Today I did my first solo MSDN Webcast. I did one with MSDN DCC and webcast guru, Glen Gordon on ADO.NET 2.0's MARS feature, almost exactly one year ago. This one was an Intro to WSE 3.0, something I present on and write about frequently and work with in my client's projects.
I thought I would write about my experience for anyone who is getting ready to do this for the first time.
The webcast went great. That's easy to say after the fact. I was definitely nervous about doing it. Not only did I have to worry about all the things that can go wrong with WSE since there are a lot of layers of dependencies involved, and worry about me forgetting a little thing here or there or making a typo and getting stuck in debug mode, but I also had to deal with all of the technical pieces of the Live Meeting as well as watching the time and remembering what to do wrt Questions.
Oh, and, I had to make sure that all of the ringers were off on the phones in my office and put a note on the front door to make sure the UPS guy didn't ring the doorbell and set my dogs off into major bark mode.
Once I did everything that I could to avoid all of these mishaps (practicing the demos and noting where I was making the usual mistakes, learning how to work my office phone, putting the note on the front door for the UPS guy and tucking the dogs away with a bunch of yummy treats) I was ready to go. That is after I was sure to do the A#1 most important thing you need to do before giving any presentation of length: pee! (I'm sorry. Do you wish I hadn't shared that? Well, it's actually pretty important, if you think about it.)
The MSDN crew were amazing. They had sent me a webcast on how to present for MSDN webcasts with great prep info on making sure my screen was set to the right resolution etc. Lots of great tips. Presenting online is very different than in front of a live audience. I absolutely watched the whole thing and did the necessary things to my computer.
I was extremely fortunate to have my friend Maryam Scoble, who happens to work for MSDN Webcasts, step in as the producer of this so we got to catch up on a little gossip before the webcast began. I'm kidding. We weren't gossiping. Maryam was making sure I had everything I needed and knew what I needed to do. And telling me not to be nervous, that she knew I was going to do a great job. Heh heh. Thanks Maryam!
Kirk Allen Evans, who is a web services guru and the coordinator of the entire Web Services Webcast Series that this was just one part of, was also a big help. After encouraging me to agree to doing the webcast, he gave me some great pointers for getting my existing 90 minute presentation to fit into 50 minutes. He saved my butt (and did a great service to the attendees) when, in the 3rd set of demos, I was so immured in what I was doing that I forgot to switch over to the desktop sharing. Instead I switched from the Live Meeting UI directly to VS2005. So there I was, ladeeda, going over MTOM when Kirk busted in on the line to say "umm, we can't see your screen". Oops. Luckily not too much time had gone by. Oddly, this same thing happened doing this same presentation in Africa last year. I was responsible for pushing the button back and forth from their computer to mine to go from the powerpoint to my demos. At one point, I forgot to push the button. Although the slides were showing on the monitor in front of me, the screen behind me was still showing my desktop. I was definitely in "the zone", but finally someone got my attention and pointed it out. Those attendees were way too polite!
I packed up the demos (with additional comments) shortly after the webcast and got them right up on my website as promised.
All in all, though I was nervous and kicking myself for putting myself under this undue pressure, I totally enjoyed doing the webcast, because I know that people got something out of it. That's the payback. I also think that my worrying was beneficial, because it forced me to deal with all of the potential hazards in advance.