Week 4 - What to do, and what not to do!

Last night I presented in Megameeting for the first time. I have experience presenting and facilitating in Discovere and have participated in online meetings in both Elluminate and Adobe Connect - so I am not a stranger to online conferencing. I decided to try something different and my intention was to demonstrate how to use Del.icio.us, RSS and Podcasting. The idea was to inform participants about a range of software which they may choose to investigate further and use in their business. It was not intended to be a training session - just a demonstration. Simple!! (or so I thought...).

To prepare I had two computers and logged into one as host and one as a guest so that I could see the demonstration from both perspectives. I decided to deliver the demonstration using the Desktop Sharing feature and demonstrate straight from the web. This immediately brought to my attention the delay which occurs between the moment I click a link and move to a different screen and when the audience see that screen. The delay is up to 30 seconds. I wondered if this was happening because both computers were on the same network so I trialled the presentation with a colleague with the same result. So, to proceed or to rethink was the question! I decided that each part of the demonstration was going to be quite short, about 10 minutes I thought, and that I would intersperse them with discussion to maintain interest and, I thought that to overcome the delay issue was a matter of technique. If I could work out when to click in relation to my dialogue it may be possible to deliver a smooth demonstration. (That, in fact, turned out to be very difficult). So my decision was to proceed and what follows is the planned structure:

Del.icio.us -a straight demo of the features followed by discussion (20 min)
RSS - a Common Craft 3 minute Youtube clip and then briefly describe and show my Google Reader account followed by discussion (20 min)
Podcasting - a second presenter who would show a video showing how to record in Audacity and upload to Podomatic followed by a short tips and tricks presentation. (30 min).
(The session was planned for 90 minutes).

All good on paper, but what happened in practice?

- there were frequent periods of waiting while screens were downloading for the audience which caused frustration and loss of interest
- when using the shared desktop feature the presenter loses sight of the conference room. There is no visual contact and the text chat cannot be seen. There is audio only. The benefit of video conferencing over audio conferencing is the ability to see how the audience are responding to your presentation. I found this quite disarming and felt as if I was talking into space.
- videos cannot be shown from within Megameeting - the download time prevents them from running smoothly. This was overcome by putting a link into the note board which took the audience to the Youtube video. However this means that the audience are leaving the room to watch the video. This was not a problem last night but the potential is there to lose people or for people to experience problems getting back into the room.
- finally our second presenter had technical issues and dropped out altogether after running her video which meant that we lost the benefit of her experience and advice.

All in all, it was very disappointing. If I were to have the night over again I would have selected no more than two topics and used screen dumps and Powerpoint instead of web tours. The videos worked well, but it is important that they are short and they need to be followed by a well structured discussion. Upon reflection I realise that I approached the session from a teaching perspective and was trying to emulate a face-to-face environment. Some of those concepts just don't transfer to the online world and live web demonstration seems to be one which doesn't work!

Nevetheless, all experience is worthwhile and I learned a lot yesterday evening. There are great advantages to online conferencing in terms of cost saving, convenience, the environment, etc. However, it's important to identify its strengths and weaknesses. This project has already exposed us to a range of online strategies and I'm sure there is more to come! Bring it on!