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While there are many ways to set-up and manage online events, here’s what’s working well for us in our webinar programme: Weekly events at a fixed time slot (identified through a user survey). Limit events to one hour (timeslot identified through user feedback). A few minutes introduction, followed by a main presentation of 30-40 minutes and 15-20 minutes of questions. Strictly time manage the event (punctual start, completion on time). Beware of time zones - we usually have participants across 10 to 15 timezones. Limit sound to host and speakers. Participants can chat only (handling 100 sound cards & microphones online does not provide a good webinar experience). A chat pod allows participants to introduce themselves at the start of the event. A second chat pod allows users to submit questions. Questions are addresses one at a time at the end of the presentation - never during the presentation. Before the event, speakers are briefed on the use of the Adobe system and a protocol for the event is agreed. After the event, we circulate slides, the link to a recording, an answer to a question not address. There are so many ways to keep users engaged, and gradually build a vertical community around the topic of the webinar.

Sites that serve as a comprehensive and reliable filter of information on a topic will be read, but they’ll always have to compete with other fast-paced news publishers. To aggregate information is incredibly easy. To process, analyze and situate it within a big picture context while offering an intriguing/unique perspective is considerably more difficult. Those who can do so will be trusted: they are a valuable knowledge asset for any reader. Detailed, unique content immediately stands out on its own, even without extensive  marketing efforts. People don’t just want to be informed, they want to better grasp a topic in all its nuances. The joy of consumption lies not only in the skimming of a news story but the processing of new perspectives to enrich a personal worldview or professional need.

Once they were your printing presses; now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us. That’s why blogs have been called little First Amendment machines. They extend freedom of the press to more actors. Once it was your radio station, broadcasting on your frequency. Now that brilliant invention, podcasting, gives radio to us. And we have found more uses for it than you did. Shooting, editing and distributing video once belonged to you, Big Media. Only you could afford to reach a TV audience built in your own image. Now video is coming into the user’s hands, and audience-building by former members of the audience is alive and well on the Web. You were once (exclusively) the editors of the news, choosing what ran on the front page. Now we can edit the news, and our choices send items to our own front pages. A highly centralized media system had connected people “up” to big social agencies and centers of power but not “across” to each other. Now the horizontal flow, citizen-to-citizen, is as real and consequential as the vertical one.