I often get asked, “Do you have any of your sessions recorded so I can watch them online?” And the answer has always been, “No, you’ll have to come see me in person.” I’m a tad of a perfectionist, so if I was going to record something just for publication online, I’d never be happy with it. Therefore, I never even tried–I knew the time investment I’d need to be happy with the product was too steep.
Yesterday, I presented my “Shortcuts From an Impatient DBA” session to the DBA Fundamentals Virtual Group. It was my first online presentation (yeah, somehow I’ve made it this far without doing any), and the biggest audience I’ve presented to so far.
When you have people in a room, you can gauge the audience, see if your pace is good, see if you are losing people. You can tell if people thought your joke was funny. You can adjust your presentation style, speed, and content to make sure everyone gets the most out of is. In a webinar, you can’t do that. You can’t see your audience, you can’t hear them laugh. You just have to hope it’s working. My moderator (the fantastic Shane O’Neill (blog|twitter)) is able to give his own feedback, and to read comments that attendees explicitly type in–but nobody types “you suck!” into the webinar comments–they just close the window and you’ve lost them. That makes webinars harder than in-person sessions. I’d rather be in front of 300 faces staring up at me, than having to speak into my camera.
Webinars are recorded
The other thing that makes webinars different is that they are usually recorded–my session was. I haven’t watched it yet, but I was there the first time, and I was pretty happy with the way it came out. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but it was a pretty darned good session. Check out the recording on YouTube (embedded below).
I also want to thank Steve Cantrell (twitter) & Shane O’Neill for having me present at their User Group. I look forward to coming back again sometime for another session.
