Doing a webcast, and doing it right

I had my first Live WebCast today on Intro to WF Rules. I did a tech-check with Julie and we checked the sound, the slides, discussed the protocol we would follow to reach each other during the Webcast, how to mute everyone else except me etc...We had good turnout, with 38 people out of the 65 registered.

All was well till the 3rd slide when I couldnt get the animation going! I realized later what I was doing wrong. In live meeting, you need to click on the smaller slide icons to move across the slides and get to the next step in your animation. I had been clicking on the view on the right. I wish I knew that before because this ended up stalling the webcast for a few minutes!

The other weird thing for me was the lack of live interaction and being able to see the audience's reception and expressions. In a live talk, I rely on this a lot to slow down or pace up or go in some more detail or skip the details. Without this live feedback, it was a little weird. Live meeting does have a seating chart and a way for the audience to give feedback to the presenter, but no one really used that feature.

Finally, one thing I didnt realize is that the time for the audience to refresh the screen images takes longer than the presenter. Marco gave me a good tip after the webcast about this one. Thanks Marco! He suggested that for his webcasts, he sees his own webcast on a second computer as a guest login, ideally with a slower connection, this way he can see what others are seeing.

Needless to say, it was an *interesting* experience for me, but not the ideal outcome. I got my lesson - doing a webcast is a different beast than doing a live talk. Hoping that next time goes much better for me, and hoping that your webcast goes better the first time round!