Technique of the Week #6: Webinars

What you need to know

Webinars use the internet to share knowledge with people in different cities, countries, or even continents.

People can access them from anywhere.

Webinars can be interactive including polls, question and answers, and dialogue.

Participants can also connect and contribute through chat forums.

Presentations can be saved and made available for additional users.

Resources, time, and skill

Although not required, you may want to have an opt-in registration page. Registration is useful because it gives a sense of the size, and diversity of the audience, and may connect with them later to provide follow-up resources, or to participate in on-going conversation. Freeware such as wordpress may be used to build this page.

There needs to be a mail-service that allows for participant tracking and to send out details about the webinar (e.g., freeware such as Mailchimp).

Lastly, a webinar platform is needed in order for participants to hear, see, and interact with the presenter. Webinar software can either be free (Anymeeting), or paid through a subscription model (e.g., GoToWebinar and Adobe Connect are the most popular paid version. Typically, paid versions offer more features such as custom branding, better security, webinar recording abilities, etc).

Key Considerations

Be mindful of your organization’s use of technology. Some people may not be experienced with using webinar software or technology in general. Weigh the pros and cons of using webinar

software. Ask questions such as “will webinars benefit our organization?” “Will implementation be met with a negative response?” “How big will the learning curve be?”.

Incorporating webinars in your KMb

Webinars can be a great way to keep your organization up-to-date if there are difficulties trying to arrange in-person meetings.

Webinars can be used as a training tool.

Webinars can be a way to present research findings to different people across cities or countries.

Webinars can be used to support collective thinking for a geographically dispersed group

The take away

Webinars are a great way to engage participants from different locations all over the world, when face-face communication is not feasible due to time, travel, and/or costs.