How To Think About Webinars & Meetups?
Skin in the game stuff
There are a lot of webinars happening nowadays. After watching some and doing one I realised something crucial. It’s very important to collaborate with the right people. There is some counter-intuition as well.
What is a webinar?
A webinar is an opportunity to learn how to communicate ideas to people across the globe. It’s a medium to share a part of what goes inside your head in your unique style. Yes, it’s just another presentation but without limit on the audience.
Pro tip: Since you are on a laptop, you don’t need to worry about your shaking legs 😆
Timing is the biggest factor
Here time means 2 things
Do a webinar as per the current trends of the industry
Time of webinar should be comfortable to people across the globe or as per your target audience. I chose Saturday 7:30 IST, because at the worst its a Friday evening in USA and at best its Saturday evening in India. Works awesome for Europe too.
Collaborate with an organiser who has skin in the game
Do a webinar with a group who’s organiser himself works in the domain.
They will get the best audience for you. They will promote you. They will guide you.
Don’t use webinars as a promotional gig
Meetups with highest subscribers might not be the right place. Rather than doing with an established group, do it for a young group.
It’s the same startup mentality -> you are more valuable to a smaller organisation.
Consider a smaller niche more engaging group instead of a large general group.
Get your skin in the game
Think of yourself as an owner of the group.
When you imagine that your poor presentation can spoil the reputation of the group because it wastes time of people, you will be motivated to do a better presentation. This leads to the question of how much time should you invest in preparation?
The formula is actually simple -> c1 + c2 * n_viewers * ppt_duration
c1 - fixed minimum amount of time
c2 - multiplication factor to add more value as viewers increase
Don’t do a presentation if you are too busy with work. The world doesn’t need another substandard presentation. People will lose trust in you.
Content
Share your table of content to people in advance. Set an expectation and be true to it. Use first 15 minutes to warm up the topic and next 45 to blow their mind.
Plan in advance
Your talk finalisation should happen a month in advance and announcement should happen 3 weeks in advance.
There is no point in working hard for something only to be watched by a few. You need to send a reminder every week in the form of information posts on Twitter and LinkedIn. Create an infographic about the talk if you can!
Allocate more time to prepare if number of subscribers to the talk increases.
What happens after the talk?
It is by statistics that more people will check your slides and talk after the webinar is done. Some might be anticipating your talk till the last day but might miss out due to an emergency or a nap.
I like Google slides because they are super-editable, clean and easy to publish on the web. The zoom video goes to YouTube as usual.
Consider updating/correcting your slides even after the talk.
Yeah, that’s it. I hope this helps.
My talk and the slides. If you are an NLP engineer, consider dair.ai.