How to create modern online gatherings with and about ai
Before I provide my easy tips for improvement, let me point to a few crucial no-go’s (and I bet you know these feelings).
- Ever joined a webinar and wondered, “Wait, am I supposed to be on camera for this, or can I just stay in my comfy pants and sip my coffee unseen?” Same here. No matter whether it’s on Zoom, Teams, Butter, or Circle, all those platforms have webinar (= audience not visible) and meeting (= camera and mic upon choice) formats. I’d just like a heads-up with the invite so I know if I need to brush my hair for that 8am learning session or not.
- Then there’s the mystery of size guessing. Having run dozens of webinars myself, I know that organizers sometimes prefer to hide the number of participants, just in case they are low. But when you join in and have no clue if it’s just you and the host or if there are hundreds lurking silently, it doesn’t help to feel comfortable. It would be so helpful if moderators initially frame the setting and let me know whether this is a cozy recorded fireside chat or a massive virtual hall of 2000.
- The famous Q&A “in the end”. Even in-person and with a homogenous audience, valuable Q&A sessions are a challenge. As a moderator and content director of events, I have a toolbox of digital and interactive methods to ensure audience participation. But in AI teachings, with often a mix of newbies and pros, it doesn’t make any sense to even encourage questions, because
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- nearly always presenters overrun and there’s not much time left for questions,
- you will deceive at least half of the crowd when trying to find a “good” questions and
- people most of the time ignore Q&A tools and put their questions in the chat, where it gets buried under comments.
- Mentioning the chat: it's often the only channel of interaction in a webinar and yet shockingly neglected as a valuable conversation and connection tool by webinar organizers. Unmoderated chats in international webinars turn into a self-promo party with LinkedIn links (Germans seem to do this less, for whatever reason). Increasingly, AI notetaker tools spam the space with their presence, “Hi, I’m an AI assistant helping xy take notes for this meeting. Follow along the transcript here:....”. (It’s a default promotion for the tool, but folks, if you want to be top-notch cool, find that toggle to switch the chat messages off, this does not belong in a chat!) And the most repeated question is “Will we get the slides”? Not quite sure what learning value there is in an AI notetaker transcript summary and isolated sets of slides, but maybe this is just me 🙄.
- And after all that, they send you a recording, 24 or even more hours later, which is just the raw, unedited footage. Sometimes, additionally, at least a few lines with highlights and takeaway messages, but in only 5% of the events, I saw something like a meaningful follow-up, treating me like the valued community member or prospective customer that I am for the webinar owners.
You get my point: we talk so much about how AI can personalize, accelerate, and automate everything, yet we forget to do that for our own events. It’s like having a super fancy kitchen and still eating cold leftovers 🙄.
5 Success Factors for Webinars in the AI Era
Even if it is a free webinar that you hold for sales purposes, acknowledge that people take the time! Value it with some effort to make it worthwhile for them.
1. COMMUNICATION Put yourself in the shoes of the participants to shape the messages before and after the webinar. What kind of information do they need (e.g. in terms of access and privacy) or would like to have (in terms of format, interaction, preparation) to feel safe and comfortable? Which expectations need to be managed? Envision this as a dialogue with each participant, complementing the core event, and make it as service-oriented & personalized as possible, to establish a real connection, even if this is a one-off and you have a big audience.
AI CAN HELP: Create AI personas of your audience and test your communication on them.
2. TECH Poor sound, strange perspectives, or eye movements make people leave virtual events. Get the basics right: a good microphone, well positioned camera and monitors (one for stream, one for speaker notes and content), and a suitable background (invest a few minutes in a custom one with smart branding elements) are key. Make your webinar a special moment - holding slides, countdowns, opening trailers, and some music do the magic. Rehearse! Ask a colleague or friend to check the full customer journey. Finally, be prepared for failures; they just happen, so make sure to have a plan B in place or mind.
AI CAN HELP: Use Canva.com for quick trailer production and Suno.com for custom music. For tech shopping, send the ChatGPT Agent to find the best quality-to-price ratio options for your use case across all providers (not available on the free Chat GPT tier).
3. ROLES When we gather online, we totally rely on someone to take us by the hand. Good hosting truly makes a difference, even if it’s just an information or learning event in a serious setting. Make participants be seen, make them smile, and let them know what’s going on and what to expect. If you have sufficient resources, I strongly recommend having a host separate from the expert role, far easier for both of you.
AI CAN HELP: Create a project in Claude.ai and feed it with some information about your webinar format, audience, and your personality. Ask the model for help with script, including timing, best practices for webinar hosting and what not to forget. Pro level: create your individual service chatbot, e.g. with Zapier.
4. INTERACTION Handle the chat and interaction with equal care as the main content! Here you can move the sympathy needle, show your professionalism, and create community spirit. Work with individual icebreakers (or icemelters, as Jan Keck calls them), offer additional sources in the chat, actively foster participant networking, but moderate strictly, according to the webinar's purpose. Pro tip: Design for more interaction and less content, and deliver additional knowledge afterwards. Even in one-to-many settings, the power comes with memorable human performance and interaction, not with facts and slides.
AI CAN HELP: Feed the LLM of your choice with the full slide deck and ask for a sleek on-air version with speaker notes. Google Gemini does this pretty well, you can also ask it for quizzes and showstopper interactions. Also, use an LLM to quickly evaluate webinar polls and to deliver polished findings to send out with the “Thank-you-mail”.
5. KEEPING UP No matter if it’s a one-off or a series, a product webinar or a skill teaching session: make the most out of it, don’t let the impact vanish. Each one showing up
for your virtual event is a valuable contact, they trusted you with their time by registering, and they are more open for any subscription, cross- and up-selling than thousand other cold contacts
out there in the market. Offer choices to stay in contact, show interest in their feedback, ask back after a week or two if the webinar content was helpful.
AI CAN HELP: Brainstorm with your favorite LLM about suitable follow-up content, hooks to promote or convert. For larger audiences and fast, personalized multi-step follow-up, you can
build smart and AI-powered automations without any coding skills e.g. with make.com
PRO TIP: Do not forget about the guest speaker experience. To make them feel welcome, invest time in a proper briefing (hints for tech and setting) and a short
test in the final webinar tech environment (like 30 or 60 minutes before). Give them a proper stage with good dramaturgy and moderation:
- Draft an appealing and personal introduction (not just reading out loud what they sent).
- Bring the person online only when it’s time. It’s distracting for the audience and annoying for webinar speakers if they are on cam while the host talks about practicalities, or sells their brand or product. Many webinar platforms allow a kind of “waiting position”.
- You want the last phase of the webinar for yourself, so prepare a clear end to send guest speakers off, e.g. with a CTA ("connect with our guest on LinkedIn, link in the chat") or with the promise to follow up with open questions, or organize a next webinar together.
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