webinars, conferences online

[lucyB456]

Believe it or not I've managed to get through the last few months without using Zoom. I've had meetings with students in MS Teams (with varying degrees of awkwardness) but I haven't participated in or attended conferences or discussions online. I have a 'webinar' coming up where I'm to present a paper. I know this is probably a stupid question but how do these actually work? Any tips for minimising awkwardness? I have a terrible tendency to wave at people, talk too loudly ("CAN YOU HEAR ME") etc. Thanks in advance

I am currently doing a course which has since lockdown we have had our taught days delivered by Zoom. It's actually been fine only hiccup for me was when we had individual 10 minute presentations to do and I couldn't manage to share my PowerPoint on the screen, not sure what I did as it looked really straight forward
It's been a learning curve for lots of us!

Find a friend to practice your presentation to. I did this (WHO meet).
You want to get the lighting right if there is video of you, anyway. I've literally used about 8 types of new telcon platforms since March (had barely used Skype before).

The only software I've struggled with is Google Meet.Technically, my work-IT only support TEAMS, so any organiser using something else is my problem. G-Meet refused to work with work equipment. For G-Meet event I had to resort to my private laptop & pdf presentation. Zoom is my favourite, btw.

Practice sharing your screen if you want to show a PowerPoint

Mute mic & camera when you're not on, or in the discussion, but be ready to unmute yourself before you start talking.

Zoom is not rocket science and it is starting to annoy me when people act cluelessly with it.

TBF its all about design. The ones I have seen so far are all a bit rubbish.

ask the organisers of the webinar if there will be a rehearsal session where you can practice getting the software right.

if you can, arrange your screen so you can see the face of at least one person in the audience (ideally an organiser who will be interested in your talk). It is much easier to give a talk to someone than to just talk to a set of powerpoint slides without seeing your audience.