I was chatting with TheGypsy a little while back about getting some Webinars going for SR, but before starting another large project i thought i would come our here and ask if people would indeed be interested in joining Site-Reference Webinars?

I can already hear Matte thinking to himself "why the heck would i waste part of my 5mb monthly bandwidth limit on a webinar" (just messing)

But seriously, we have a lot of newcomers here, and perhaps some little step-by-step tutorials on a few different topics would be educational/fun

if we build them...will you come?

1)  Well, I'm a bit ignorant here, Nic. Is a webinar an fancy name for a web tutorial or is it a live, interactive seminar where we converse with the tutor and audience?

2)  Australia is said to have the slowest broadband of the developed world. Just the other day the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced a new broadband system. Fibre optic to the home/business. Forty three billion dollars in a country with a population of twenty one million people. Eight years to complete. Will cover (from memory) 90% of the population.

3)  There are not a lot of the old, core members left to support such a move.

I see a great interest in Twitter links, the other day, and PR posts, both new and old, seem to be the flavor of the month.

If these are indicative of the interests of new members, then I'm not so sure about this.

Note that I can go to the Gypsy's site and follow links to 20 or 30 of his mates, placing myself among a great variety of cutting edge people in the SEO and SEM fields.

So the webinars (whatever a webinar is) would have to be pretty good.

Best wishes with it. It would be great to see SR once again what it was a year or two ago.

I can already hear Matte thinking to himself "why the heck would i waste part of my 5mb monthly bandwidth limit on a webinar" lol (just messing)

ROLFMA!!!!

Glad you were thinking of me.

I guess the core question is, can it be done better as a webinar than say a flash tutorial or similar?

what is a webinar? is it as laurie said a fancy name for a web tutorial?

laurie_m wrote:

1)  Well, I'm a bit ignorant here, Nic. Is a webinar an fancy name for a web tutorial or is it a live, interactive seminar where we converse with the tutor and audience?

2)  Australia is said to have the slowest broadband of the developed world. Just the other day the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced a new broadband system. Fibre optic to the home/business. Forty three billion dollars in a country with a population of twenty one million people. Eight years to complete. Will cover (from memory) 90% of the population.

3)  There are not a lot of the old, core members left to support such a move.

I see a great interest in Twitter links, the other day, and PR posts, both new and old, seem to be the flavor of the month.

If these are indicative of the interests of new members, then I'm not so sure about this.

Note that I can go to the Gypsy's site and follow links to 20 or 30 of his mates, placing myself among a great variety of cutting edge people in the SEO and SEM fields.

So the webinars (whatever a webinar is) would have to be pretty good.

Best wishes with it. It would be great to see SR once again what it was a year or two ago.

1. 'Web' + 'Seminar' = 'webinar' (sort of like 'web' + 'log' or logbook = 'blog') 

Just like a seminar, a webinar can take many forms and can have various levels of interaction. Since the web presents challenges a live seminar does not, it would of course not be fully interactive (don't want a hundred people screaming questions into their computer microphones at once).

But for example you could structure it so that people email me their questions during the presentation portion, and we have a short Q&A based on those questions at the end

The main difference I see between doing something like this and a video tutorial is 'being part of a live event' (even if it is over the net). Just like being part of a seminar differs from watching the recorded DVD's afterwards. Just a different feel to it.

2. Yes, unfortunately some people simply won't be able to attend, not only because of their net speed, but also because of time differences for example.

The good thing about a webinar is can be recorded and replayed.


3) Not sure what core members have to do with this? I'm not looking for support or a pat on the back. I'm looking for interest. Like most things on SR these will probably be free. Whether someone has been part of SR for 1 day or 4 years, it hardly matters in this case - what matters is how many people would find it beneficial and would like to attend.

Note- Gypsy and his friends are indeed a wealth of knowledge and bless them for sharing it. But a  few things:

> their method of sharing is mostly written - this would be a different way of learning (people do learn in different ways)
> we'd love to have any of them as guest presenters
> we'll cover more subjects than SEO and SEM including all types of things - maybe even a "Joomla 101" (which could have beneficial when you started out a while back)
> I see us helping beginners more than the advanced crowds. A lot of the stuff the crowd you mentioned talks about is over most newcomers head's. For example you could do a very simple webinar that would take people how to properly setup key factors to on-page optimization

We have videos, and we're constantly adding more video tutorials, but these would be more comunal, interactive events for learning.

Plus you could get a chance to see TheGypsy 'live' - how could you pass that up?

Yo ho... remember me? For starters I do apologize for the blog slipping, but I have been working on some new posts and we'll get that rolling again next week.

Now on with the show...

My Blog - as some of you know, I tend to concentrate on the more advanced stuff on the Trail geared towards the SEO crowd and generally don't do the 'How To' type articles. Thus many of the posts aren't really what the 'average' member here would be able to readily digest...

SR Webinars - these would be more of an extension of the blog posts here on SR in that we can break down the processes into more step-by-step approach that would give folks something more usable that the posts tend to. For example I may talk about processes such as phrase based optimization, but how does one go about utilizing this information? I would use this platform to break down the processes we use to achieve value from such an approach.


That being said, I'd imagine we would get some feedback into what areas people are most interested in. We could do some on specific methods or even best practices on getting the most from tools that we use and so forth. It would really depend on what folks are looking to see....

I also think we could incorporate some type of chat element or ability to field questions from attendees in order to bring some life to the process. I've been attending some webinars (on landing page optimization/split testing etc... and find the ability to take questions live an important aspect; to that end, I agree with Nic on the value there... (more of an instant messenger/chat room than via microphone)

We could also do site reviews...and more - still working on that part.


Some random notes;

"[...] see SR become what it once was" - it should be noted that forums in general have ALL taken a hit since the rise of Social Media (forums are social networking 1.0). This is not limited to SR as ALL of the major boards I have participated over the years are shades of their old selves... I would hope these types of initiatives might breath some new life into things...


"Core members" - lol... once more, it is more about who is here now. Who knows, maybe some of the old farts will come back to get in on the action.



Anyway, I know a lot of folks that are using these types of format utilizing locales such as Ustream to actually sell more tickets and bring in those that can't attend the actual seminar they are giving. Yes...people are paying for these... my friends at IM Spring Break recently did so and it went over quite well. So, much like Nic eluded to, it's a seminar that can be attended virtually (there are even entire virtual conferences being done this way lately.) - it's quite interesting really.

I think it is certainly an interesting idea and worth looking at... hopefully we can get enough feedback to take a stab at it...

Ah! Thanks Nic and Dave for those explanations. I guess you're both thinking out loud, to some extent.

Yes, I've heard Gypsy a couple of times on web radio. Like the great orators, he gets going with an audience, doesn't he! Would be great to see him as well, in action.

And yes, something on Joomla would have been great. I sure did it tough. Haven't got it all sorted yet. Still unsure about some SEO issues involving URLs and indexed pages.

I think at the end of the day it's something worth looking at even if we simply to a 'Ask the experts' grab bag of questions and some site reviews even. A lot of folks seem to like the video format and this seems a good place to start...

...see how it goes....

Well you can take a from me. I have a tendency to get lost trying to learn some of this seo stuff

Speaking of lost---- paging AWC our always confused faithful one