Earlier today I delivered a webinar for HR Zone, sponsored by Saba Software, entitled Top Tips for Successful Online Learning.

One of the things I’ve thought about this evening was the slight technical hitch there was with my audio. As it’s such an important part of the online learning event it can be stressful when it goes wrong.

Obviously I had those momentary thoughts of “oh no, what’s happened?“, “I don’t want to let everyone down” and “crikey, I’m supposed to be the expert here“.

However there were three important things that meant this wasn’t a big deal and the show carried on well:

  1. I had a good facilitator/co-host in Jamie Lawrence, editor of HR Zone. When it was obvious something wasn’t working he took over the reigns for a moment.
  2. I had noticed in the chat window that people were commenting on my sound. At the first comment I was aware and kept going. After several comments of ‘lost sound’ I paused and asked for “green check marks if you can hear me” to be clicked in the webinar software. With none forthcoming I knew I had to deal with something.
  3. I didn’t panic. 

toptips1

By not panicking everything else went ok.

I had a certain amount of trust in my technology set up – the hardware is the same I use for every other online event, whether classroom, producing webinar or online meeting in any software.

Through five online meetings/runs of the webinar there were no problems! This was what I did:

  • Double checked all my extraneous software was closed and not causing an issue.
  • Good old fashioned plug the headset into another USB port
  • Reconnect audio and hey presto, no more problems.

As many of the webinar attendees said, “Murphy’s Law”.

You need to be prepared by knowing the software, having good quality hardware and set up and then it’s about keeping calm enough to engage brain to fix things.

Luckily today I managed to practice what I preach and it all turned out OK!

What about you? Share in the comments 😀

4 Comments

  1. Hi Jo, I was so gutted that I missed your session today. I signed up and at 15 mins before start I tried to log in and then spent the next half hour wrestling with Java on my machine as it was saying I needed latest version, even though I had latest version 🙁

    Hoping to be able to catch recording if possible?

    Take care and will defo be on next webinar you facilitate, that’s for sure 🙂

    Thanks

    Paul

    1. Hi Paul, thank you so much for trying so hard! I know a couple of people had Java issues. There is a recording, I think if you click here you should be able to play it.

      I have another one coming up in Jan with the LPI, so I look forward to seeing you then.

      Thanks and take care yourself,
      Jo

  2. These things are sent to try us! One little tip that I have adopted is – whenever a participant thinks that the facilitator has an audio problem in WebEx, they click the smiley with the red warning triangle – much quicker than typing something into chat, and less obtrusive.

    Geoff

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