Master the Production of Virtual Events and Improve Engagement Have you ever found yourself confidently delivering content for a virtual training session, webinar, or online meeting only to have a participant drop off? Or, have you bravely launched breakout sessions but found that participants got lost on where to go? These scenarios illustrate the convergence of virtual session facilitation and production. While attention is most often paid to the facilitation of virtual sessions, significantly less is devoted to producing them. Producing Virtual Training, Meetings, and Webinars rectifies this gap. In this book, Kassy LaBorie, go-to training expert and co-author of Interact and Engage! 50 Activities for Virtual Training, Meeting, and Webinars, guides you through the production knowledge and skills a trainer needs to master the production of virtual events while delivering engaging training, productive meetings, and captivating webinars—from how to prepare the technology and content beforehand to how to run everything smoothly. Using examples from and discussing differences among common virtual conferencing platforms such as Adobe Connect, Blackboard, Zoom, Webex, GoTo suite, and Microsoft Teams, LaBorie offers a plan of action for conquering just about any platform and troubleshooting potential problems. This book thoroughly examines typical platform features (audio, webcam, chat, screen share), advanced interaction methods (polling, breakouts, Q&A), and administration and logistics elements (logins, session scheduling, reports). With production in mind, you’ll also learn how to: Design session materials. Prepare attendees to participate before and during the session. Build successful virtual working relationships with presenters. Through stories, templates, checklists, and examples, LaBorie shares about her 20-plus years of engaging participants successfully in thousands of virtual events and gets you up to speed in no time.

Engaging online audiences can be challenging. Learn how to break the mold of static lecture-style online training that drives participants to multitask or, worse, tune out. Instructional design experts Kassy LaBorie and Tom Stone cover all the steps necessary to remedy poor online training experiences and ensure that what you teach sticks. Interact and Engage offers proven strategies for captivating your live online audience. With more than 50 activities ranging from openers and icebreakers to closers and recaps, the authors present a framework for igniting online training programs, meetings, and webinars. Within the pages of this book, you will discover how to start events off right and bring them to a fitting end, while achieving the event's goals in the middle--and delve into what facilitators and producers need to do before, during, and after an activity. Light and fun, this book will be your go-to resource when you need that perfect engaging activity.

Are your virtual training tools ready for a tune-up? You've discovered the best way to reach remote audiences without boarding a single plane. And you've learned that an effective virtual training program is relatively short, highly relevant, and extremely engaging. Now you need the tried-and-true tools that will make your next program an all-out success. Virtual Training Tools and Templates: An Action Guide to Live Online Learning offers proven resources for delivering top-notch virtual training programs. Make expert trainer Cindy Huggett's professional array of virtual tools your own, and discover new perspectives from a range of training trailblazers. You'll find their real-world lessons learned and get full access to their secrets of the trade. Starting with a simple four-step process (get started, get ready, get buy-in, and get going), Huggett helps you select the right technology, then offers detailed sections on how to design content, develop activities, and work with both facilitators and producers. And if you're wondering how to prepare participants and evaluate program results, Huggett does not disappoint. Follow along as she guides you with new and relevant tips, tools, and templates every step of the way. A virtual training pioneer, Huggett wrote this book for you---instructional designers, facilitating trainers, learning coordinators, and training managers. And she continues to experiment with creative techniques and hone her skills so you can jump in with confidence. This complete guide builds on the author's popular The Virtual Training Guidebook---use them together or on their own to delve into Huggett's holistic approach to virtual training.

Build a cohesive and high-performing virtual team with this fantastic resource full of actionable advice and practical tips Engaging Virtual Meetings: Openers, Games, and Activities for Communication, Morale, and Trust offers concrete strategies and practical tips for bringing teams together across the digital divide. While many struggle to build teams in a virtual environment, accomplished author John Chen has found ways to create team cohesion, promote engagement, and increase virtual participation. In Engaging Virtual Meetings, he shares these methods with you, and also: Describes virtual tools for promoting effective teamwork, like the Participant Map Teaches you to optimize your teleconference setup for ideal audio and video Illustrates ways to apply these methods in any virtual environment, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and more Explores how to debrief your participants to improve your methods over time Perfect for anyone working in or with the increasingly prevalent virtual environment, Engaging Virtual Meetings is a great addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in how to create and build engagement in team settings of all kinds.

Rule the Room is the product of Jason Teteak’s twenty-year experience as a trainer and coach. His thoroughly tested advice covers every presenter’s concerns, from hooking the audience immediately to entertaining them, and from overcoming your fears to handling questions. He covers every base—content creation, delivery, audience management— with an overview plus step-by-step instructions, review exercises, and scores of specific and practical tips. Whether you want to persuade, motivate, teach, or inspire, Rule the Room can be your guide.

Ignite Online Events and Virtual Training with the Use of Well-Designed and Facilitated Activities Creating outstanding virtual meetings, webinars, and training programs has always been challenging for novice and experienced instructional designers and facilitators alike. Virtual learning experts Kassy LaBorie and Tom Stone understand that the need to interact and engage is more important than ever, as online collaboration becomes the norm rather than the exception. In this new, updated edition of Interact and Engage!, the authors offer more than 75 activities as well as tips and strategies to help you create effective online learning and masterful meetings and webinars. Activities range from warmups and icebreakers to closers and celebrations, and everything in between. LaBorie and Stone cover advanced features and techniques and guide you on how to convert or create your own online activities, no matter what technology you are using now or in the future. An appendix presents two capability models for the positions of virtual facilitator and producer.

Supercharge your virtual meetings with evidence-based practices from an award-winning team The shift to virtual meetings was sudden and often traumatic for businesses across all industries as they responded to the global pandemic. Rather than focusing on what worked best, they focused on what worked now . . . which meant closing up the office and being suddenly virtual in nearly every meeting, often without the tools, the training, or the expertise to optimize the new “kitchen table” office. Thankfully, businesses are beginning to be more purposeful in both the tools they use and the approach they take. This book seeks to be a definitive guide for businesses looking to make their meetings as effective as possible in the ever-evolving “new normal”—leveraging insights from some of the foremost thought leaders in meeting science and on-camera communication. This book will: · Highlight new research insights springing from the rapid and exponential adoption of virtual meeting technology · Discuss the problems, challenges, and pitfalls of meeting in this new modality · Provide practical, actionable best practices, backed by meeting research that lead to more productive and effective virtual meetings Perfect for executives, managers, and employees at companies in all industries and of all sizes, Suddenly Virtual provides practical and actionable best practices that lead to more productive and effective remote meetings.