They’re a little weird and really impersonal, but my webinars seem to be working. While I don’t think they’ll completely replace in-person seminars, it looks like they’ll be a permanent tool in my ministry toolbox. Here’s a not so serious overview of my experience with webinars.
- “Read my lips” doesn’t work. Generally speaking, people like to actually hear you when they watch a webinar. Lip reading, flash cards and sign language don’t go over well. The severe audio issues I had with my first scheduled webinars necessitated me rescheduling them for two weeks later – and buying a new laptop.
- Bribery does. In person seminars give the speaker the advantage. Group peer pressure ensures that everyone – or almost everyone – stays to the end. But webinars give the audience the advantage. They can come and go anytime they want and do anything they want while you speak. So I have to bribe attendees to stick around to the end. Offering to send them my orientation DVD for free if they watch the entire webinar is working exceptionally well. So far, only one hasn’t stayed to the end and that was because he had already heard the material.
- Attendees get an “attentiveness” score. I was shocked when I saw this pop up after my first webinar. GoToWebinar provides a list of attendees, each assigned an attentiveness score from 0 to 100. How creepy is that? I have no idea how they figure this out. Can they count how many times your eyes close and your head nods? Do they know when you’re checking your email instead of watching the webinar? Who knows? All I know is that these days, Big Brother isn’t just watching us, he’s peering at us through a high powered electron microscope. (And by the way, Fred from Kalamazoo, try drinking a cup of coffee before watching my next webinar.)
- A chest of drawers with old high school year books stacked on top make a great webinar stand. A top drawer pulled out with a 1×12 board on top for your mouse is an upgrade.
- Webinars beat flying United on endless ministry trips. Of course, these days you might get beat up flying United, so this isn’t saying much.
- I’m a hairy, old fart. Do I really look that old? I don’t feel like Father Time.
You can view a recording of the webinar for yourself, complete with audio.
And guess what? If you watch it through to the end (and correctly guess my age to within plus or minus ten years), I’ll send you a free orientation DVD. (A $20 value!!!) If you get my age wrong, I’ll send you a free used orientation DVD as a consolation prize.
Oh, and your attentiveness score has to be greater than or equal to 50.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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3 thoughts on “Beats Flying United: My Take on Using Webinars to Teach Men’s Team Ministry”
Hi Herb. I was a recent attendee of your webinar (last Thursday, 4/20) and I thought it went pretty well. A few times the video/audio went out of sync, but overall the quality was quite good. Yeah, the bribery worked 😉 and I stayed to the end, although I’d like to think that I would have stayed to the end regardless. I recall some kind of dark spot on the wall to your left that was a bit visually distracting, but maybe that’s just me. A ficus or something green and living in the background might be pleasant.
The GoToWebinar site defines attentiveness as “Percent of time the GoToWebinar Viewer is the primary window on the attendee’s screen”. I wonder how that works for multi-monitor users like myself? I had your presentation in full screen viewing mode on my primary monitor the whole time, but I also had your PDF handouts open in Adobe Acrobat on my secondary monitor. If the Acrobat application has the focus (is the selected window), does that mean GoToWebinar thinks I’m off doing something else and therefore not attentive? I probably stayed with the presentation itself 98% to 99% (not saying that just to get the DVD, I’m actually curious as to how accurate/valuable that metric really is in all cases).
The content itself was very compelling, and it’s a subject that I have been giving some thought to as of late. There were also a number of great take away quotes, my favorite being that the incarnation was not a short-term mission trip. And the story about the single mom at the restaurant where the group was meeting was very touching; it was a great example of lifestyle evangelism (not to mention being a bit tissue-worthy).
Yep, I saw the mark on the wall too, Keith. I fixed it for later presentations that week. I’m moving my webinar to a permanent location, since I need to actually use my chest of drawers for its normal purpose. We’ll see how well I do with my next set design.
Your attentiveness score was 82, Keith. You tied with Ron from Washington State for the highest. John from Michigan, your score was 54. You can keep your DVD, but let’s step it up a notch next time, K?
I don’t know if “tissue-worthy” is a great metric for men’s ministry, but I’ll take it anyway.
Herb
I received this great comment via email. I’m posting it without attribution: “Thank you for putting on the webinar, there were 3 of us watching and we each enjoyed it very much. It gave me some definition to what we have been doing over the last couple of years and inspiration to keep on keeping on. We have about 25 widow ladies that we contact each month and end up with 7-8 projects from those calls, which is good because we have only 5-6 guys on a good Saturday to serve them however I have noticed that God has been faithful in providing for the our needs and the widows needs through that. What you explained in your webinar concerning identifying with and how that happens and the need for commitment and sacrifice is what I have seen happening so it was nice to see your defining that process and the need for it. Do you have or have you considered doing a 20-25 minute promo video of sorts that includes the why do widows ministry and the identify,commitment and sacrifice part of the process. I want to use some of the webinar as a recruitment tool but getting it down to 20 minutes will be hard to do. I like your computer stand.*:) “