I don’t typically write about random things. I like to keep this site full of useful information. However, yesterday I found myself doing a webinar outside in the smoking section of a potential client’s office.

The Back Story

I will explain how my life got to the point of an upper eighty degree weather webinar, but as I was baking and doing my best to have a great event, I couldn’t help to think of the stupidest place I have ever done a webinar. In 2013 I did 511 web events, mostly demos but I also did over 100 webinars. If you are unfamiliar with a webinar it is a meeting online where the audience can see my screen and hear me talk. Now, I can’t hear them, most of the time – there was that one time I was doing a webinar for a webinar company where the platform was malfunctioning and we could hear a lady texting verbally.

Top 3

1. New Jersey Turnpike – As bad luck would have it I had to drive during one of my webinar. Well, I wasn’t driving I had a colleague do that. I called in on my cell phone and had another colleague at my office who was running the meeting push the slides and I just talked.
2. The Lobby Of The Hilton – In Hackensack NJ. Again poor timing put me between meetings with no place to go. My fist attempt was to rent a meeting room but the very helpful (not so much) Hilton employee said they were all occupied. I found what I thought would be a quiet corner, and for the most part it was. About 30 minutes into the webinar a Hilton employee came sauntering by with a trash can at a slug’s pace, staring at me. It wouldn’t have been that bad except he had the loudest – squeakiest wheel I had ever heard. I got high marks for that webinar but people wanted to know why I was near a construction site. I guess it was loud.
3. A Department Store – In the middle of Christmas shopping in the bedding department. I wanted to go shopping with my wife. I don’t really shop, I am on “support team”. You know holding her purse, getting different sizes and paying for everything. I just didn’t want to miss it and I thought that no one would buy bedding as a present and I was right!

There I Was

My favorite place to do a webinar is my office. I have, however, done webinars at home and occasionally got the interruption from one of my kids (I have four) usually from the youngest wanted me to get her milk or Netflix. I have done webinars on my front porch and back yard, so when I found myself sitting on the benches reserved for smokers in the hot sun because the potential client acted funny when I asked for a room, I thought – what fun! If life is so choreographed and predictable where you never have a little bit of a speed bump then… I don’t think you are stretching yourself enough. Well, at least that’s the way I looked at it… the marketing team I was working with saw it completely different.