I was on a face to face course last week. The joining instructions were a pain; I had to cancel and rebook the date and received a paper copy of the invite. A text a few days before reminded me of my attendance but had the wrong date on it, leading to more calls and confusion.

I arrived at the venue and the receptionist I went to didn’t deal with that course, so I had to wait for someone else. Unfortunately they were dealing with another person and had to wait 10 minutes before being seen. This made me late for the start of the course; not that it mattered since all but one other attendee were late.

We did start and my heart sank, the slides were words. Lots of words. I counted 75+ on one slide alone, all which the participants struggled to read. One good things from the slides being like this – it’s nudged me into getting an eye test.

Why do we do this? In the end I got a lot from the course and, knowing the mechanics behind the curtain, understand the reason for some of the decisions made in the process. Other attendees may not be as tolerant and if we’re going to make the face to face experience needed, wanted, and worthwhile, we need to up our game. Substantially.