How to make a live Webinar for FREE?

As a thank you to permies people for helping with my youtube channel I want to host a live webinar that would be free for you guys to join in.

The votes are coming in.  Pop on over and vote if you haven't already.  Even if it's a long time after, I can see referring to that list in the future.

There sure have been a lot of votes.  I guess part of me thought, "no one will be interested in what I have to say, I won't have to learn how to make a webinar happen".  My imposter syndrome was wrong again.  

So here we are.  On the path to making a webinar.  

Time to figure out how.

Mostly this thread is because my brain seems to think best in the medium that is forums.  I can read feedback, it triggers other ideas I didn't think about, reread it all, keep track of idea paths and resources I find online.  

What do I want to do?

Live webinar that can be saved (and hopefully sold to help fund the new computer - more on that later in this post)

What does that look like?

I'm hoping that a webinar is me sitting in front of my computer with the web camera turned on, talking about a specific topic and then people will watch and ask questions in the chat.  
I wonder if I need someone to help fish out the questions from the chat as I'm a slow reader?  

Maybe share my screen for some details?

The big problem is, my computer has a lot of trouble running zoom.  It's not built for audio or visual processing - I built it back when I was doing mostly word processing.  sigh.  If I run this via zoom, it will probably die quickly and people get frustrated and sad.  

Youtube has a way to run a live feed.  I tested this out and it looks easy enough.  But I can't figure out how to share a screen on it yet.  

But the youtube system saves the file to their cloud and I can download it later for editing.    This frees up a lot of processing for my computer.

Could I do this with me talking and not screen sharing?  Maybe some props?  That would greatly limit what I can do to what's in season at that time.  But it also makes it easier on my brain as I don't have to figure out new software.

Then again, screen share could give me the freedom to drink some tea while people are looking at something other than me.

Brain dump done.  More later.  
What are your thoughts so far?  
What do you like to see in a webinar?

This is what won the vote: Overview - what plants can I grow for textiles and how do I get the fibre out?

I need

a better title

a thumbnail

a trailer

a unifying theme

some sort of structure to what I want to say otherwise, it will be a 12-hour long event

maybe plant a couple of people in the audience with some questions I would like to answer to get the ball rolling - is shilling a thing in webinars?

set a time and date

do a sample with maybe 4 people to see if the technology is up for this?

a way to make this permies - only.  Probably in the daily-ish forum because it's easy for everyone to access that (by signing up for the daily-ish)

Let's start at the bottom.  Anyone here not know about the daily-ish forum?  

Watching a webinar this morning, I had two thoughts.

1. it wasn't a real webinar, it was 30 minutes of background and housekeeping and 30 min of selling her online class.  
2. Boy, she had a lot of technical issues and didn't know it.  She wasn't watching the chat.  
    - I really don't want to rely on technology too much at this stage, so am I willing to forgo screen sharing in favour of a smooth expierence?  

Another thought - what am I going to bribe myself with to get through this?  Tea of course.  Jaffa cakes maybe?  too messy to eat on screen.  Probably shouldn't eat while fliming.  But after.  Tea and jaffa cakes.  Yes, that might work.  

I did the preliminary outline last night.  Still, a lot to flesh out but first, I want to get this down from a 4-hour talk to a manageable 40 min.  I could get this ready for the second half of Feb easily.  

I can easily tilt my camera so it shows my desk or shows my face.  This way I don't need to stress out the computer (and my brain) with learning new software.  I just need to remember to put everything upsidedown on the desk - like when I used to show maps to tourists.  


Waking up this morning, my biggest worry is my microphone.  Is it up for the task?  It's good enough for zoom, but I haven't heard what it sounds like.  I'm not looking forward to doing the research and thanks to a series of unfortunate events, this would mean I probably couldn't afford to do this for a few months if I need to buy more kit.  

But maybe I'm worried about nothing?  I need to design a test.  2 min talk, maybe 4 people... what could I possibly have to talk about for 2 min that my test subjects would find interesting?  

You can talk for at least 5 minutes about tea and Jaffa cakes!!

Mmmm... Tea.  

Test webinar:  The value of sampling, swatching, and those hateful things that get in the way of creating stuff

(the title is a work in progress)

Goal length, 5 min plus question time

When: 5 February, 11 am Pacific time.  (I tried to convert that to some of the other time zones, but my brain said "good luck with that, I'm going on vacation")

If I can get 4 people able to commit to that time as my sample audience, I'll do the sample webinar to find out if I need to upgrade my equipment or not.

I want to help. Count me in.

Sat Febr. 5th 11:00 am PST

                   12:00 noon MST (Missoula)
                     2:00 pm EST (New York)
                     7:00 pm GMT (London)

Have to go to a webinar in a few minutes, but I'll stop by later with some thoughts.

Would love to help with this, and should be available on the 5th for the test run.

Hi R. I watched a webinar last night. They were very organised! Two people were doing the talk (like question and answer), another was reading the chat and sometimes passing on an important question or remark and a fourth person was there for technical stuff (and he did the introduction). If you are on your own ... I think it's very difficult!

r ranson wrote:This is what won the vote: Overview - what plants can I grow for textiles and how do I get the fibre out?

I need

a better title

a thumbnail

a trailer

a unifying theme

some sort of structure to what I want to say otherwise, it will be a 12-hour long event

maybe plant a couple of people in the audience with some questions I would like to answer to get the ball rolling - is shilling a thing in webinars?

[/list]

I can help with title.

Can probably help with theme and structure too, and can definitely help edit/shorten things.

Shilling...depends on the webinar. I've seen some that were so obvious about it, and others where I couldn't tell if anyone was asking predetermined questions or not.


I am no good at tech, but I have a history of answering questions in chats when I know the answers. Just something I do. I could probably help with that, or with pulling questions from the chat.

Today's webinar had some issues. It was one-person, and Zoom was giving people grief about getting into the meeting. Not sure what that was about, but one of the things our host mentioned was outsourcing tech in the future. Yesterday's had gone fine (same host, same platform).

We have 2 people available for the 5th.

Do we have two more?  

I can help with tech/Zoom stuff if that's what you're ending up using. And monitor chat, read out questions, etc.

I'm available for the test webinar on the 5th!

My computer really struggles with zoom.  It usually crashes.

But it seems good with the youtube live thing, so I'm going to start there.  

We got 3.  One more?

If my other commitment ends in time I will check back here for a link or my YouTube subscription.

Did we have one more confirmed for this Saturday?  

I accidently made this a public webinar.  So here's the link of anyone else might be able to make it.

https://youtu.be/JADMFwi6-W4

It's at 11am Pacific, tomorrow (saturday).  I hope it lasts about 15 min, but it's okay if it lasts longer.

My main goal is to test if I can do this with my existing equipment or if I need to save up to buy new ones.  

I'm hopeful people will come with questions.  I don't know how many I can answer, but I'm curious if I can keep up with the chat.  

See you tomorrow!

Is it okay that I'm insanely nervous about this?  

r ranson wrote:Is it okay that I'm insanely nervous about this?  

I would be too, so I think that's perfectly normal.

Oh my god, yes! One method of easing stage fright/performance anxiety is to go through all the worst case scenarios before getting "on stage". Just acknowledging them can help to keep them from overwhelming you with worry, plus usually they're not actually that disastrous even in our imaginations.

r ranson wrote:Is it okay that I'm insanely nervous about this?  

75 years of experience I am over confident. I will be there to help you stay calm.

Remind for tomorrow's me.

Put your reading glasses on so I can see the chat.  

about one minute until this goes live

Nicely done! I could tell you were a bit nervous, but was glad to see you overcome it, in the process of doing it. The more you do it, the better you'll get at it.

Oops, I totally forgot ... But I was lucky to see it when you were still there. The first part I'll have to watch later (you said you'll edit it)

You didn’t seem that nervous to me! Some great nuggets of knowledge even in this “sampling sampler”. Can’t wait to see the next webinar.

That was nerve wracking.

Thank you so much for everyone who came!



Notes for self
- move notes up high so I don't have to keep looking down.
- make notes typed so I don't struggle to read my hand writing
- wow, people are so supportive
- yeh, reading the chat constantly was hard on my brain.  Need to train myself to find places to pause and read.
- good point about reading the whole comment.  There's often quite a lag for people joining so some people can have a whole minute difference between chat and video.
- camera shows more of my desk than I expected.  Future goal is to get a better camera that doesn't have such nasty lens distortion.  
- do something different with my crazy hair.
- the black sweater worked well as it doesn't rustle and it looked okay.
- should I be looking at the camera or beside?  Which is less freaky?  
- put gadget in other room so it doesn't make noise
- remember to drink tea when mind goes blank as an 'excuse' for not talking constantly.
- turn off air filter so it doesn't make extra background noise
- make checklist of all the things I need to do.
- make sure I have a full hour to make tea, and do all the stuff so I am not rushed prior to broadcast.  Maybe noon would be better?  

Lighting - worked okay.  Can be better.
Sound???  How did that go?  My most nervous element.


Edit: I also need to make sure I don't put ads on the next one.  I think they are default on and I expected default off.

Often there will be someone “behind the scenes” keeping track of the chat and comments. The presenter only has to focus on presenting, and the facilitator will chime in when there’s something relevant.

I’d say look into the camera. It feels more personal.

Sound was good! I didn’t have any trouble hearing you, though it seems like there’s maybe some noise cancellation processing happening on YouTube or on your computer that’s changing the levels sometimes.

Looking at makes it feel more personal, friendly. Having the tea is a perfect 'pause' button. Things like tweaking the lighting (which was not bad at all, anyway) and keeping other devices off/ silent will be an ongoing learning thing.

I think you did well, and having watched all your previous videos, and how you continually critique yourself, I'm positive you'll just keep getting better. It's a normal process, and you're very good at the self- critique.

My internet has been unreliable today. I'm sorry I couldn't make it.

I'm going to leave it up and unedited for a while.

https://youtu.be/JADMFwi6-W4

I went outside for a few hours to play with the chickens and recover.  Then came and re-watched.  It's pretty rough stuff.  

My biggest problem was I wasn't confident.  I had a lot more to say and better ways to say it, and didn't get there due to nerves and worry about how the system works.

Which makes this a really good thing I did this 'swatch'.

The question I need to answer before I do this again, "how can I get more comfortable with this that I don't stumble over myself?"

r ranson wrote:I went outside for a few hours to play with the chickens and recover.  Then came and re-watched.  It's pretty rough stuff.  

My biggest problem was I wasn't confident.  I had a lot more to say and better ways to say it, and didn't get there due to nerves and worry about how the system works.

Which makes this a really good thing I did this 'swatch'.

The question I need to answer before I do this again, "how can I get more comfortable with this that I don't stumble over myself?"

You did better than you think.

To get more comfortable, more practice. Rehearse, and rehearse, and rehearse. Another test-run might be a good idea as well.

You could try scripting small amounts, statements you definitely want to include, and memorizing them. That goes back to practice again.

I think your point about typing up your notes will help too.

I agree, you didn’t do as bad as you think.

And also with practice. The more live appearances you do the more confident you’ll get.

Sound was great.

With my zoom presentation I can do a rehearsal without anyone else to make sure my outline can be on the screen and the desk top tabs I want to share are ready and appear as I want them.  I publish the outline beforehand often in question format so the audience is looking for the answer and better prepared to ask clarifying questions.  My presentation then is answering questions which I love to do. I have not experimented with screen sharing on YouTube but having the audience see the text of what I am explaining which may have unfamiliar words gives me a break and allows me to set up the next demonstration.  If you can share a pre recorded video clip that allows you to look at the chat while it is playing.  With the master mind group on zoom there are co hosts that can keep things going when my internet gets interrupted.  You cam record a presentation on zoom or YouTube then schedule it as a premiere so you only have to fallow the chat and answer questions as they come in.