Here are a few things to think about:

How much contact do you need with your web conferencing system via the computer?

I purposefully have simple slides with one idea each, so I don’t use, for instance, annotation tools except in rare circumstances (e.g., demonstrating them).

I also am platform-agnostic.  My company is purely in the education business and we don’t sell web/audio/video conferencing or services, so I’ve adapted to be prepared for whatever conferencing platform my client is providing.  This doesn’t mean I don’t tackle platform-specific tactics when I’m working with a client privately, but in a public webinar like the one you attended I plan content to be applicable to the most people in the audience, regardless of what conferencing solution they’re using.  Takeaway:  I don’t spend as much time using/demonstrating “hand-up” or other features that they may or may not have.

It also depends on the type of session you’re delivering.  A broader lead-generation webinar often doesn’t require the same hands-on types of exercises you might use in a training session where you’re teaching managers a new software application.

What’s your office setup?

Me, I walk away from the computer, come back, push the next slide button (frequently!), and then when I do need to do something hands-on, I sit down.  Then I’ll stand up again.  While I don’t have a raised surface in my office now, when I was at Microsoft I had one section of my cube desk raised so I could stand at it…it was the best setup I’ve had.  If you can do this, it might be the best of both worlds

Finally, if you do sit down, what’s your posture? A few tips:

Sit up straight. It’s basic, but it’s important to letting your lungs/diaphragm/voice do the best they can do.

Put your feet flat on the floor – apart. Don’t cross your legs…it contributes to a constricting “closed” posture and generally tightens you up.

Breathe. As I often quip, we can’t change the voices we were born with, but we can change how well we use what we were born with.  See this post for more on this and a few other pre-conference tips.

Want optimum energy?  Stand up when you present at webinars.

To be sure, in most cases you should push yourself to use more and more interactivity as your audience has less distance to travel to Distraction Avenue. I’m not saying it won’t feel artificial sometimes to ask a question, but your goal for that question, poll, or ‘hand up’ may well be to demonstrate that you will be interacting with the audience. This is a powerful message if you need them to engage – and you probably do if your goal is to educate and influence and outcome.

But the worst thing you can do is lose one precious moment working on something that doesn’t support your presentation goals…to communicate with the audience to effectively deliver them the knowledge or skills that accomplish an outcome.  Creating a moment of interactivity with no purpose is a waste of the audience’s time… and a waste of yours.  Don’t use a poll just to “be interactive.”

Don’t use interactivity tools without a reason.

Is it a helpful technique to mention the person’s name who asks the question like you guys are doing right now?  Don’t some people get offended by this?

Tony,

I think you should consider it both in terms of context and culture.  Here are a few things to consider:

Generally, I do mention names – first names only.  The sweetest sound to anyone’s ear is their own name, and not only do you get that person’s attention when you respond with their name, but you get other people’s attention as well.  It’s part of what makes a live event real and personal.  I think it’s a big mistake to make a live event as impersonal as an on-demand piece of content.  That said, ask yourself a few questions:

What is the culture of the audience?

This could be national or geographic.  This could be organizational.  There are no absolutes, and you want to be sensitive to cultural norms.

What is the nature of the session?

Is it a smaller, private training session with 15 participants?  Is it like a public seminar where the speaker asks everyone to write their name on a card and set it up in front of them so s/he can respond by name?  Have you promised anonymity or would you and your audience benefit by keeping responses anonymous?

Is the event public or private?

I’m a big respecter of privacy, so I don’t use last names in public events, but unless everyone in the audience knows “Tony,” you’re not breaching that trust to address a question with “Tony asks a fair question… let me address that.”  If it’s a private event, what are the expectations?  As I mentioned earlier, I don’t use last names (or any other identifying info such as company), but I think you can personalize and respect privacy at the same time in a public setting.

If it’s important based on the context and culture, I’d be sure to address it when you set the ground rules for your meeting.  Err on the side of caution, but don’t through out an amazing opportunity to be live, personal, and real.  It’s what distinguishes the shared experience of a live event from all the other on-demand noise.

Not very, if you ask me.

Don’t get me wrong, when I bumped into this free tool to use with Keynote (shared by Tuaw) that would tweet out your presentation text.

Here are four reasons I wouldn’t recommend it:

You should present more like Steve Jobs.  And Steve’s presentations would make lousy tweets

Steve’s the master of simple, powerful imagery and few words.  How relevant would it be to tweet out one word that had no image?  Strike 1.

Most presentations deserve the moniker “death by bullet.”  Too many words = lousy tweets

Unless you planned the presentation to keep everything under 140 characters, the tweet gets cut off, and the thought is thwarted.  Strike 2.

Presenting is an audio/visual communication format.  Twitter is not

If your presentation can be read and doesn’t need you presenting, you’re wasting your audience’s (and your) time anyway.  Do them a favor – write them a paper and avoid  Strike 3.

The power of Twitter is voice with value

When someone watches your presentation and tweets something out, it’s something they find of value enough to share with their followers who they believe will find it of value.  AND they usually share a complete thought that makes sense unto itself.  Used right, that’ll attract eyeballs.  Use it poorly and you’ll hear a big sucking sound near the unfollow button.

Following is one that came in that I didn’t get to during the presentation:

Chris C. asks, “How do you manage running the meeting with monitoring chats?”

Practice, for starters.  (I’ve been doing this a long time).

Have you ever hopped in an unfamiliar car and tried to turn on the headlights only to have the windshield wipers start flapping?

Repetition breeds familiarity, and in time you know where to look, know where to grab, etc.  Start with one tool and get good at it.  Then in a meeting or three find another that suits your style and start using it.

I’d start with chat, because it directly facilitates dialogue.  And like I mentioned in the webinar, I’d keep it open and glance back and forth between it and your presentation, just like you watch your audience AND glance at your notes when presenting in person.

Following is one that came in that I didn’t get to during the presentation:

Scot R. asked a few questions:

“How would you work OneNote into this?“

When I dropped out of PowerPoint to demonstrate how to use Word as an ‘active agenda,’ I was just sharing my desktop.  Anything you’ve got on your computer desktop can be shown to your audience, so OneNote would work just fine!  (BTW, it’s a great program…love OneNote!).

“Would you recommend using the video in the meeting?”

That’s a longer answer than I’m going to take the space for here.  For a multi-page dissertation about how it works and why I’m very careful with the use of video in a meeting, get the book (please don’t take that as a pitch – I’m just pointing you toward the one resource I know about that addresses this in depth).

The question I’d ask is “what’s the tradeoff?”  Video can be useful, and sometimes it’s even necessary, but there’s a cost technologically.  What’s the value you’ll get versus the potential downside?  Example:  if yours is a marketing presentation and you’re unsure of your audiences’ technical savvy, bandwidth, computer horsepower, etc., is what you’ll gain worth the potential risk? (Also see what I wrote to Mary Ellen and Catherine)

It’s a tool – and all tools have their place.

“I work with lots of developers, if I have them at their desk how do I keep them engaged (instead of working on the code so they can leave)?”

We’re talking about remote audiences here.  If they all piled into a conference room you not only cannot engage them one-on-one, ask them to contribute, ask them to answer a question, etc., you still can’t guarantee their not coding either.

In addition to including each individual in the discussion, keep things moving.  Even someone who glances away or goes to check email will come back so as to not miss something.  It’s part of why I push 70-80 slides in a presentation (~30 seconds each).

Finally, remember the ‘move the needle’ exhortation.  You’ll never get 100% participation in any meeting, save CEO mandate.  Think through what you’d do in ANY meeting to improve its “interestingness” (to coin a word), and remember the goal is to improve the averages.

Of note here, I had the privilege of making a guest post there recently while she was globetrotting about.

Thanks for the honor, Olivia.

-R

When we present face-to-face, this is true whether we want it to be or not.  Presenting virtually, however, means that we don’t see that thing that happens in the audience that we comment on.  We don’t see the meek hand that starts to raise but then goes back down.  We don’t see that we’re on a winning streak and decide to run with it.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t be spontaneous when presenting virtually, however.

We respond best on-the-fly when we’re comfortable, and a simple fact is that most online presenters are dealing with something new.  And they’re focused on the task at hand…getting through their slides.

The solution is simple:  plan to be spontaneous.

The experience will come, but in the beginning an easy thing to do is to plan in advance where you’ll ask an “ad hoc” question.  It might be a question that helps you set up the next section of your presentation, it might be one that simply gets your audience engaged in some way.  For example, if you just concluded a story about your trip to Spain, ask a question like, “Hey, have you been to Spain?  Go to the Q&A pane and tell me yes or no, or maybe tell me the name of most interesting place you’ve been.”

All planned.  Not critical to the success of the presentation from a content perspective (it doesn’t make a difference if they’ve been to Spain or New Zealand).  But it IS critical to connecting your virtual to you as a real person.  They participate…and active listeners will hear your message better than passive listeners.

Beat the newbie blahs.  Plan your spontenaity.

You can them ignore them for a while without someone feeling ignored or passing out from holding their arm up for long.

You don’t have to use the phrase “parking lot” for a question that comes in that you’d really rather answer later one-on-one instead of in front of the group.

You can pick/choose the questions you want to want to answer.

You can better manage your time.

You can use planted questions more easily (nobody actually even has to ask the question).

You can tackle managing them as a group.  For a big audience, you can enlist additional people to join the presentation team to answer questions.  Let the event producer or moderator or sales team tackle those FAQs that would otherwise take up your time.

Master the essential tool for interactive presentations.  Master text-based Q&A.

Think about a television or radio broadcast. You get to listen. You don’t have a choice.

Think about a seminar you’ve attended with hundreds of people in the audience. The presenter has a certain amount of content to get through in a specified period of time.

Now put yourself in the presenter’s shoes. You’ve planned how to interact with your audience, and ideally you’ve got a sense for how much time you will be doing that.

If you need to retain maximum control over your presentation, you need to be able to pick and choose what questions you respond to. Ideally you can choose questions that best support your point, best provide value to the broadest part of your audience, best set you up to be the rockstar.

The only way you can do that is to manage questions via text. This means that your best solution for letting the audience listen is having them on “listen only” mode, whether they’re on the telephone or listening over their computers.

Put the audience on “listen only” for optimum control.