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kgately
Active Contributor

Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

Does anyone have any tips for running a four hour long (half day) webinar? There will be at least four presenters, each about an hour long. How did you handle Q&A periods?

14 REPLIES 14
Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

I am the Organizer for an 8-hour long webinar yesterday and another 8-hour long webinar today. This is normally a state-wide face-to-face conference, but we are doing it via GoTo for over 200 Attendees each day.

 

It is great if you can practice with your presenters ahead of time, like on another day. I had a two hour session last Friday to allow the presenters to practice. There are 12 sessions spread across these two days, each session with multiple speakers.

 

One problem is that sometimes the presenters  show up to the webinar using a different computer than they used for the practice.  This can cause more potential issues like screen sharing and microphones.

 

It helps to have lots of experience with GoTo in order to handle the little issues that come up.

For this webinar, some presenters are showing the PowerPoint from their screen.  Sometimes three speakers are talking and the PowerPoint is on one of their screens, or it might be three separate sets of slides from multiple computers.  Or the PowerPoint mght be on my computer with the speakers saying "next." 

 

It is best to have practice switching the presentation among a series of presenters.  Before you make someone else the presenter, you need to be clear and say " I am now giving the presentation to Mary. Mary, a small window will show up on your screen asking if you are ready to share your screen with the audience.  Mary, if you have two computer screens, this will be the place to decide which screen to show." 

Now you make Mary the presenter and walk her through the decision of which computer display to show.  Many people skip right through this step, not knowing how important this decision is.

 

If Mary gets it wrong, you then have to be able to walk her through the GoTo Control panel where she can switch which of her computer displays that is shown.

 

Practice this with a colleague or with the actual presenters ahead of time.

 

 

 

Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

The practice session can help a lot for getting good audio.    Many presenters do not even know if they have a microphone or speakers on their computer.  You have to spend time with each presenter to get their microphone working or get them connected to the phone as their audio source. 

 

You have to help them be aware of background sounds like dogs barking, paper rustling, breaths because they are too close to the microphone, etc.  I had one speaker who started talking today and all of a sudden there was a jangly sound like jewlery, chains, or coins clicking. I sent her a message through the chat box and she must have noticed it, because the noise stopped.  There was no noise at all during her test last Friday.

 

I had one presenter who practiced great, but on the day of the webinar she connected through just her phone.  She sent an email asking to be unmuted.  You have to watch your email to help Presenters and Attendees who are having troubles. 

 

I told this Presenter that I could not unmute her if she was connected only by phone.   I have all presenters  connect to the webinar through a  web browser first, then they can choose phone for audio if they wish.

 

kgately
Active Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

Thank you for your response Chris. We are doing 4 separate hour long sessions each with one, or two at most, panelists and they will be in control of their own PP presentations. We will have two organizers and four screens at our end. One question I still have is regarding recording. If we pause between each session will it still be ONE 4 hour long recording? I'd like to have four separate recordings, but to do that do I have to end each session, then start a new one? Thanks for all your help. This is something we also would do face to face, as a meetup. I've been organizing webinars for years but have never done anything like this before. But then these are unusual times.

Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

I never assign Panelists to the webinar ahead of the webinar.  I always have them register as a regular Attendee, and then I promote them before they need to speak. 

 

Many GoToWebinar Organizers will use the feature to add additional panelists ahead of time.  Those panelists will get a special email (Join Link) that allows them to connect as a panelist on the day of the webinar.

 

The problem I found is that those folks might share that Join Link they got in the email with others.  It is too easy to just forward that email to a colleague who might be interested in the webinar.  If they do forward this Join Link email, then your webinar Staff list will have multiple instances of the same name, and only one of them is the actual presenter.  You have to figure out during the webinar which connections are real and then mute and ignore the others.  It is hard to ignore people who are listed in the Staff list who have the name of the panelist, but are actually regular attendees and do not need to be able to speak.

 

Just before the webinar starts, and during the breaks between the sessions, I will look in the Attendee list and promote individual presenters to become Panelists.  Then I will talk to them (one at a time) to let them know that I have added them to the staff list. I will acknowledge the quality of their voice, and offer suggestions as to moving the mic closer, etc.  I ask about their PowerPoint, if anything has changed since the practice (like the PowerPoint will be on someone else's computer). Then I help them find the microphone mute button and tell them that they should mute their microphone now and unmute it when it is time for them to speak.  I do not have time during the webinar to mute and unmute everyone, so I empower the presenters with the power to mute themselves.

 

This puts all of the presenters in the Staff list rather than the Attendee list.  If I hear background noises coming from a presenter whose mic should  be muted, I might send a chat message to them asking them to mute their mic.  If the noise is bad and urgent, I will mute them and explain it in the Chat message.  Most folks have not a clue as to how much noise they make when they are not talking.

Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

At the start of the webinar, I will tell the attendees to enter their questions throughout the webinar in the Question box.  I monitor the Question box and copy the ones that are relevant and paste them in the Chat box addressed to the Organizers and Panelists.

 

The comments in the Question box like "Thanks" or questions about sound quality, I answer myself, and do not pass those on to the Presenters.

 

At the end of each session (hour), usually the presenter asks for questions.  They should be able to read the questions I gave them in the Chat box.  If they do not see the Chat box, I will open my microphone and read the questions.

 

At question time, I had one presenter who said she wouldn't mind if I just opened all of the microphones to let people ask questions rather then texting.  I explained that it would not be a good idea.  Everyone has some kind of background noise, and if I opened 200 microphones at one time, it would be an audio chaos.  Always open one mic at a time and listen for sound issues like echos or squealing.  If you open multiple microphones at one time, you have no idea who is making all the bad noise.

 

On some webinars  we allow people to raise their hand if they want to speak, but in large audiences I find some Attendees just like clicking buttons and have no idea they just raised their hand.

kgately
Active Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

95% of the presenters on our webinars do a lot of webinars either with us, their own companies, and some even on their own. I make them panelists fist with a reminder that they are not to share their log in. I've very rarely had any issues with that.

 

I also remind everyone just before the webinar starts that they should mute themselves whenever they are not the speaker. Again, rarely have problems with that but if I do I take care of it the same way you do.

kgately
Active Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

Yeah. Same here.

Luckily, this four hour webinar is not my first webinar. Just my first four hour one.

thanks for the help!

Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

Pausing between the sessions will help you to eliminate the long dead space on the recording. Be sure to have a sticky note on your computer screen to remind you to restart the recording.  Remove the sticky note when the recording is again recording.

 

The entire webinar will be one long recording.  You can use the GoTo Recording Editor to chop out the dead space at the beginning and in the middle of your webinar.

 

For me, I download the recordings for all of my webinars to spiff them up using my own video editor.  I use a compressor on the sound and cut out the pauses that are more than 5 seconds. 

 

For these long webinars I will cut the 8-hour-long recording into separate sessions, six sessions per day in this case, and then upload them all to GoTo.  I then get the registration link for all of the individual recordings and post them on our own web page where I also post the PowerPoint or other files each presenter wishes to share with the Attendees.

 

For these long webinars, where we have over 200 Attendees, I have another Organizer who has been a big help, and also there in case I loose connection to the Internet.

Having a separate Organizer who just deals with the questions is a huge help, even on smaller webinars.

Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Tips for running a four hour long webinar?

I have the program listing the days's schedule on the screen before the conference starts and between the sessions. That way folks who join between the sessions can see on the screen the time when the next session starts. 

 

We have been allowing minutes between sessions and 30 minutes at lunch time.   I use that time often to check in with the presenters.