Production Tip: Do Your Webinar Backwards

“Backwards, she says? Has she gone nuts?”  No, I’m pretty sure I’m not crazy. At least not in this area.

I’ll explain why and when this approach works, and I’ll suggest a process if you want to try it yourself.  First, you can take a gander at a recent example that Killer Webinars produced for Accelerance.  I know you won’t want to watch all 56 minutes unless, of course, you are in the mood for some offshore software development.

Important: After you hit the PLAY arrow, use the Full Screen toggle button in the lower right of the player. (It looks like an X to the naked eye.) Then you’ll be able to jump around using the Content list on the left.  Come back here after you’ve had a look around.

See anything different from other webinars?

Probably not.   There’s a presentation, followed by live Q&A, ending with a soft pitch from the sponsor.  But there WAS one difference the audience noted: “It was the best webinar I ever attended!”

Accelerance had done two live webinars BEFORE this one in a fairly typical way: They invited a client and an IT vendor to talk about a case study and answer questions from the audience.  Everyone prepared his own slides for the time allotted to his part of the one-hour broadcast.  Like most folks who aren’t professional speakers, they discussed who would say what and when… but they didn’t rehearse.  You can probably guess how those webinars turned out.

Control yourself, please

Since Accelerance planned to continue featuring client/vendor case studies, I suggested we put the webinar truck in reverse gear and drive production from the rear-view mirror.

1. Email the client and IT vendor some questions you’d like them to address.
2. Interview them individually and record each conversation (we used a Skype plug-in).
3. Edit the audio relentlessly until you have only the best bits (we used Audacity).
4. Create a ton of fantastic slides that support the audio content (yes, Powerpoint).
5. Synch the slides with the audio track (we used Camtasia).
6. Render the presentation in a video file format that your web conferencing platform supports (we used .FLV for Acrobat Connect Pro).
7. Play the thing to your live audience and handle their questions when it ends.

I left out a lot of detail here, but I think you get the idea.  It’s a huge amount of work, too.  But the speakers invited by Accelerance loved the result because they didn’t have to do a heck of a lot themselves, and we made them look good!

When is backwards better?

There are a lot of reasons why this extra effort is worthwhile, but I can sum them up in one word: Quality. Consider using this approach yourself when…

• You’re doing a webinar with an expert who’s not what you’d call a well-trained speaker.
• The topic “feels better” as a back-and-forth conversation (think stories, case studies, etc.).
• You’re planning to re-purpose the content in other ways later.
• You have the control freak gene in your DNA.

Did I already mention that this isn’t easy?  Don’t let that stop you.  Like hosting a dinner party, each time you do it you’ll discover shortcuts along the way.  Ask me about those sometime!  :)