”. So slippers yes, but PJs no!
A super idea for a blog – one I’d been meaning to set up a long time ago so now I can sit back and enjoy 🙂 and contribute as a commenter!
Wish I’d had this list to read through before the Virtual Round Table last Friday which I “survived”.
I’ll second Scott’s point about the camera, something I definitely need to work (needed to remember to brush my hair -oh how we forget when we spend so much time behind screen invisible to the world!) and I’d also say that practising the whole thing using the same conferencing tool beforehand is really helpful -that way you feel comfortable and don’t need notes. This technique has certainly helped me.
Another challenging aspect is the speed of text chat + other speakers and multiple windows that you need to “cope” with. Again practise and experience help as do your advice on pearls.
Great read,
Vale
Hi Nickly,
Nice tips and you are right, lots of damage is done these days by presenters who do not switch on webcams, read from a script or talk to an unseen counterpart over the heads of the listeners who stare at a blank whiteboard.
Seen it, been there.
Refreshing to see that during last week’s conference we saw a fresh breeze in these stalen virtual presentation rooms with presenters daring to screenshare, watching the text chat and responding to it in a timely manner, slides were kept at 10min and presentations kept within 30min.
The nicest thing that we experienced were learning conversations with everyone using a webcam and fabulous conversations taking place.
Just to add another tip to your tip list which I would say: turn up early for a mic and webcam check. 🙂
Rgds Heike
Hi Nicky,
Thanks for this blog! An excellent idea since more and more of us have to (or want to 🙂 move online.
As to online speaking – and I wish to add I’m talking mainly from the audience’s perspective as I’ve presented online only once so I’m still wet behind the ears – as you say it’s important to interact with the audience and set them short tasks to complete to keep them engaged. However, if you’re planning group activities, it’s good to have assistants appointed beforehand; they will then take the lead and guide the group through the task, without the speaker having to rush from one room to another to check on progress or even set up the activity again and the audience feeling at a loss as to what to do next.
Looking forward to the next blog postings, especially the ones related to online moderating. As an aspiring online tutor, I will certainly be back for more ideas and tips! 🙂
Best wishes,
Ania
Hi Nicky!
Congrats for your article. I think it is very useful indeed. You know, I had the great fortune to be chosen by the British Council Venezuela in 2007 to take the e-Moderation course with Consultants-e. Linday was our course facilitator. I really enjoyed the course and learned a lot. I remember we designed a handbook for e-tutors. Do you know if it is available somewhere online? Is it hosted on Consultants-e website? I need the online reference to add it to my blog but also to back a report I have to hand in at my university next week on all ICT activities I’ve done during the last 5 years. I would really appreciate your help at this matter. Thanks in advance.
My best wishes,
Evelyn
Hi Evelyn – glad you like the blog! I’ll get back to you on your query via email…
Hi Nicky
Great to see that your off and blogging. You’ve made a great start and this is a great topic for a blog.
My tip that I would add here, is; ‘Don’t be afraid of the back channel.’ Often you will find that your online audience is texting and messaging each other though the chat window during your presentation. This used to freak me out a bit at first, but I’ve come to regard it as a really good thing. The presentation isn’t just about the presenter sharing their knowledge. Your audience has knowledge too and the back channel can help to make the whole presentation a much more collaborative process. It’s something that I have come to really enjoy about online presentations.
Best
Nik Peachey
Thanks for this good advice, Nik. I also like the idea of a back channel such as Twitter being used by the audience and displayed on a screen during a f2f presentation, athough I’ve not got around just how to be speaking and reading the back channel info at the same time so as to integrate comments and feedback into one’s ongoing talk… Tricky. Perhaps pauses and space needs to be built in to include this, wth a moderator keeping an eye on the back channel and sifting through the info…