Andrew Hewertson is a London-based management trainer, consultant, and coach with over 25 years experience in both the public and private sectors. With a background in HR and Learning & Development, he specializes in enabling lasting change and performance improvement for organizations, teams, and individuals.
Challenge:
On the day in question, Andrew was delivering a day-long professional skills training for Best STL, a group of delegates in central London. He also had a participant joining in from Amsterdam.
“I deliver a lot of management and professional-skills training and didn’t know there would be someone dialling in for the day. I immediately realized they would have a harder time than their colleagues, ” said Andrew.
To make things even more of a challenge, the training room wasn’t equipped with a video camera and only supported voice conferencing. Andrew and his colleagues tried several alternatives. In the end they had to resort to emailing a .pdf of the presentation slides so that the remote participant could at least follow along as the content was discussed.
“This worked for the morning, but I knew in the afternoon there were a lot of quizzes and interaction with the presentation material. A pdf wasn’t going to work ,” he recalled.
Presenters struggle to keep their audience engaged, even when the presentations are delivered in person. If that’s the case with face-to-face presentations, imagine holding the attention of remote audiences.
Solution:
Andrew remembered reading about the launch of Zoho’s new presentation delivery tool, ShowTime, and thought he would give it a try. During the break, he uploaded his slide deck to ShowTime and sent the url and audience key to the delegate joining from Amsterdam.
All the delegate had to do was enter the key on his device, and he could immediately view the presentation slide-by-slide in real time.
“The process was so easy, they didn’t even comment on it. I use a lot of software, and ShowTime had no technical glitches at all. It worked the very first time,” Andrew said.
From there on, the delegates, including the remote participant from Amsterdam, not only took part in the quizzes, but also asked questions and interacted with Andrew. Once the presentation ended, the audience could give instant feedback and tell the presenter how good the session was.
“As a trainer, I felt much happier that I could deliver a better learning experience for the whole group. ShowTime worked, and I’m very grateful,” Andrew said.
Zoho ShowTime is not another presentation tool. Just as Andrew discovered, it redefines the presentation experience by bringing your audience closer to you than ever before. You don’t just present anymore, you interact!
