Mercury News | 05/15/2003 | Siebel makes shareholders meeting Web-only
I initially thought ‘cool, webcasts’ adn then realised that shareholders are seriously pissed at not being able to attend a physical meeting. Makes sense. And this is a potentially a danger of the medium – it gets used against the wishes of the audience, who may well want to have a physical classroom, meeting etc if possible.
There’s obviously a danger that webcasts get used all the time and this has a detrimental effect on the user – I think they work brilliantly if you’ve already met. Interestingly one of the disgruntled shareholders said “…this is a company that hasn’t earned that level of trust.’”
That’s it in a nutshell – trust. If I’m missing the nuance of facial expressions and so on, I want to be able to visualise that person, know that they mean what they’re saying.
So, how to beat this problem?
* Physically meet the attendees, at least once if possible
* Webcams
* Photos in your presentations – a little grinning you in the corner of each slide does wonders
* Don’t lie :-)
This was by way of Corante, a rather nifty news site, with a even niftier blogs – social software, gaming, business creativity. So much good reading, so little time.