These folks aren’t trying to be rude – they’re for the most part quite engaged in the presentation they’re attending – they’re sharing the essence of what they are hearing with their network and the world beyond, if the hashtags are hot.

How does this affect your style of presentation, or what content you are sharing in the first place? I suppose not much, just the evolution of attentive listening skills to include simultaneous input and output?

Rude or Rad?  I’d love to hear your thought on this so comment and let me know what you think.

This article from Datamation highlights some new features just announced by webcast pioneer On24.  Their new widget-oriented platform allows integration with applications like twitter, allows webcasters to tailor the look of the screen in ways not before possible and promises to offer levels of interactivity that have only been possible in face to face events in the past.

Their team compiled some interesting statistics relating to webcasting – when to hold them, what kind of conversion from registration to attendee you can expect, and breakdowns of their event registration and attendance by geography, industry, title and other demographics.  These are based on the events hosted on their platform during 2009.

They have prepared both a webcast and downloadable report for your viewing or reading pleasure.  If you’re in the business of webcasting or webinars you should get this snapshot of one platforms’ performance during 2009.

You can find this useful information here. You’ll have to register (painlessly) to attend the replay or download the report.

Now it seems social media and webcasting have also crossed that final chasm into the great beyond.

While doing my daily scan of webcasting news, I came upon this article about an Australian funeral home that now offers webcasts as part of its funeral services offering for those friends and family that can’t attend the ummm… live event.

They are also offering  real-time messaging so those attending remotely can email a friend, post a message of condolence or light a tribute candle on the family’s web page.

Whoda thunk it?

As the clock was ticking to the top of the hour, one of the members of our team was MIA.  Unfortunately it was our featured presenter, who was giving a very detailed technical presentation that only he was familiar with.  So, his “handlers” reached out via email, cellphone, called his manager, used the company’s internal IM system – nothing.  He had vanished with just a few minutes to go before start time.

We began frantically looking for a substitute presenter – ANYBODY who might have seen his slide deck before and felt comfortable presenting on this topic.  No joy there either.  So our production team and the marketing folks from my client got ready for Plan B, which meant telling the audience our speaker had an emergency and that we’d have to reschedule.  As we hit our scheduled start time, I posted a message to all the attendees asking them to stand by for a few minutes as we were having technical difficulties (OK, I lied to buy time).   Attendees began streaming in – hundreds had registered for this event – and everyone on our pre-call began to panic as we hit five minutes past scheduled start.

Just as we were about to pull the plug on the event, someone located our missing presenter.  Where was he?  Was he OK?  He had simply had the event on his calendar for an hour after the actual start time, and was rushing to a phone where he could dial in.

He joined the call at 10 minutes past the hour, flustered and without benefit of logging in to the console to view the webcast live.  I told him to get ready, took my time with the introduction so he could gather his thoughts, and then I began to push his slides, letting him know what the audience was seeing as he presented from a printout of his deck.

We had planned for an hour webcast and now had to cram it into less than 50 minutes, so I gently rushed him along, quickly moving through his slides and managing to get to the end with about a minute to spare.  One audience question and we wrapped up.

Although the worst case scenario was avoided we lost several attendees waiting for him to arrive.  Our post-event email will invite all those who had to leave to view the event in archive, but certainly some damage was done.

SO… Best practice number one:  Contact your presenters 24 hours before the event and make sure they know when to be on the live call, and re-contact them once again an hour before to remind them.  If possible, have a backup presenter waiting in the wings to take over should an emergency arise.  And keep the aspirin handy.

And as webcasters strive to engage audiences further, the demand for videos – whether to entertain, show a demo or have a busy executive make a “guest appearance” during an event – has put pressure on webcast platform companies to deliver a richer media experience across a wider variety of browsers.

I recently had the chance to speak with Mark Szelenyi, Director of Product Marketing for San Francisco-based On24, one of the most popular platforms for large webcasts and the one I’ve used for hundreds of Ziff-Davis Enterprise eSeminars and PCMagCasts over the past several years.  As On24 continues to expand beyond simple webcasts to virtual trade shows and virtual briefing centers they have recently added Flash capability to their arsenal of technologies, resulting in a host of benefits for presenters and audience alike.

Moving to flash offers better compatibility for different web browsers.  Older On24 versions relied on either Windows Media Player or Real Player, but flash is universally available across all popular browsers.

The flash-based platform also allows PowerPoint transitions and animations to be incorporated easily.  As presenters bring up the slide in the present console, they see how many builds each slide has as well as the build they’re currently on.  This way there’s no guessing what happens when they press the advance button.

Flash also improves interactivity in a key way.  Before, On24 interactive polls were delivered as pop-ups, so attendees would have to disable their popup blockers to participate in polling questions.  The flash version eliminates that drawback and can increase the percentage of attendees who actually respond to the polling questions, and more interactivity is always better.

Pricing for the new Flash-based webcasts is slightly higher than their non-flash counterparts, but may be well worth it if you are ‘build-heavy’ or looking to broaden your webcast’s reach.

PresenterNet’s new Web Conversations feature allows you to not only embed your presentation into any web page, but adds interactivity features that create a conversation between your content and the viewer, allowing them to rate interest on specific features or benefits using a sliding scale, answer questions, complete forms and get the sense of being more connected to the content being presented.

You can see a demo of how it works at their website here.

Our featured speaker was calling in from a hotel room – not uncommon at all.  His room had a broadband connection, his phone sounded great, but as we got underway the bandwidth to his notebook just went to hell in a hand basket.   Suddenly, as he advanced his slides, he couldn’t see the slide changes on his screen.  Thinking he wasn’t advancing the slides properly, he kept pushing the advance button till he was way out of sync with the slides everyone else was viewing.

Once we realized what was happening he passed control of the slides over to me and I gave him verbal cues as to what the audience was seeing and we continued to complete a great session with excellent audience participation.  All in all a successful event.  But for a few minutes it was clear that we were having some kind of trouble.

We didn’t find out exactly what happened until the post-webcast wrap up call, but once we did we discussed what we could do to ameliorate the problem should it crop up again during our next event together.

Here are some things to keep in mind when running your next webcast.

Your internet connection isn’t reliable.  Don’t expect you’ll have the bandwidth you need – or for that matter the connectivity you need at the time your event goes live.  Always have a hard copy of your presentation in front of you so you can keep presenting when your technology fails.

Have a “presentation buddy”.  If your slides have lots of builds and subtle transitions that are key to your presentation, ensure there’s somebody else on the call who can take over the job of advancing the slides for you.  This could be the event moderator, a colleague in another location or a dedicated event producer if there is one.  Do a complete dress rehearsal with those people so they will clearly understand your cues for advancing the slide or build.

Hide the extension phones.  There is a legendary story at Ziff-Davis eSeminars about a presenter whose visiting mother-in-law picked up an extension phone during a webcast and began to blindly dial and say “Hello?  Is this thing working?” when she heard unexpected voices on the line.  That particularly embarrassing event happened to me a few years ago.   While you’re at it turn off your iPhone, pager, Blackberry, PC speakers and anything else that will make noise you don’t want to share with a few hundred of your closest friends.

Check the equipment before you start.  If you’re in a hotel room or unfamiliar office ensure you can mute your phone for those times someone else is speaking or presenting.  And if you are doing a long event – some virtual trade shows I’ve participated in have run three hours or longer – work from a wired phone so you don’t run the battery down on your cordless handset or headset.  I’ve had presenters ‘disappear’ in the middle of an event when their phone died.

Have a drink.  If you’re speaking for a while you’ll get thirsty.  Have a tall glass of water handy when you start to wet your whistle when necessary.  And take a bio-break before you start, just in case.

Have you had an event melt down?  Let me know what other disasters we can help avert together.

I suppose it could be worse. I remember a teenager I worked with years ago who could not complete a sentence without at least five “like”s and six “you know”s. I’d raise a finger to count each one, driving her crazy but hopefully getting the point across.

When you or someone you work with is preparing to make a presentation to scores or hundreds of potential customers, being ready to present means more than knowing your content cold.  You might have given the same presentation in person or to a group, but not having live audience feedback – not being able to see their faces and gestures – can wreak havoc with your timing and sense of how the events is going.  The result can be hesitation bringing with it silent pauses or those nasty filler syllables.

Here’s some thoughts on how best to prepare yourself (or your speakers) when getting ready to webcast.

• Be the subject matter expert. Attendees want to hear the expert point of view.  If you’re not the expert find someone to bring you up to speed.
• Write a script and rehearse. You shouldn’t read your speaker notes or script word for word but you should have a great idea of what you’re going to say for each slide you present.  And that doesn’t mean reading the bullet points on the slide.
• Time your rehearsal. You can do this alone with a stopwatch or as part of a dry run walkthrough so you know your material will fit into the timeslot allotted for your presentation.  Many webcasting platforms and venues just cut you off at the end of your time slot.  I’ve seen great presentations ruined by the speaker running out of time before he made his big point.
• Do a dry run using the webcast tool.  You should be familiar enough with your webcasting platform to be able to pass control to somebody else if needed, either verbally or through the webcasting tool.  If you plan to advance your own slides you should be comfortable with the controls so you’re not fumbling – or panicking – during your live event.  Make sure you know what to expect on your screen during the event – some platforms show audience polls, special agenda slides and speaker headshots that briefly obscure what you’re presenting.  If you know they’re coming and see them in action beforehand you won’t break your stride during the webcast
• Have some answers ready.  If you’re going to have a live Q&A session prepare a few seed questions to get the ball rolling.  Most audiences don’t start asking questions until they’ve heard one or two answered, so think of a few that would amplify or clarify some key points and use them to get the juices flowing.
• Ask for help.  There are plenty of coaches who can help you get all this done.  Don’t be afraid to reach out to professionals for assistance in any part of the process.

Do you have a personal presenter pet peeve?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Think of it as a really big virtual flash mob.