Webinars: an answer to many questions
By: Ismini Balale
Tags: Covid 19, Greece, Webinar, Education

Webinars: an answer to many questions

The age of COVID 19 has totally changed our plans but it also helped us to adapt different ways of communicating Ismini Balale Apr 22, 2020·4 min read

Image from Simon Abrams at unsplash.com

Who doesn’t like face to face seminars? Hot coffee and fresh baked cake is served, and the moment to meet new people and connect with them on a personal level, learn new things and broaden your horizons has come. It’s time to spend a whole day attending workshops, with a lot of coffee and lunch breaks and with some (not much) boring moments during the sessions. Or at least, this used to be the case?

The age of COVID 19 has totally changed our plans but it also helped us to adapt in different ways of communicating and sharing knowledge, and one of them is the so called «Webinar». A short for web-based seminars, webinars are video presentations, workshops, or lectures hosted online and attended exclusively by an online audience. Webinars make holding meetings and conferences possible and achievable whenever and wherever.

Despite the fact that many of us have been listening about them the last few months, the first public web conference became available in May 1996 due to the efforts of Microsoft, which announced the launch of NetMeeting. From then on, many companies, universities and other educational institutions organize webinars, providing a low-cost way to share information with a large number of people.

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Now, more than ever, webinars become part of our quarantine life, since they are helping us to make time pass in productive manner. In Greece, also, more and more people are attending online seminars about various topics, many of them, offered free.

Events like these in Greece are coordinated also by Digital Communication Network Southeast Europe Hub, a consortium of Aristotle University, Digital Communication Network, non-profits, public and private organizations and companies involved in the fields of digital communication, social impact campaigns, technology, and innovation. These series of virtual events about numerous issues, such as misinformation and media coverage in the age of COVID 19, discussions about digital marketing strategies, crisis management tips, have the same goal: to enhance knowledge and raise public awareness in the context of the COVID 19 crisis.

The director of the DCN hub, Assistant Professor and Google Research Scholar at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communication at Aristotle University, Nikos Panagiotou states that he is satisfied with the participation in the webinars while ”on average 130 people are taking part in our initiative from different places worldwide, such as Europe, India, America etc. Α very encouraging factor is that more or less 70 people are attending them regularly. The fact that it is an online seminar with participants from many countries causes a deviation by 40% from the people who claim that they will attempt it and the ones who finally take part”.

The flexibility and the low cost experience the webinars offer, supplements the face to face seminars and the combination of these two could produce a really interesting result in the future with various choices for the participators, adds Dr Paragiotou.

But, nowadays, apart from the webinars, more and more people are working remotely, they are watching their favorite movies and they are communicating online and the question that arises is wether the internet can handle it. Dr Panagiotou states that “due to the rapidely rising demand for the internet worldwide, it is normal to come up with some difficulties, although we haven’t faced any major problem with the connection yet. I believe that in normal circumstances together with the experience we will gain, things will be much easier and clearer. However, we should never forget how important the safety of our communication is; a factor that many platforms haven’t dealt with yet with the most sufficient way but right now it is the perfect time to do it”.

More and more initiatives take place on everyday basis with various topics. Either you want to share your concerns and knowledge, learn something new and enhance what you already know, or just look for a way to spend you free time, webinars are the answer and they are served together with comfortable clothes and a cup of hot coffee.