Thanks Mark. Yes, excellent points.
- I have to admit I've struggled with the technology switching to a whiteboard. It's challenging to achieve digitally without an iPad - although I now switch over to powerpoint and in real-time build up diagrams.
I have a colleague at Snowflake who invested in a digital whiteboard for both presentations and drawings - but that cost over $3,000.
- What I've seen (and having discussed it with my colleagues in the Snowflake US Training and Education Team is they have the same challenges.
I suspect (to some extent) it's a "cultural issue" - especially for teams in India where we find people (a) Don't switch on their cameras (b) Don't speak up and add questions.
To some extent I find people more willing to type questions in a chat box, but at times I've been really disappointed by the lack of engagement.
What REALLY struck me though was when the remote attendees on day 1 joined us in the office for days 2-3 just what a HUGE difference it made.
I was able to read their face - as soon as I saw them questioning the topic, I knew I needed to ask them to contribute and it is an awful lot easier to have a "group discussion" when we're all in the same room
Having said that - remote is here to stay and for scalability - nothing beats it. I just think it's not the "best way" - but perhaps often the "only way".
Interesting article, as ever.
Whilst I get that the idea of the article is to do more in-person training/education, there were a couple of things I didn't really agree with:
1) that you can't come out of the presentation and "whiteboard" for online training/education - I don't see why you can't be sharing your screen and switch to some app to effectively whiteboard there. Or even switch to your camera with a whiteboard in the room you are training/educating from, and physically use that whiteboard.
2) I'm surprised that people don't contribute with questions/anecdotes/whatever when they are online, as social media tells us people are generally very keen to do that sort of thing"! I always make the effort to try to ask things in training/education, whether in person or remote, as generally you get more out of these experiences if you are prepared to put something in, rather than if you just sit back and hope you will absorb everything.