In recent weeks I have fought with VoIP difficulties on webinars using three different web conferencing technologies. Is VoIP truly ready for prime time?

A bit of background first for those unfamiliar with the terminology and concept. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. In our particular niche – looking at web conferencing – it refers to letting participants use a microphone or headset connected to their computer as a way to let other meeting participants hear their voices.

This is subtly different from “broadcast audio” or “streaming audio”, which deals with the transmission of sound out to participants’ computer speakers. The sound in that case may come from a telephone call patched in to the web conference or from recorded audio clips being played as part of the meeting content.
VoIP is a great concept. When it works correctly, it offers several potential advantages:

* It removes a separate technology (telephones) from your meeting equipment requirements and places focus solely on the computer.

* It reduces the complexity of instructions you need to send out to participants, since there are no telephone numbers and codes to remember.

* It can reduce costs by eliminating telephone connection charges.

Unfortunately, VoIP is prone to several disadvantages as well:

* Not everyone owns a computer headset/microphone. If your participants don’t have the right equipment, they are helpless (I think it’s fair to say that everyone has access to a telephone).

* Computer-connected headsets require configuration for use. Many web conference participants are not experienced or patient enough to go through the right steps. You are dealing with a computer peripheral that has drivers to load and interactions with Control Panel settings. Simply getting your computer to select the headset as the input/output audio device to use can flummox users on occasion.

* The interaction between the conferencing software and the headset can potentially be confusing (to use a charitable term). I have had cases where the order of connection can mean the difference between success and failure. I’m not saving myself any time in connection instructions if I have to tell participants to connect their headset first. Then select it in Control Panel. Then start the conferencing software. Then confirm a popup box that lets Flash recognize the device. Then run a test step to set audio levels.

* This isn’t a fair ding against the technology itself, but the nasty fact is that most of the computer headsets I’ve come across out there in the general community are of appallingly low quality. Businesses all too often seem to tolerate purchases of VoIP headsets as a lowest-possible-cost toy rather than as a valued business asset.

Even when everything else works, computer headsets in webcasts sometimes exhibit random behaviors that are nothing short of mysterious. I was on a webinar yesterday where my headset worked fine until I had to replug it right before show time. Then it switched to a feedback mode where my audio was picked up by the mike and rebroadcast. I sounded like I was talking in a giant tin can. I had an event where my client as the primary speaker could use her VoIP headset right up until I connected mine on another computer under a different login, at which time she was blocked out. The vendor couldn’t explain it at all. I gave a training session where we used collaborative participation with audience members on computer headsets. One person could never get his headset to broadcast through the software. One person’s mike was live the entire time, even when explicitly muted in the webcast software.

When these things happen, you can easily spend long, frustrating periods of time trying to diagnose and repair the setup by long distance. And that’s a recipe for disaster with your audience. As soon as they start concentrating on the technology rather than your topic and content, you have lost the battle for effective achievement of your goals in holding the meeting. With my training class, I spent a short time trying to solve my audience’s problems, but ended up rescheduling the session with the promise of a telephone dial in.

All in all, I’ll reserve VoIP participation in webinars for internal business sessions with coworkers I know. Ones where I can tolerate some fumbling and frustration if things get muddled. But for public sessions and webinars where I need to rely on voices actually making it all the way into the web conference without exception, I’ll stick with the telephone as the input device of choice.

By Ken Molay, president of Webinar Success

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Web conferencing – Collaborative interacting over the Internet
Web conferencing allows a presenter to show an audience what is on his/her computer screen and collaborate in a number of ways.

* Data: Web conferencing is focused on computer-based data (presentations, documents, software apps, or a desktop), which it can display and easily manipulate. That makes it easier for the businessperson to use, and makes it fit most day-to-day business meetings and events. Some Web conferencing platforms offer Webcam video.
* Web & phone: Most Web conferences use an audio conference call to let the group hear the presenter. Phone audio is more reliable and higher quality than Internet audio. And it allows real-time interaction among participants in the event. But it does add the cost and effort of using the phone as well as a browser.
* Small to mid-sized groups: The data-sharing and two-way interactivity work well for groups up 500 attendees. Also, costs scale with the number of users, making very large Web conferences more expensive than similarly sized Webcasts. Meetings can be hosted or attended from any PC with an Internet connection. No production or special equipment is required.
* Two-way: Web conferences are more interactive, with the ability to share presentation rights and control of applications among all group members. For collaboration, in-depth presentations, sales demos and training it can’t be beat.

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Webcasting (web’kast’) – Broadcasting over the Internet
Webcasting technologies use streaming media technologies to broadcast audio and video or audio only with power point slides (optional) over the Internet to a large audience.

* Video: The biggest difference between Webcasting and Web conferencing is the predominance of video vs. sharing desktop applications and content. That makes Webcasting preferable for high-profile public events. To make the video TV quality requires onsite production support, powerful servers, and lots of Internet bandwidth, which is why the base cost of a Webcast can be very high.
* Internet-only delivery: Live or archived video is delivered over the Internet and the audio is provided via speakers on your PC.
* Large events: By using high-capacity distributed servers, Webcasting companies can deliver events to audiences of thousands. The services digitize the content and then send it to servers that distribute the content to the audience. The processing steps introduce a delay between the presenter and the audience – for example, the audience is seeing what the presenter did 30 seconds ago, although it appears live to the attendee. Unlike production costs, per-attendee distribution is cheap – just the cost of bandwidth – so very large events are less expensive as Webcasts than they are as Web conferences.
* One-way: Streaming media is a technology developed to compress and transfer video and/or audio data through the Internet in such a way that the file can start to play while it is downloading. The content can either be “live” or “archived”. The distribution is fine for large events in which there can’t be much interaction between the audience and the presenter anyway.

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Webinar (web-in-AR) – Web-based Seminar
A is a term used to describe a specific type of web conference short for “Web Seminar”. It is typically one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction. A webinar can be collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line or through the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a truly web-based communication.

*
Power Point slide presentations
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Audio through the phone (conference call), VoIP (Real time audio communication through the computer via use of headphones and speakers), or combination.
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Web-browser tours
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Recording (for viewing at a later time)
*
Whiteboard with annotation (allowing the presenter and/or attendees to highlight or mark items on the slide presentation. Or, simply make notes on a blank whiteboard.)
*
Text chat – For live question and answer sessions, limited to the people connected to the meeting. Text chat may be public (echo’ed to all participants) or private (between 2 participants).
*
Polls and surveys (allows the presenter to conduct questions with multiple choice answers directed to the audience)
*
Screen sharing/desktop sharing/application sharing (where participants can view anything the presenter currently has shown on their screen. Some screen sharing applications allow for remote desktop control, allowing participants to manipulate the presenters screen, although this is not widely used.)

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1. Reboot your PC

2. When it comes up, only have your browser open

3. Keep any other programs, especially those that have pop ups or reminders off, for e.g., we have our Outlook turned off 30 minutes prior to sound check and until the webinar has been completed, as this ensures nothing will pop up during the webinar. If you need to work on these prior to our sound check, all panelists (Frank & Rebecca) need to have theirs turned off when we start the sound check.

4. Then run the GoToMeeting Wizard about 30 minutes prior to logging on for our sound check by following these simple instructions, and if you need additional assistance, please call CitrixOnLine Support for GoToWebinar support at 1 888 259 8414, and tell them you are a client of WebAttract and they will help you out. These folks are pretty responsive, but you might encounter a 10 minute or so wait, which is why we suggest you running GTM Wizard about 30 minutes prior to logging on.

a. 1. Surf to http://www.gotomeeting.com/wizard
b. 2. Click the “Download GoToMeeting Connection Wizard” link
c. 3. Run or open g2mwizard.exe
d. 4. Right click the GoToMeeting logo banner
e. 5. Click “Manual Tools”
f. 6. Click “Reset”
g. 7. Click “Reset” again
h. 8. Click “OK”
i. 9. Click “Custom Wizard”
j. 10. Click “Next”
k. 11. Click “OK” on the dialog box
l. 12. Wait for tests, then click “Next”
m. 13. Under “Streaming Communications” click “Direct, Hostport: 8200″
n. 14. Click the lower right drop down menu labeled “Usage:”, choose “Force”, or leave it at “Try Always” (Try Always is recommended)
o. 15. Click “Store and Validate”
p. 16. When tests finish, click “Next”
q. 17. Click “Exit Wizard”

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Planes are finally starting to fly over Europe again, but the backlog of travel woes will take days to unwind. As I write this, Scandinavia and the UK still have flight restrictions in place, thanks to Iceland’s volcanic temperament.

Publicare Marketing Communications in Germany issued a very short press release this week stating that web conferencing service providers reported an average increase of 58 percent in conferences compared to regular workdays.

I was interested in how they came up with that figure, so I contacted Publicare’s managing director and asked how they were able to get quantitative data so quickly. Robert Harnischmacher helped fill in some of the background for me. He pointed out that the information was self-reported by a variety of web conferencing providers which are named in the press release. There was quite a bit of variance in the reported increases, ranging anywhere from 7% to 130%. He had contacted Cisco as well, but their information came in too late for inclusion in his average. And he also wanted to acknowledge that the figures are not weighted in any way to account for the base number of web conferences for each vendor used as a starting point.

The 58% figure isn’t really as important as the indication that web collaboration has been seen as not only a standard business practice to help supplement in-person meetings, but as a viable emergency measure to replace business travel when it becomes impossible.

I did a little checking myself with some of the European-based web conferencing vendors I know, asking if they had anecdotal evidence of increased business attributable to volcano effects. All my contacts reported extra work caused by the travel embargo. I was particularly interested in larger webinars and webcasts as opposed to small ad-hoc web conference meetings. The larger web events are traditionally planned and scheduled far in advance, so scrambles on this front might not be as numerous, but would be significant.

Rob Holmes at Podia, based in the UK, told me they had scrambled to provision three impromptu webinars for clients who had already arranged large meetings and couldn’t get their people to them.

Joe Garde at Online Meeting Rooms in Ireland showed me some clips where meeting speakers had webcast their presentations to groups in physical halls because they couldn’t travel to the event (including a professor who webcast his violin playing to an audience in the National Concert Hall). Joe summed it up as: “Put it this way… I’m exhausted!”

Roland Steinmetz at Meeting.ie in Ireland agreed that he was seeing more inquiries and signups since the travel ban went into effect. He pointed out that audio conferencing also got a big boost from companies or smaller groups that couldn’t arrange or afford video production services.

And even though America is not in the path of the ash cloud, we have felt the effects as well. I spoke with Nick Balletta, the CEO of TalkPoint – a webcasting technology and services provider here in the States that handles large events. He gave me two examples of webcasting filling in for stranded travelers. Goldman Sachs had an international emerging markets conference in New York. The European contingent of attendees was unable to attend, so TalkPoint changed their support from what had been planned as just recording some sessions for archiving purposes into a last minute full-fledged live webcast of all sessions at the conference.

Another TalkPoint example was McDonald’s worldwide convention in Orlando, Florida. They had planned to include some limited webcasting of a talent competition, but were suddenly forced to provide live webcasting of the entire conference for all the attendees unable to get international flights to Florida. Nick told me that the call for support came in on Saturday and they went live with the international webcast on Monday.

Therein lies the greatest benefit of webcasting as an emergency backup. Instead of needing to book physical spaces, arrange seating and stage setups, food service, and signage, you add your extra arrangements once, at the delivery point. Everyone else just logs in from wherever they happen to be stuck in the world.

Web conferencing, webcasting, webinars… Call them what you like, but remember that they just might save your bacon the next time travel becomes an issue.

By Ken Molay, president of Webinar Success

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View in VE’s archive @ http://virtualedge.stream57.com/sl/presentation.aspx?key=PKfe2a671c314a46a18809a01f56cff487

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When it comes to webinar campaigns, less is usually more. Relying on a “spray and pray” approach may drive attendance numbers initially—but often leads to higher drop-off rates and fewer qualified leads.

* Sell the webinar, not the product. Focus on your objective: recruiting qualified leads to your event. Stay clear of product superlatives and mention benefits only in the context of your event.
* Use your most valuable real estate (headline and subhead) wisely. Resist the urge to be clever, opting instead for the facts: what, when, why and how to register.
* “Lead with a compelling benefit,” advises CDI, and forgo “setting up” your pitch. Phrases like “as an IT manager, you need…” only waste space, pushing the important message below the fold.
* Call to action, early and often. Don’t wait until the end of the email to ask prospects to register.
* Use incentives strategically. Rather than offering the “gadget du jour,” select an incentive that’s relevant to the topic and doesn’t “cheapen the event or your brand,” says CDI.
* Test your subject line. Include what and why (what the event is, and why the reader should attend) and test multiple versions.

The Po!nt: Outperform your competition with relevant and focused invitations that drive attendance and demonstrate that you value your customers’ time and attention.

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I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but I can’t help shaking my head in bemused exasperation when I see a webinar promoted with a starting time but no time zone. Even if your subject is intended for a local audience, others are going to see the announcement as well. You might as well be explicit about which time zone you are using.

While we are on the subject, it’s worth remembering that United States time zones have different abbreviations inside and outside of Daylight Saving Time. The difference can be critical for foreign audiences trying to figure out their local equivalent. That means you cannot use “PDT” and “PST” interchangeably… They signify different global times. Figure out which one applies to your event date and use it correctly.

If you are reading this from outside North America, our most commonly used time zones covering California to New York are:

* Pacific (PDT or PST)
* Mountain (MDT or MST)
* Central (CDT or CST)
* Eastern (EDT or EST)

A “D” in the middle indicates that the time is in Daylight Saving Time. An “S” in the middle indicates Standard time. Some of our states do not observe Daylight Saving Time when the rest of the country does.

If you are promoting your US event for an international audience, it is important to use a more specific time zone indicator. If you say your webcast starts at “10:00am Eastern” or “2:00pm Central” you may confuse people in Europe, Australia, and other locations that use those same shorthand time zone designations.

Time zones and time conversions can be confusing. Your best bet is to include a global lookup for the event so anyone anywhere in the world can see the starting time in their local time. I use an online tool at www.timeanddate.com. If you use their Fixed Time World Clock, you can put in the starting time and day of your event in whatever time zone you like. Click a button and it generates a page with the corresponding time for major cities around the world. Just include a hyperlink to that results page and your potential audiences can look up their local starting time no matter where they are. The site keeps track of all local Daylight Saving Time variances so you don’t have to. Here’s an example of a results page. I wrote this blog post at 2:20pm in Raleigh, North Carolina. You can see what time that was for you by clicking here.

Let’s all work at avoiding angry emails from webinar registrants who tried to join the event at the wrong time because they misunderstood the instructions!

By Ken Molay, president of Webinar Success

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I am by no means a Social Media Expert. Not yet at least. Nor do I claim to even be a Twitter or Facebook expert. I’ll leave all that to the thousands of people who claim they are.

I do know a few things though. I’m educated in the worlds of marketing, design, presenting, engagement, storytelling, and a little bit of technology (put that Info Systems degree to work!). All of this knowledge and experience has helped me mold a social media strategy that works for me.

I believe the most effective marketing techniques are those that don’t market yourself at all. Especially over the last couple of years, many companies have found great success in what is sometimes called Content Marketing. It’s more than just creating and distributing content, however. It’s about sharing information, helping people, engaging with your audience, responding to their needs, and most of all CARING.

A wholehearted believe in this type of marketing has led to my social media rules for engagement. These have helped me engage with my target audience, spread brand awareness, and truly help others. This isn’t the only blueprint for success, and there are many other ways to market yourself – many of which will probably drive more traffic to your site, grow your followers overnight, and help you build a database of emails you can spam – but these are rules that I like to live by. This is how I truly believe your audience wants to be treated. I know that because it’s how I want to be treated as a consumer, and audience member, and a friend.

Never “Auto” Anything
This isn’t all-encompassing, but it nearly is. Hardly anything I do on Twitter is automated. The key to effective engagement is to actually be there. When I receive an auto-DM (direct message), it feels disingenuous to me. You send the same thing to everyone who follows you, so you don’t really care about me, personally. However, it puts a smile on my face when I get a real DM, with my name, thanking me for following. Especially if they note something specific about me, like “Thanks for the follow Jon. Looking forward to reading your presentation tips!” Social media is about building relationships, and few relationships can be auto-built.

The only automatic thing I approve of, and all of this is just my opinion, is scheduling tweets. Most nights I finish my blog posts at 1am EST (or is it EDT?). Many of my colleagues are asleep and only tweeting my blog post once at such a late hour will get little exposure. So I schedule my tweets to go out 4 times on the day it’s posted, spread out 6 hours each. All of my quality followers follow enough that this won’t clog up their stream, and gives them a better chance of seeing my tweet. I used to religiously be against this tactic, but it helps drive traffic and I’m not repetitively tweeting a link to my product. I believe these posts are all helpful and free of charge, so it’s not rude to want to spread it.

Be as Human as Possible
I was on #brandchat recently where a question was posed about how human a brand should be, mostly regarding the use of faces vs. logos for Twitter avatars and the proper handling of multiple “tweeters” per account. Being human is one of the greatest marketing techniques there will ever be, and striving to be as human as possible can do wonders for your brand. It’s not appropriate 100% of the time, but some brands choose to be human 0% of the time, and that’s never appropriate.

There’s no one formula for success in social media when it comes to humanizing a brand. There are valid arguments to use a logo instead of a face and to use just one Twitter account instead of many. But if you’re on Twitter as a personal brand trying to connect with others, you will go very far if you act like a human. That means using a picture of your face as your Twitter avatar, being descriptive about yourself and your passions in your bio, @ replying people to try and engage them, especially if it’s just to thank them for a ReTweet or to tell them how much you appreciated their recent article, and responding to all your blog comments, @ mentions, Facebook messages, and emails (it’s okay if it takes a little while – just make sure it gets done).

Don’t Let Your Social Media Presences Flatline
One thing I’ve certainly noticed over the last few years is that keeping the heart of my social media efforts beating is no small task. There are many different parts and they all need tending to. If you neglect one for too long it basically shrivels and dies – however, it never goes away which can be even worse (unless you make an effort to completely remove it). Many companies jumping onto the social media bandwagon, only to fall off shortly thereafter. During the first week they may post twice daily. Soon that becomes daily, then weekly, then monthly, then the cobwebs start to form in the corners of their blog or Facebook Fan Page. At this point consumers are coming across these pages and wondering what the heck happened. Did this company go under? Did the person tending to this get fired? Did they lose their passion? Were they only doing this because everyone else was?

First, just because a social media website was created doesn’t mean you HAVE to join it. Nobody is putting a gun to your head to create a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account, and to author a blog. They can all certainly be useful, but only if you know you can commit the time to them. Second, make sure if you choose to create one that you will commit the time to it. Create a schedule to keep yourself on a deadline. Telling yourself that you’ll write a post “when the inspiration hits” can lead to a lonely blog. Tell yourself you’ll ask your fans 3 questions per week on your fan page, or you’ll write 3 blog posts every Sunday (or before a certain time on Sunday) to be posted on three separate days per week. This isn’t easy, and even I struggle with it sometimes, but without it you’ll certainly fall off the wagon.

CARE
I’m a Gary Vaynerchuck fanboy. Although I’m not a fan of wine at all, I watch nearly all of his video blogs, watch his keynotes, read his book, and met him after he spoke at RJ Julia bookstore in Madison, CT. I’ve consumed a lot of @garyvee content and while I realize it’s impossible to retain it all, I know I’ve learned and retained a good portion of it. As any presentation expert will tell you, “Forget two or three. You’re lucky if your audience remembers just one point you made in your presentation.” There’s one piece of advice to become successful in business that Gary gave in the very first keynote of his that I ever watched, and that was to care. Not just to care, but to CARE. To go above and beyond what’s expected of you as a brand, a business, and a person. Gary has nearly 1 million followers and gets thousands of emails per day, but if you @ reply him or email him, I bet you’ll get a response (if you’re patient). Try doing that to Ashton Kutcher or your favorite athlete on Twitter. Maybe they’re more famous than Gary, but regardless, as a human being he can’t scale. No matter who you are, 850k followers is too many to respond to them all (not to mention emails and blog comments) but he finds a way to reach almost everyone who reaches out to him. Heck, I’ve messaged fellow Xaverian alumnus and pro quarterback Matt Hasselbeck a few times on Twitter and never gotten a response, and he has 22k followers (that’s 2.5% as many as Gary, if you’re keeping score at home).

Truly caring about your customers, your audience, your followers, your fans, and your friends is so underrated. I’ve come across a few college students who have tweeted that they were working on a PowerPoint and I offered my help, free of charge. I do this for the sole reason that it would have been cool to get the help of a presentation designer when I was a college student who knew nothing about presentation design. It’s a nice thing to do, and my parents always taught me to be nice. My paying customers come first and I don’t spend all my time laboring for college students, but it’s a better way to spend my time than watching reruns of the Soup. I truly believe doing things like that will come back to me somehow.

This isn’t the only way. You can use many techniques, including black hat techniques, to grow and monetize your business or brand. But I believe that we as human beings have a responsibility to treat others as we want to be treated. I believe that following my rules of social media engagement will make this space a better one to be a part of.

By Jon Thomas, Presentation Advisors

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Webinars can go wrong in any number of ways. You are in charge of making things work out. Here are four common problems to prepare for:

1. Missing Presenter: Webinar speakers sometimes confuse the start time’s time zone—“Was it EDT, EST, or GMT?” If the presenter doesn’t show up on time, be sure to have his or her emergency contact information on hand so you can call their cell phone or hotel room or have their assistant track them down.

2. Audio Difficulties: The telephone or Internet audio may cut out midway through the webinar. You may lose the presenter, lose the audience, or lose everyone at once. This situation can quickly become overwhelming unless you act quickly and decisively.
a) If only the presenter cuts out, verbally inform the audience what has happened and tell them the presentation will begin again shortly. That gives the speaker time to call in again or call in with a backup phone line.
b) If just the audience cuts out, post a note on the webinar screen with instructions for what the audience needs to do. They may need to exit the webinar room and login again or hang up and dial into the conference call again.  Before the presentation resumes, confirm everyone can hear the audio. The easiest way to do this is to have several co-workers be attendees. They can run over to tell you if the audio is working again.
c) If everyone cuts out at once, first post an explanation, then get the presenter’s audio back up, and finally make sure the audience’s audio is back up, per the instructions above.

3. Presentation Slide Control: The speaker may lose the ability to progress from slide to slide during the webinar. Sometimes the presenter can log out and log back in to regain access. If not, the presenter should have numbered the slides and have a hard copy nearby. The presenter can then use the hard copy to present from and instruct the facilitator when to move from slide to slide.

4. Doomsday: Webinars depend on many variables: the Internet provider, the telephone provider, the webinar technology, and your computer, to name some. Sometimes these variables collude to get the better of you and you have no choice but to cancel the event. Don’t make yourself wrong for this happening. Just deal with it. First communicate with the live audience what has happened, what they can expect from you, and how to reach you. After that, you’ll want to email or call every attendee. Your message should include an apology,information about the rescheduled event, and some kind of compensation for their lost time, like free access to the next webinar or a complimentary e-book or report.

You never want to have these problems but, if you do, be excited: Any failing gives you the opportunity to impress the audience with your client service.

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The webinar presenter may never have dealt with your specific webinar technology and probably has only a passing familiarity with how to prepare for delivering an online event. Help the speaker by reviewing the technology beforehand and going over the final details on game day.

Prior to the Webinar Date: The speaker, on delivery day, will see a busy computer screen. There will be a streaming audience chat box, the presentation slides, a private presenter chat box, recording buttons, whiteboard options, polls, audience activity trackers, and more. This can be variously overwhelming, distracting, and confusing. As the expert webinar facilitator, explain how you, and not the presenter, will handle each element. Only if the speaker asks for an explanation of a feature should you bother them with the knowledge. The presenter will manage some technical elements such as clicking through each slide and using a whiteboard overlay. Help them master the technical elements they manage so that, come webinar time, they have total confidence in what to do.

Finally and critically, let the presenter know how to prepare the brick-andmortar room where he or she will deliver from. For example, they will need to call from a land line, use a wired Internet connection, press the “Do Not Disturb” on their phone (and make sure their office dog cannot be heard barking). Compile a list of these things and send it to the presenter to check off before delivering.

The Day of the Webinar: During the live event, you probably will not have time to resolve problems or the privacy to resolve them away from the audience. Have the presenter log in to the webinar and call in (with VOIP or the telephone) at least one half hour before the go-live time for a sound and general technology check. Other details worth reviewing include: what the presenter must do when the webinar goes live; when the presenter takes control of the slides; how the presenter should prompt you to pull up the interactive polls; and any other areas of collaboration.

Does it take a half hour to do all of that? No. But most times something goes wrong and that half hour provides you with the time cushion you need to troubleshoot things (or to visit the restroom).  The webinar facilitator can also call the presenter(s) after the presentation to say congratulations, debrief, and review what went well and what might happen differently next time.

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