In practice of my first webinar I forgot to do some basic things prior to running the event in order to make things run more smoothly. Because of this, I created a checklist of things to do prior to launching the webinar.
Here’s my most ridiculous preflight checklist prior to running the short webinar:
Give The Dog A Bone
If you run webinars at home and have pets, keep them happy and quiet for the duration of the webinar by making them as comfortable as possible. Take your dog for a walk, give her dinner, or give her a bone. Turn on some calm television programming in the background in your house that may drown out some other neighborly sounds your dog may bark at. For me, giving Bella a bone usually keeps her quiet for 30 minutes or more.
Turn Off Your Cell Phone
Notification tones are really annoying during a webinar. Turn your phone on silent or off. Also remember to move the phone away from the microphone or anything it may vibrate against if you leave it on vibrate.
Show or Run The Clock
Don’t rely on the small clock in the interface of the computer screen for timing your webinar. It will likely be covered by the slide presentation or interface. Either have a physical clock with a large readout or find a web app to count the time for your webinar. Websites like online-stopwatch.com have some options and this can be shown on a secondary monitor so you can track your time.
Turn on All Lights
It requires a lot of lights to get good lighting for the webcam. I never work with all of these lights on so it’s easy to forget to turn them all on.
Test Microphone and Camera
This one is obvious. But the one time you don’t check it will be the time your mic level fails!
Webinar Platform Log-in / Setup
Log in and double check your settings are accurate for the type of webinar you plan on running well before the meeting. There’s always seemingly one box that should have been checked in set up previously was not.
Have Your Script Handy
Practice your script and allow yourself to speak naturally. Adjust to match the spoken flow, but just in case you lose your thought you will have a script to get you back on track.
Load Your Slides
Load your slides early enough to give all the content time to load. If you house your slides in a cloud service platform some slides may take more time to load content. Sometimes slides don’t load at all! On to the next point.
Back-up Slides PDF
Have a backup of your slides in PDF form. If your slides fail to load from the cloud service or Powerpoint crashes you have a backup handy. This will quickly alleviate the slide hiccup rather than stumbling and reloading the slide platform likely just to fail again!
Log-in to Other Platforms Used in Demonstration
Don’t forget to log into any services you intend to utilize in the webinar demonstration. It wastes time to sign into services live in the webinar and if you forget your password it’s embarrassing!
Resource Document
Have your resource document handy during the presentation so you can share links live. Don’t go digging around your Google Drive live in the webinar to find it. Everyone can see your various folders and lack of preparation.
Give The Dog A Bone
If you run webinars at home and have pets, keep them happy and quiet for the duration of the webinar by making them as comfortable as possible. Take your dog for a walk, give her dinner, or give her a bone. Turn on some calm television programming in the background in your house that may drown out some other neighborly sounds your dog may bark at. For me, giving Bella a bone usually keeps her quiet for 30 minutes or more.
Turn Off Your Cell Phone
Notification tones are really annoying during a webinar. Turn your phone on silent or off. Also remember to move the phone away from the microphone or anything it may vibrate against if you leave it on vibrate.
Show or Run The Clock
Don’t rely on the small clock in the interface of the computer screen for timing your webinar. It will likely be covered by the slide presentation or interface. Either have a physical clock with a large readout or find a web app to count the time for your webinar. Websites like online-stopwatch.com have some options and this can be shown on a secondary monitor so you can track your time.
Turn on All Lights
It requires a lot of lights to get good lighting for the webcam. I never work with all of these lights on so it’s easy to forget to turn them all on.
Test Microphone and Camera
This one is obvious. But the one time you don’t check it will be the time your mic level fails!
Webinar Platform Log-in / Setup
Log in and double check your settings are accurate for the type of webinar you plan on running well before the meeting. There’s always seemingly one box that should have been checked in set up previously was not.
Have Your Script Handy
Practice your script and allow yourself to speak naturally. Adjust to match the spoken flow, but just in case you lose your thought you will have a script to get you back on track.
Load Your Slides
Load your slides early enough to give all the content time to load. If you house your slides in a cloud service platform some slides may take more time to load content. Sometimes slides don’t load at all! On to the next point.
Back-up Slides PDF
Have a backup of your slides in PDF form. If your slides fail to load from the cloud service or Powerpoint crashes you have a backup handy. This will quickly alleviate the slide hiccup rather than stumbling and reloading the slide platform likely just to fail again!
Log-in to Other Platforms Used in Demonstration
Don’t forget to log into any services you intend to utilize in the webinar demonstration. It wastes time to sign into services live in the webinar and if you forget your password it’s embarrassing!
Resource Document
Have your resource document handy during the presentation so you can share links live. Don’t go digging around your Google Drive live in the webinar to find it. Everyone can see your various folders and lack of preparation.
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