There’s an article from my Twitter feed titled: Why Are Some Webinars So Bad? I would extend that to why are so many conference sessions bad?

I have attended numerous expos, seminars, webinars and conferences. Many are just pitches, blatant and boring. Very few live up to the description or agenda (false advertising?). Slides filled with terms, graphs, and data. Boring!

I moderate panels and I am organizing BarCamp Tampa. In both cases, I look at it from the Attendee view.

• What would be a good take-away?
• What is the Attendee looking to learn or hear?
• And ultimately, what would be a Wow?

Admittedly, I am a bit of a bear when it comes to session / webinar material. I don’t want screenshots or revenue projections or subscriber growth charts. I want to know:

• Who is doing what now?
• What is working?
• What’s Unique?
• What is the Trigger?
• How is it being delivered?
• Where could this go?

In the case of VOIP, I would want to hear about HD sound, Jajah’s translation service, stuff like SimulScribe, hooks to integrate VOIP with other applications, and finally how to use these things on my PPC-6700 mobile handset. (In that case, screenshots would work).

The thing specifically about a tele-seminar or webinar is that the speaker doesn’t know if the audience is engaged or not, unless the speaker specifically hooks or engages them. You have seen folks in meetings typing on their Blackberries - and that is when you ARE in the room. Now try to engage effectively when the attendee can be interrupted by his email, phone, colleague, etc. Your presentation has to be enthusiastic, absorbing and captivating. What?! Yeah. That’s hard work, but people are giving up their time to attend, so shouldn’t you give them their money’s worth?