e3datasolutions company blog

If you could do 3 things to improve your online training sessions...

1. Prepare
2. Prepare
3. Prepare

Remember the old adage about the three most important things to remember in real estate - location, location, and location. You can have the most beautiful of house designs, the best craftsmanship, the highest quality materials, but if you build the house in the middle of an industrial park it just won't sell.

It sounds simple enough, but it can't be over stressed. Preparation on the part of the trainer and moderator is the most important part of online training. It is easy to get wrapped up in the technology and excitement of broadcasting and forget the fundamentals. The training topic can be of the highest importance, the trainer can be the best communicator, and the need may be most urgent, but if you can't find an internet connection because you did not speak with the Network Admin in advance to ensure the meeting room wall jack is "live" then you can't broadcast.

For a successful online presentation it is a great idea to have a checklist to aid in preparation. The first item on the list will not be the setup of the camera, but in the research of the topic. Preparation of the presentation materials should be done well in advance. A site survey of the facility at the proposed broadcasting time is a good idea. If you are presenting online from you home office and the lawn crew usually shows up at 2 pm on Thursday then don't plan to give your presentation at that time. Leaf blowers make for terrible background noise.

At least one, if not several, dress rehearsals are absolutely required. Not just to check for lighting, etc. but to get a feel for the follow of the presentation. Even if you are taking a training session that has been given numerous times to an onsite audience, you will still want to check to see how it flows when presented online. Not every nuance of the presenter will necessarily translate to an online audience.

The checklist will evolve over time. The basic tasks will be listed and should be in a simple, repeatable format. Everything from the setup of the equipment to reminding everyone to mute their cell phone prior to starting should be addressed. Remember, the technology is only 10% of a successful presentation with production tasks (preparation, rehearsal, setup, etc.) being the other 90%. Technology is not perfect, so you must have a manual contingency plan for even a complete failure such as a rescheduling / refund policy.

For a free trial of TwoPlus - our online meeting and training - solution please click here.

Hope to see you online soon!
Bill Cooey
www.e3datasolutions.com

If you could accomplish 3 (fill in the blank) ...

This is the first of a series of articles on focus - plain and simple. So many times in projects, in our careers, and in our lives, our best efforts manage to get bogged down in minutia. We give birth to a great idea, plan, design, you name it, only to watch it fail post partum. We ask ourselves why and then find all the usual excuses - people, events, change, etc. However, in a great many cases you can attribute the root cause back to the old adage, and I am paraphrasing here, "that it is better to do a few things well then to do many things average or poorly".

Today I decided to create a whole category on this subject for the blog called "If you could ..." In these hard time we all need to get back to basics and I feel that adopting this philosophy is a good start for companies. This ties in with another tried and proven method - "Begin with the end in mind" - but with the one missing attribute called "focus".

The design of software, internet tools, websites, all can succumb to a lack of focus. Note that they typically did not start out this way. Someone somewhere came up with a great idea to solve a problem. It was talked up in numerous meetings, scratch budgets were reviewed, and eventually it was decided that there was a valid need and a viable solution.

At this very point there should have been a brief pause. Very brief, but very important. This is where you, your management, your team, should develop a consensus that there is a need for "abc" and to resolve it we are going to create "xyz" and the three things it will do are "1", "2", and "3". Write it down, tattoo it on a body part, put it on a plaque and hang it on your wall. That is your focus and this is the only point where you can document your stakeholder's buy in.  

Of course, life is never that simple is it? There are many complex issues to deal with that should have more than 3 parts for a solution - right? WRONG. If there is a deeper issue, it is made up of smaller parts with each part consisting of a maximum of 3 expected results. As long as the sub issue truly fits in with the main issue - and I mean truly - then don't even go down that path (scope creep) UNTIL you have resolved the 3 main results of the original solution.

 If this "math" is not working out for you then you need to go back to the fourth paragraph and run your issue back through the analysis. If you still feel this way then just move along as there will be someone who will replace you that will.

Look for more articles with that reflect this theme as it will be so very important in the coming months.

"If I could find out what my customers are thinking"

"If I could write a blog today" 

"If I could make a sale today"

"If I could spend $100 today"

More to come!

Bill Cooey

www.e3datasolutions.com