My training webinar: Present interactively-your audience expects it!

Today I conducted a training webinar on presenting interactively. I loved the topic and enjoyed myself quite a bit! Here’s what I covered:

1. Why interactivity is necessary in today’s world: people are no longer willing to sit passively and take in information. They’re used to gaining knowledge interactively on the Internet, choosing what they want to see and hear.
2. How to create a menu-based presentation that lets the audience control the direction of the presentation
3. How to use third party software to make interactivity easy. I showed Yawnbuster and Raptivity Presenter
4. How to use social media, specifically the “back channel” to create and manage interactivity.

Of course, I did everything possible to make the webinar interactive. I used polls and created a menu-based presentation that covered the last 3 topics. I let the attendees choose the order by typing their first choice in the Questions box in the webinar panel.

The social media topic was especially fun.  Some attendees were familiar with social media, some used it occasionally, and others hadn’t used it at all. I introduced them to BackNoise, a chat program that facilitates comments on an event. I heard about it from Cliff Atkinson at the PowerPoint Live conference. (He’s writing a book called The Backchannel, which covers the topic of social media during presentations.) I gave the webinar a hashtag of #interactivepreso. During the webinar, attendees used BackNoise and commented on the webinar, as well as BackNoise itself. Here you see some of the comments.

BackNoise

I think the attendees liked the idea that they could see each others’ comments. Even those who didn’t open BackNoise saw the comments, because I displayed it on my screen. I certainly enjoyed seeing their comments!

Have you used the back channel in your live presentations? Have you ever attended a webinar that used the back channel?