At the start of quarantine in March, I was pretty quick to jump on the attend-every-webinar-Zoom-session-possible.
The initial ones, during the lockdown in Malaysia, were held outside of the country, mainly the US and the UK.
This also sent me into a spiral of FOMO. But that will be for another post.
The very first and most engaging online session by far, was the four-hour Weird Stream-A-Thon held by Patreon. Although I had no clue who their guests were, I was pleasantly moved and surprised to find Neil Gaiman doing a surprise reading.
For FOUR hours on the web, and for myself to want to comment and continue watching, wishing each guest had a longer session and that they weren’t so strict with their time (but this was of course necessary for the programming) — the Patreon Weird Stream-A-Thon was extremely engaging; more so than some of the really bad hour-long ones I’ve sat through or the ones that ran painfully overtime without substance.
#1 High energy
Here’s what Patreon did right in their FOUR-HOUR live event: They were not obnoxious. The hosts appeared genuinely excited and was unafraid to display raw emotions on the live stream.
The way they ran it was like a live talk show, where they would cut from the “studio” to someone doing a totally random task (e.g. cooking a dish, or changing a tyre during the course of the show). I’m sure there’s a name for this segment or the structure. (Let me know in the comments below if you know what it’s called.)
So, Patreon had a lady making chilli and they would just check in with her for maybe 30 seconds to a minute before cutting away to another guest. This would be repeated throughout the live event, until the end of the show, or until the chilli is done.
And I‘m guessing the Stream-A-Thon was well managed from the back-end. There was a host, Jack Conte (Patreon co-founder) and a tech guy (director), Carlos Cabrera (Patreon head of finance) who would cue in guests throughout the four hours. And their director was extra strict about time.
I can’t stress enough how the host has to have the energy and enthusiasm to engage in a conversation with not only the interviewee, but especially the audience. Many of the so-so webinars where I dropped out of, or even live workout sessions, is when the interviewer completely forgets or ignores the fact that the audience has taken time out of their day to be there, and that it’s a privilege they even have people tuning in.
When they take that attention for granted, the audience tunes out.
#2 Great audio, lighting and framing
Now, I’m not expecting people to have a professional setup. I mean, Gretchen Goldman here legit went on air without pants on, and none of us would’ve known if she didn’t Tweet it otherwise:
What a legend.
A clean background, audio feed (your handsfree headset will do), a cheap selfie light (or desk lamp) and your webcam placed at eye-level (see next point) can do wonders.
#3 Generosity
Taking into account the 200+ hours I’ve invested in attending webinars and workshops since March, the James Beard Media Awards at Home: Representation in Food Media was by far my favourite panel discussion.
What I really enjoyed about the ‘Representation in Food Media’ session was the overall flow and space and time given to each panelist (Pati Jinich, host of Pati’s Mexican Table; Amanda Kludt, Editor-in-chief of Eater; and Marc Fennell, Host of It Burns).
The moderator, Debbie Mitchell, while she had a more formal approach in the beginning, eventually allowed for natural conversations between panellists to flow — and that’s where the magic of online meetings happens.
(Althought I honestly can’t say the same of the session held the previous week. While the topic on cultural appropriation [‘Who Gets to Talk About Southern Food’] was interesting it severely lacked fluidity. I can understand the weight and emotions tied in with the topic and at the height of the BLM protest during the time of the online event, but its overarching angle was so negative and at the same time “too safe” (without diving into the meat of the issues, perhaps for the sake of moderating comments?). There was clearly frustration in one of the panelists. And I wished they were briefed prior to the event on setting up their cameras [I think we’ve been through and sat through enough Zoom calls to know that having your nose up to the phone camera is the worst possible angle … ]).
#4 Respect and acknowledgement
To paraphrase Seth Godin’s explanation on why enforced Zoom meetings are so bad, inefficient and painful to endure, is that the people who are running such meetings are simply using the platform to try to cling on to status.
Be it the absence of in-person meetings (to make sure everyone is “doing work”) or the lack of validation and shoulder-rubbing at an annual festival, such disrespectful sessions often result in painful, one-way conversations and a waste of a person’s most valuable resource: time.
I paid (a very nominal amount) to attend a live stream of a workshop. While the focus of the session was for the in-person participants who were at the session, there was just no respect given to the online attendees.
The first half hour of so, was terrible audio coupled with a pitiful video stream; plus, the online moderator yelling, almost complaining, to the persons in the event room, “Hey, the online people are having problems!” — as if we were the ones at fault for their shortcomings.
Similarly, another event (which cost four times more to attend) where the host and panellist were somewhat more insightful, had their tech guy drop us all prematurely into breakout rooms without any briefing. This is turn resulted in an attendee treating the room as her personal soapbox, giving zero airtime to anyone in the session to speak. Perhaps this was bad luck being stuck in such a room. But I’ve been in better breakout rooms by other organisers where we were briefed beforehand and everyone went into the room with a generous mindset to listen rather than dominate.
After attending over 50 sessions and counting, with the longest session running for eight hours straight, I have compiled a list of housekeeping rules for both hosts and attendees of online events. It’s a much longer list. So I will save that for another day.
Until then, pick your online meetings well. Don’t apologise and don’t be afraid to drop out of those painful sessions that don’t have any respect for your time.
