Web Conferencing

On Sunday, March 20th, I attended a web conference as a requirement for a graduate school class. I have attended several web conferences in the past, mostly for meetings with people in different locations, but this was my first web conference for a course that is required for my degree.

In attempting to describe the conference, words are difficult to come by without sounding too harsh. Overwhelming. Disorganized. Crazy. It was pretty rough.

It did, however, spark some ideas for me to implement in the event that I conduct a web conference in the future.

1) Ensure that all participants understand the purpose of the conference ahead of time. This is common practice for in-person meetings, and it should be for online meetings, as well. A clearly defined purpose would alleviate confusion and save the moderator time because he/she will not have to explain the purpose over and over again.

2) Limit the number of participants to a small enough group that they can all participate. If you truly want to conference, I would suggest 15-20 people as a maximum. More than that and you are dealing with a web conference where people cannot keep up with the comments of others. Ultimately, conferences with more people than can actively participate are no longer "conferences." They become webinars with presenters disseminating information.

3) Esatablish a protocol. This should be adapted to fir the purposes of the conference, but some things to consider might be

• no one contributes until the moderator begins the session and asks for introductions.
• questions are taken in an organized manner (maybe alphabetically or in some numerical order)
• the moderator may implement a STOP command, when issued will tell all participants to stop posting and wait for others to catch up or for further directions.