Finding Your Inner NPR Voice

As a die-hard fan of National Public Radio, I’ve recently begun paying close attention to the quality of the voices of the hosts. I admire their clear and precise language that is free from annoying uhms and errs, and includes a variety of tones.

We can learn from the pros at NPR how maximize the use of voice to improve the delivery of a web conference. Since the audience may not see the speaker, the speaker’s voice carries additional importance. One tip that someone recently shared with me is to use the recording function of your web conferencing tool to record and listen to your voice as you rehearse. Great idea! The Public Speaking Help blog also offers 10 Tips to Improve your Speaking Voice

Web Conferencing is Green

One of the ancillary benefits of web conferencing that is sometimes overlooked is that by meeting virtually instead of face-to-face, carbon emissions are reduced. I like to include a slide at the beginning of each web conference that describes “what we saved,” to emphasize how web conferencing can contribute to carbon footprint reductions.

1. First, Calculate carbon emissions from transportation. Enter participants’ flight info, or estimate where all participants would have come from, and come up with one average flight. Then multiply the emissions for that flight by # of participants. You can use emissions calculators from CarbonFund.org or Terrapass.com

For example, if you have a web conference with 30 participants and half of them would have flown from New York to Dallas-Fort Worth Texas (2,700 miles each or 40,500 total round trip) the carbon emissions would have been 7.57 tons for the flights alone.

2. Next, convert the tons of carbon saved into something more tangible. The EPA has a great Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. Use Option 2 and input CO2 totals from #1 above, then click "Calculate Equivalencies." You'll get a variety of results to choose from - select the ones that will resonate with your audience.

Following the above example, 7.57 tons of emissions is the equivalent of recycling 2.4 tons of waste or the emissions from 16 barrels of oil.

Pretty nifty!

Tips from ASTD TechKnowledge Participants

I am at the ASTD TechKnowledge Conference in Las Vegas Nevada and what an amazing week it has been. Today I made two presentations on “Facilitating Virtual Events,” one to a virtual audience and one in a traditional meeting room. In the spirit of knowledge sharing, I collected best practices and tips from both audiences and have posted them here. Any other good tips out there?
· Applaud volunteers profusely
· Rehearse in front of my dog
· Don’t read your slides verbatim
· Don't put ALL content on slides. Slides should reinforce what you are saying
· Use your National Public Radio (NPR) voice
· Don’t limit interactivity to verbal questions. Ask for hand raises. Include electronic click questions, free text response questions, etc.
· Create competitions to add some fun
· If you plan to record, make sure people agree to be taped. Remember that every form of recording is discoverable in a court of law.
· Participants should close all other non-applicable applications to enhance performance and reduce if not eliminate band-width issues.
· Help presenters with developing their own interactive solutions by providing coaching feedback on their rehearsals/teach-backs
· Give a "door prize" ( a gift certificate or book) for participants who complete pre-work (verified by us)

PREP Model for Web Conferencing: POST MORTEM

The final step of the four-step PREP model for web conferencing that I’ve been writing about for the last few days is the Post Mortem.

The Post Mortem is simply a review of what you did. One component of the post mortem is an evaluation by participants (such as a level 1 online evaluation, at a minimum). The importance of soliciting feedback and making adjustments cannot be understated. Since we cannot see our participants, the evaluation is even more important. Another component is a debrief by the facilitation team. Talk with the team about what worked well, what needs to be changed to improve the delivery.

Both of these tasks should take place immeidately after the event. Make the changes to your course as soon as possible...before you forget what they are and before you forget to do them altogether! The last thing you want to happen is to log in for your next delivery of the session and then realize that you didn't make the changes needed (to the content, exercises, etc.) from the previous delivery.

PREP Model for Web Conferencing: Execution

Over the last few days I’ve been writing about a four-step model for web conferencing known as the PREP Model. PREP stands for Planning, Rehearsal, Execution and Post Mortem. Today’s post elaborates on the Execution step.

In the Execution step, you are ready for the formal launch of your training. By the time you reach this step you have planned and rehearsed, you are ready to go!

A few tips to make sure your delivery goes smoothly are:

· Log in 30 min. early; ask participants to log in 15 min. early.

· Start and end on time.

· Display conference call number or audio information on screen.

· Engage the audience early, exposing them to the variety of methods they can use to interact.

· Give audience time to respond to questions, polls, chat. Some silence is okay.

· Have a second computer next to you so you can see the participant “view” at all times.

· Disable email arrival notification pop-ups and chimes.

PREP Model for Web Conferencing: REHEARSAL

If you’ve seen a Cirque du Soleil performance you can appreciate the amount of time the performers spent to get all of moving parts on the stage to synchronize flawlessly. Think about what you will need to do in order to ensure a smooth delivery so that even the very first time you deliver a session you make a good first impression.

I shoot for three practice deliveries: one with the facilitation team to work on timing and flow, then two rehearsals with mock audiences. After each rehearsal note adjustments needed and incorporate them into your session.

PREP Model for Web Conferencing: PLANNING

Over the next few days, I'll look at each of the four steps of the PREP (Planning, Rehearsal, Evaluation and Post Mortem) model for web conferencing. Step one is the planning you do to prepare for a web conference.

Five areas are listed in the planning stage, beginning with task of learning the platform. I’ve seen this happen before where the only preparation step taken was to learn the platform. Obviously you need to become familiar with the web conferencing platform and this is an important first step, however there are a few other tasks to consider. You'll also need to adjust your content and exercises to work properly in a web conferencing environment. Once you've finalized your materials, create a facilitator script that describes what is happening in terms of interactivity on each slide. Finally, you'll need to select your facilitation team which generally consists of a lead (the subject matter expert) and the producer (the web conferencing expert).