Surviving the Webinar
Today was the day. The day of the webinar. The day where I stayed homefor the half-decent internet connectiondonned a ridiculous looking headset with microphone boom, and presented to an unknown audience for an hour.
I stressed out last night, and again this morningchecking things, double checking more things, running through slidesobsessing over anything and everything. I even checked audio levels in both the host operating system, and the webinar client software. An hour before kick-off I ran some tests with a co-worker to check image and sound quality.“How do I sound?”“Perfect”“How does it look?”“Perfect”Big sigh of relief. It really does pay to have a proper headset (I had a plantronics one tucked away that I originally bought for Google Hangouts, but it hardly ever gets used).
The hour presenting in front of the virtual crowd flew by. Of course paranoia dictated that I was effectively operating on “lock down” while “on the air”no email, no messaging clients, no telephone, and no answering the front door. I even considered closing the curtains in case the postman arrived, and spotted me through the window.
Towards the end of the hour “on the air” I became aware that my voice was drying out, and cursed at not having a glass of water somewhere nearby. My last idea to throw up a timeline on the monitor across the desk worked perfectly thoughgiving me easy prompts to understand where I was, and where I should be as time went on. Talking, showing, and reading at the same time are surprisingly difficultI guess that's why most podcasts double team.
If nothing else, today raised my respect for those that record podcasts into the stratosphere. Quite how anybody can talk for several hours a day and remain relaxed, interesting, entertaining, and informative at all is a mystery to me. I would be the guy when the roving reporter says “back to the studio” that's sitting playing the F1 game with his back to the cameraAnyway it is done! Tomorrow I have a trip down to the south coast to visit a client. Wish me luck! (and expect train platform photos on instagram).