We hosted our first webinar during a pandemic. Here’s what we learnt.
As the COVID-19 pandemic challenges companies to reassess their work arrangements, we at Jala found useful online alternatives to host our workshops this year. While we have always incorporated technology in the way we work, we turned to additional digital resources (like Loom, ClickMeeting and Google Hangouts) as we continue to work remotely, and hosted our first event of the year — and also our very first webinar ever — for translators.
Our first webinar, “How to be a successful translator” curated an extensive list of skills to have, including CAT tools out there and how to use them. We also picked out things that organisations look for in a translator. All of these, doused with creative ways to curate your portfolio and where to begin as a translator.
Believe it or not, none of us had hosted an online webinar before. Needless to say, as rookies to the webinar hosting experience, the process has been truly rewarding and we highly recommend it!
Here is what we learnt as hosts:
1. It’s Not Easy.
We realised early on that while the idea of a webinar may seem like an easy feat (you just need a laptop and an internet connection right?), a lot of hard work is involved to prepare for one, especially when it comes to planning quality content, and ensuring that our audience actually learns something. Our priorities were to strike a balance between covering the basics, but also providing examples and applicable steps for translators! We did multiple rounds of research, content planning, and restructuring of the presentation to make sure we met these goals.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice!
Needless to say, co-hosting a webinar for the first time was nerve-racking! We took painstaking steps to ensure that the software would not act up, that we would be able to adequately deliver good content, and that we could answer any questions our participants may have.
As we developed our content and put together our structure, we practiced via video calls over Google Hangouts (Liani is based in Malaysia, and I am based in Singapore) multiple times. We then took our presentation to the entire Jala team and did practice sessions with them as well. Getting their feedback and having a mock audience (who indulged our fears and asked us super challenging questions) certainly helped build our confidence too!
3. Interact.
One of the themes that stood out when we were doing our webinar research and planning was interactivity into the webinar. Instead of lining up a boring lecture, we wanted to make sure we were engaging our audience. This definitely required quite a bit of thought! Finding a balance between interactivity, while at the same time not coming across as too forced (or cringey to ourselves) was really challenging!
We attempted a blend of asking questions, posting quiz and poll questions, while simultaneously interacting with each other as hosts. One important thing we realised was that having an open channel for communication (in this case the chat box function in the webinar software) is a true lifesaver when you are striving for an interactive experience. One of our colleagues suggested we also show our faces via video — we were too shy this time round, but maybe next time?
4. Have Fun!
Our final takeaway from the entire webinar experience was to douse some fun into the process! Even though we were super anxious about keeping our participants interested or engaged, we realised that it would be more meaningful and helpful for everyone if we poured our passion and plucked our own experiences as translators as we presented our webinar.
Planning and practising with the entire team also offered plenty of fun insights as our team members have diverse skill sets. This we can say the same about our diverse participants from the actual webinar. We observed how our participants of varying translation levels, and backgrounds from all over Southeast Asia interacted or reacted to what we said, and it was encouraging to learn how much they found our webinar useful — and had themselves rushed to sign into the webinar room early. It definitely sparked some joy for us!
Overall, some good groundwork was laid for future Jala webinars, and we are excited to expand our series of online events. We found that there are truly innovative ways to connect with our community — and hosting a webinar is one of them! Not only that, it’s a fun way to collaborate as colleagues too. Liani and I ended up growing much closer and learning a lot about each other in the process (For example, I learnt that Liani’s father has a doppelganger with the exact same name in Malaysia. Meanwhile, Liani shared how in awe she was of my Indonesian grandmother who had learned French in Jakarta in the 1950s!).
Mostly importantly, hosting a webinar is not successful without the commitment of participants who choose to take the time to attend such online events! We’d like to thank our participants for signing up and we hope the online learning was an enjoyable experience.
Missed out on our webinar?
You can easily access our recorded webinar here. We’d love to hear what you think of it in our feedback form.
We will keep you posted on when our next webinar will be, so keep watching our Facebook and Instagram pages!
Meanwhile, if you’re working from home and struggle to find tools to improve your translation skills, check out these useful online resources we’ve lined up here.
Written by Dewi Fitzpatrick
