I am talking into a camera lens right now, and that is a really unnatural thing to do.
Ryan ‘Fluff’ Bruce
A couple of weeks ago I was facilitating a webinar on some different ways that online video could be used to enhance and extend teaching practice. The subjects covered included creating micro lectures, broadcasting lectures to the web and using webinar software to have synchronous online teaching sessions.
Because of our new shared office I had to find a quiet space elsewhere to lead the webinar. It felt like I was sitting alone in an office while talking to myself and hoping there would be an audience somewhere watching, listening and engaging. This was far from my first webinar, but there is still the feeling of being disconnected because I don’t get the visual and behavioural cues that I would get in a traditional workshop.
Everything turned out well and the group engaged nicely in the webinar, but the thought stayed with me about how disconcerting it can feel to be in this situation.
The quote at the top of this post comes from Ryan ‘Fluff’ Bruce, a YouTuber and guitarist, who was speaking about how much speaking on camera was a major hangup for him when he started his YouTube channel. It was reassuring to see that someone with more than 300,000 subscribers and more than 50 million views on YouTube was speaking honestly about how unnatural it can be to speak to an audience that you have no direct connection with.
Even with experience delivering webinars, working in distributed teams and using online conferencing it can feel unnerving and unnatural to communicate on these platforms. It does get easier over time, but there are often nagging doubts about whether people are engaging, or as is sometimes the case can people even hear me. It is worth bearing this in mind any time the subject of webinars or creating educational videos comes up. It can be daunting and it can feel unnatural, and that is absolutely fine.