Philippine Webinars

During the mid afternoon of April 28th, Lopez Link through the HR / PR Council of the Lopez Group of Companies launched its first webinar session entitled “Social Media and Networking 101”, which was conducted by Janette Toral.

There were close to 50 registrants for the webinar comprised of different employees within the group of companies and guests. About 30 made it to the session. Considering this is their first undertaking within the realm of webinars, the number was definitely a good start.

As the room was opened, attendees started to come in as early as 20 minutes before the session.  The session started at 3PM sharp.  About 70% of the audience were first time webinar attendees, as they were asked by Janette at the start of the session.  A phrase has been coined for newbies stating that they are not “webinar virgins” anymore.

The presentation was filled with statistics, discussed the basics of social media and existing sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn plus a showcase of social media campaigns from top corporations and what made it successful.

One interesting thing to note are the questions asked during the session. Some were basic such as “What is the difference between a blog and a microblog?”, “What does SEO mean?” and “Is it advantageous to “be-friend” your competitors in social media sites?”. Some were geared towards internal communications, corporate branding, whether social media is just geared towards the B & C market but probably hard to penetrate lower C & D, and even a short assessment of Meralco’s effort to confront recent issues through social media.

Despite the audio issues experienced during the session, which could be due to high internet traffic usage at the scheduled time that resulted to a slow internet connection, the participants engaged with the speaker and stayed 20 more minutes to learn. Some even asked for an extension.

Rosan Cruz, AVP of Group Public Relations for Benpres Holdings Corporation informed us that there will be a monthly webinar session available for its employees and guests through Lopez Link, a monthly publication of the Lopez Group of Companies.

Support for the event was managed by ProFora Media.

Unproven assumptions can lead to major glitches down the road.

Murphy’s Law states that, “If something can go wrong, it is bound to go wrong.”  I never really believed in that before and thought of the cliché as a way for someone else to rain on my parade.  After all, mishaps and bloopers are things that great planning and endless rehearsals cure.  Besides, we’ve been doing the same things over and over for the last two weeks without any hitches, so I assumed that it was “just another day at the office”—was I in for a surprise.

During yesterday’s broadcast (a webinar on internet marketing), the audio was choppy, we experienced intermittent internet connection (thanks to our very reliable local providers), and at one point, the speaker was even heard screaming at the top of her lungs in horror saying, “Nawala ang internet connection ko!” [I lost my internet connection].
We found ourselves laughing about the day’s events afterwards, but two lessons became very apparent, especially since we were dealing with technology.  They are:

1.    Never ASSUME that things will work as they have before.  Assuming most often leads to one simple conclusion—I make an A** out of U and ME.  Not a very exciting situation to end up in with a live audience.

2.    Be Prepared.  The internet is an exciting arena to be operating in, but it is heavily reliant on so many other aspects.  Having a back-up ready to act as a fail-safe are sure ways to guarantee a smoothly running, seamless presentation.  Unless, of course, it’s already the hand of God Almighty that has put you into a corner with no way out.

I guess these lessons apply, not only to web-conferencing, but to everything else in life.  So the next time I get into anything (and I apologize for this in advance), I will keep on asking questions,  double check and run the risk of being tagged as a nuisance.   At the end of the day, no one really got killed because of these, right?

image source:  http://freedigitalphotos.net, Photo by Juan Gnecco

One might think that this is the worst possible time to leave the corporate world and a regular, monthly salary to start a business that offers a service unheard of in the Philippines.  Call us crazy, but that’s exactly what 5 friends and I did.  We officially incorporated ProFora Media Solutions last Sept. 15, 2008.

We’re a week away from our one year anniversary and during the 11 months, 2 weeks and 5 days that we’ve been in business, we went through every birth pain imaginable.  Chose the wrong tool provider, overpaid for accounting services, over-complicated our website design, wrong sales strategy, blablabla.  You name the boo-boo, we did it.  Our only excuse is that we believed in the concept so much that our eagerness to offer the service, more often than not, overshadowed rational thought.  We went back to the drawing board so many times that some people voiced the opinion that we should just close up shop.  Obviously, we didn’t listen…stubborn and pig-headed is a shared trait amongst the partners.

We’re still learning but as of today, I think we’ve got most of the major kinks ironed out because our September and October are fully booked with back to back webinars.  Renzie Baluyut has joined us as Managing Director for Marketing and we’re in the final stages of negotiation with several  learning content providers.  We’re also finalizing the training schedule for one of the top universities in Manila.  We have a presence on almost all the major social networking sites and we’ve documented and streamlined all our operational processes.  The wheel is turning…we just need a bit more elbow grease.

Virtual events IS the next step in the evolution of how we communicate with each other.  All that you need to do is let us, ProFora, show you how…

If you’re interested in taking those baby steps today, ProFora Media in partnership with the Digital Filipino Club will be hosting a series of online talks, in celebration of Digital Filipino’s 10th anniversary -The ProFora Media Lightbulb Sessions- on Thursday, 17 Sept 2009.

The webinars for the day include:
* 9AM – 10AM “Introduction to Software Process Improvement” by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 11AM – 12NN “The State of E-Commerce in the Philippines” by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 2PM – 3PM “Briefing on the 3rd Digital Filipino Web Awards (2009)“, by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 3PM – 4PM “Managing Training Effectively & True ROI“, by Karthik Subbaraman of ECC International
* 4PM – 5PM “Briefing: Philippine Schools Cyberfair 2010“, by Janette Toral of Digital Filipino
* 5PM – 6PM “AEC Outsourcing in the Philippines“, by Gio Carino of Prodigy AE
* 6PM – 7PM “Video Editing for Profit“, by Mary Tolentino of ClientFirst
* 7PM – 8PM “Blogging For Money: How To Make Money From Writing Blog Reviews and News Articles“, by Janette Toral of Blog4Reviews

Contact us directly through:
www.proforamedia.com * info@proforamedia.com * +63.2.3767040 * Twitter@Profora Media * Facebook: ProFora Media

image credit: alucco7 on flickr