Thursday, May 01, 2014

The joy of technology. Not.



Last fall in my wisdom, I decided that we would offer more webinars to our members – three a month, to be precise, which was a serious undertaking, but I was thrilled with the way presenters stepped forward to participate.  Not only that, I drew on women from around the world – how cool is that.

Except for one thing.  Without fail, with practically every webinar, something technical went wrong. Even my more seasoned of webinar leaders, Jan, found herself talking into thin air – no one could hear her.

Then there was the webinar where the hook up wasn’t working, but it gets worse.  This month, we sent out the recording link for one popular webinar, having tested it ahead of time on our computer to make sure it worked, only to find that when you tried to watch/listen to it on an iPad, it took you to a porn siteJ

Another seasoned webinar presenter had a power cut right in the middle of the presentation.  I could go on.

Now in the past I would have taken all this as a sign – that the universe was telling me that this was not a direction I should be pursuing, but not this time.  No, to me what the universe is telling me is that I need to take more control over the technology used, and that despite my fear of all things technical, it’s time I learned more.

So that is my plan over the summer.  I’ve purchased a program and when it is quieter on the work front, plan to tackle and wrestle this technology, so that come the fall in 2014, we are fired up and ready to go.

Stay tuned. Technology permitting, of course.


4 comments:

Patti Pokorchak said...

Don't you just love technology when it works and hate it when it doesn't! Sucks. And it's always when you need it the most.

I've heard good things about Google Hangouts for what it's worth.

It really is all about having a really good reliable internet connection. Good luck on your next one.
Patti

Erika said...

Hi Anne
I agree it's worth persevering to get it right! I'm about to start offering webinars too so am curious to know what platform you've decided on? Onwards and upwards! Erika

Unknown said...

I am going with Webjam which uses Google Hangouts. Have a friend who is going to show me how it works. All being well, that is what we will use in the fall.

Carol said...

I did a presentation using Webinarjam last week and once I got used to where are the controls were, it went fine.