The other day I saw this tweet from Jeff Wren:

On webinar, all muted and any questions asked by chat will be answered by e-mail in next week. Nah, not good. I want to hear answers now and to all questions not just mine

— Jeff Wren (@jeffwren01) January 18, 2022

So here’s another in the series where I vent.

Attendees – they’re not an audience for your presentation, so don’t teat them as passive observers. That means talking WITH, not TO them. Hearing a 10 minute lecture is dull. I don’t care if you think it’s great – asking me to sit through 10 minutes on non-interactive noise won’t keep me there.

Slides – If you’ve text on the slide, I’ll be reading that and not listening to you. Slides are free so show more with fewer words. Use GOOD images and make it personal. Unload your bullets before they shoot you down.

If there’s no chat – I’m not having that. If there’s no way to communicate with other attendees or the speakers I will walk. This isn’t a show and if that’s what you’re going to do, pre-record it and publish it as a video on your website and YouTube.

Mute your notifications – if I hear the ping of you receiving an email I will check my email. It’s a Pavlovian response because we’re all used to hearing the pings, bells, notes and tones all day. The same goes for Slack, Teams, WhatsApp…

Can you hear me? – Ask that in a room of 250 people and you’ll get 30 messages in the chat. Check your settings and equipment beforehand. The back office admin’s role is to check we can hear.

Stick to time – if you’re overrunning then cut the content. Don’t rush through the last few slides to get your marketing message across because it looks crass and unprofessional.