After a few technical glitches - which raised our stress and adrenaline levels to heightened excitement - during our practice sessions leading up to the December 3rd webcast it finally did come off flawlessly. We had nearly 900 people register for the webcast. Since there were no fees or financial commitments involved, we knew not everyone would join us as busyness got in the way. Ironically I did touch on the problem of being overwhelmed and too busy for what's really important!
547 sites logged on for the webcast with over 95% staying on for the full 58-minute webcast. I'll take that to mean the vast majority of participants felt it was worth investing their time. They must have felt they were getting much more value than they paid for the session.
A large number of those sites had groups of participants tuned in together with the visual feed (slides) projected on large meeting room screens. Here's an e-mail from the director of service excellence and organization development at a U.S. health system:
"We had a big group from a few of our sites gathered together for your webinar. We invited formal leaders and told them to invite 'high performers.' The rooms were filled with all different employees. Formal leaders, supervisors, wonderful high-performing staff (who needed and deserved the great boost you gave them) and some not so high performers who I hope left with a lot to think about!!!!!
At the end of the session, I asked what they thought about it. Overwhelmingly positive! They want more!!! We had a quick debrief session - I asked them what would be the responses to the webinar of a 'leader', 'follower' and 'wallower.' They got it!!!!!!
The live webcast consisted of my voice through an audio broadcast synchronized with my slides full of the usual animations and transitions I use when presenting in front of a group. Many participants asked for a copy of the slides to refer back to. Typical was this request from the VP of a logistics services company:
"I was wondering if we might be able to get an electronic version of the information so we can do some things in management meetings over the course of the next year to keep the ideas alive."
Whether you were a registered webcast participant or not, you can now download a PDF file of all the slides used in the presentation from our web site. We also received many regrets from people who couldn't make the live broadcast but wanted to see it. We now have the broadcast available on our site for viewing as streaming audio and video or download the WMV file to your computer. When you visit our "Thriving in Turbulent Times" webcast page you'll also see the agenda of what was covered to help you decide whether or how to view the webcast. Click here to access the webcast page.
The webcast is also available as a free podcast download from iTunes. Click here to access it.
So you can catch the webcast on your own time, show it at your next team meeting, or bring people together for a shared learning experience and do the assessment/discussion exercises recommended in the presentation.
