Despite the country moving to level one lockdown, the majority of employees are still working remotely. Even those that have returned to the office have realised the multiple benefits of holding remote sessions and this is probably going to be the norm going forward. Not only are companies shifting towards virtual meetings, online conferences and webinars are the way forward, as businesses have been unable to hold these face-to-face for several months, and even now there are limitations that restrict the number of people who may attend.
Of course, with a plethora of online webinars and events for people to choose from, it’s key to ensure that your session is as engaging and dynamic as possible. Three of the things that make for a successful webinar are interacting with your audience, capturing their attention from the outset and incorporating different types of media.
While the very nature of a webinar relies on the use of technology, one piece of technology that is significantly changing how remote sessions are held – and that can help the presenter comply with the three aforementioned points – is the interactive whiteboard.
Barry Venter, CEO of Nashua South Africa, explains how the technology has the capability to bring geographically disparate participants together in the same virtual room. “While video-conferencing applications like Teams, Zoom and Skype allow virtual meetings, events and webinars, the introduction of an interactive whiteboard means that the attendees can participate in the discussion or activity in real-time.”
Whiteboards are commonly used for brainstorming ideas and for gathering information from attendees and participants in a graphical format. The interactive whiteboard takes this a step further. It’s a device, much like a laptop, tablet or cellphone, that supports collaboration between webinar and event attendees or meeting participants, regardless of their location. Whiteboards become interactive tools when attendees are able to write or draw on the shared presentation screen. “This can be a great way for an audience to engage dynamically with the presentation,” says Venter.
People can connect to the whiteboards remotely from their laptops or desktops, enabling them to contribute to the discussion in real-time. The end result is more engaging presentations that hold people’s attention.
He elaborates: “An interactive whiteboard can be an invaluable tool for increasing audience participation in webinars. The whiteboard is a presentation screen that can be drawn on or written on during the webinar. You can write, draw, erase, edit, save, print and share the content on the board, as well as record audio. You can even project images onto the whiteboard and write over them to highlight points made in the presentation. Then the amended visual can be saved and either printed out or shared electronically with attendees.”
How interactive whiteboards add value to webinars, conferences and meetings:
- Increase engagement among participants.
- Promote collaboration.
- Permit simultaneous real-time interaction.
- Facilitate better communication.
- Allow multimedia presentations.
- Documents can be changed there and then and shared after the session.
Going forward, interactive whiteboards are going to play a bigger role in virtual get-togethers, with functionalities and applications being added on an ongoing basis to ensure that they provide all of the meeting room functionalities that one could imagine. This is a far cry from the whiteboard of old, which was just a surface that one could write on.
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