According to Nick Wreden an “informational seminar is a way to educate customers about your services and products, as well as to market yourself through entertainment, handouts, and to generally show that your company has a wealth of knowledge to offer.”
So this makes sense form a marketing point of view, but do these seminars actually help us to learn?
I believe they do! Being in a room filled with like-minded people possibly leads to the most effective informal learning there can be. It is however important to keep a few pointers in mind:
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- Focus on the value those attending will be able to walk away with – template, tool, technique.
- Target the audience. Begin by asking yourself, who am I trying to reach? What are the needs of the people who might attend? What are their hopes and fears?
- Keep everyone awake. According to one rule of thumb, seminars should be 60% education and 40% entertainment. Boring is never good and especially not at this kind of event!
- Evaluate properly afterwards not only in terms of how you have done but also in terms of a self-evaluation of a before-and-after knowledge on the topic.
See more about this in “Running Successful Seminars,” Harvard Management Communication Letter, Vol.4, No. 10, October 2001.
Webinars:a high-tech, low-travel alternative?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia: “Web conferencing refers to a service that allows conferencing events to be shared with remote locations. Most vendors also provide either a recorded copy of an event or a means for a subscriber to record an event.”
We are all aware of the rising frustration of getting people together for a training event. Webinars is a definite option to increase interest and decrease frustration! There are however always a few problems involved in using alternatives to traditional approaches.
Seminars should be 60% education and 40% entertainment – Nick Wreden
SOURCE: The Institute of People Devleopment – IPD