Why the Webcast?

By now you have probably sat through your fair share of webcasts. If your experience is anything like my own, you have seen a few good ones and many bad ones. So what makes a web presentation go so wrong? I would say its often the choice of the format in the first place.
Have you ever asked yourself, “does this really need to be live?” Countless bad webcasts occur when a presenter just talks through a long power point presentation without any interaction with the audience. What’s the point of doing a presentation live if you are not going to take questions?
The web is a different kind of place. People have shorter attention spans and will not offer the same type of professional courtesy they do in person. Long power point presentations do not often work, especially on the web.
As an alternative, consider recording your presentation, keeping it short, and posting it on the web. At Slideshare (www.slideshare.net) you can create and post slidecasts for free. With a recorded presentation you can reach a larger audience than you ever could with a webcast.
Keep in mind, comments often provide a discussion place for a presentation audience. As the presenter you should monitor the comments and respond. In this way the web allows for much longer discussions than possible in any live format.