Presenting an AgRA TC webinar

We invite TC members to present their work in the form of a webinar.  This post is to answer some frequently asked questions.  Before the details, I'll briefly mention that the webinars are broadcast to an international audience and also recorded, so those who are in different time zones can view at a different time. I will also mention some benefits to you and your work.  And, if you have questions, please contact me - I'm the webinar host: Amy Tabb.

[This is a working document, and will evolve over time.  Last update June 28, 2019.]

Benefits

The biggest benefit of presenting a webinar is broad dissemination of your work to a diverse audience in terms of discipline and geographic area.  Unlike a conference, there are no costs for the participants or you to attend.  And, for academics, these talks are another line for your CV!  Are you the leader of a lab, and too busy to prepare and give a webinar?  Ask a graduate student or postdoc in your lab to do so; this is an excellent opportunity for them to showcase their particular project and also talk about how it fits into the larger work of your lab or institute.

Webinar provider

The webinar provider we are currently using is Zoom. Since protocols change frequently, I'll not link to the client here.  If you are presenting, I will send you invitations to a Zoom test session, and there will be instructions for how to install the free client.  There should be no cost to you.  Zoom supports Windows, Mac, and Linux (I have only used Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04).

With the client installed, you can share your screen, and that's how the webinar will be presented - by you at your computer.  You can present the audio by phone, or VOIP, and we can test both during our test session, which usually takes 15 minutes. I'll record the test session and send you the link, and then you can decide some final details of the webinar if any are still undecided (phone versus VOIP, etc.).

Recently, we have also started live streaming with YouTube Live while the Zoom webinar is ongoing, and have had some people join that way.

Format

The webinars are typically allocated for one hour.  There is usually a 5 minute time that is lost in the beginning as everyone gets logged in, and I will introduce you as the presenter, and we like to leave 10 minutes for questions.  Audience members can ask questions through the webinar software.  Given that, your presentation slides should take about 45 minutes.  When we test the software together, we can determine if your presentation has natural stopping points for questions, or if you want to wait until the end.  At the time of this writing, some webinar presenters selected two stopping points during the webinar for questions.

Unlike a conference, where the audience can see you, in a webinar they will only see your slides.  Because of this, you may want to put a picture of yourself on the front slide to create a visual-mental link at a later conference between you, and the work you are presenting.  Another thing to consider is the latency of the video and audio, etc.; you will want to speak slowly and clearly.  Imagine all the transoceanic phone calls you have made.  Now speak like that when you present your webinar.

You can take a look at some past webinars here.

There is no requirement that the material be totally new; you can expand a presentation previously presented somewhere else, create a presentation for a preprint or recently-published paper, or something else entirely.  I'm less familiar with how to come up with a webinar from an industry perspective, because that's not my background, but we have had some interesting talks at the workshops at IEEE/RSJ IROS I have attended from people working in industry R&D and there are some examples in the past webinars as well.

Given that, while the slide, research results-type webinar has been the standard, if we want to introduce some different types of webinars we can explore that too.  The webinar software allows for multiple panelists, which would allow for an interview-type format.  Tutorials may also be of interest to the group.  I am also available to talk through your ideas with you and give you more details about the logistics.

Scheduling

We schedule the time of the webinar together.  I am located slightly west of Washington, D.C, in the U.S., in the Eastern Time zone typically associated with New York in time zone maps.  However, I do not have an issue with hosting a webinar at my 2am if that captures working hours for your area of the world.   Choosing a good time is a bit of chance -- it is difficult to tell how many people will show up for any given webinar.  We can try to capture as many regions that will have daylight near you, or simply schedule it according to your preferences.  There is no right answer.  We will also schedule a time a few days before to test the webinar software, as well as a few slides and at least one video segment, if you are going to show video.  The typical format is that we will share your screen, so as long as your presentation works on your computer, everything should work fine.

Once we decide on a date, I will list your webinar date on the AgRA website as an upcoming event, but without any details of who is presenting the webinar or the topic.  Doing so allows for others to select a date, and for some flexibility if we are scheduling a few months away. The schedule for advertising your webinar at this point in time is:

~3-4 weeks away: you return a 1-page questionnaire, we finalize the schedule, I write a post for AgRA website, and send to you for accuracy check

- after post approved: LinkedIn, first Twitter, first AgRA mailing list advertisement, and email sent from me to interested persons or institutes given the topic.

~one week away: AgRA mailing list advertisement, round II, repeat Twitter ads as date approaches.

Intellectual Property (IP)

The webinar invitations are sent to TC members, but are also sent to the public, and there is no expectation that your content will remain private.  In addition, your webinar will be recorded and posted on the the AgRA's website.  So treat any webinar as a fully public presentation with regards to getting IP protections in place beforehand, if required.

Language

To my knowledge, the language of the TC and of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) conferences has been English.  I would like to explore the idea of presenters whose first/second/third languages are not English present non-English language webinars, or a webinar in English and a companion webinar identical in content, but in a non-English language.  My main motivation behind this idea is to enable more people, in more places, to participate in our webinars, particularly students at the university level.  As with all experiments, I am sure that there will be surprises -- particularly as my non-English language skills are not good -- and I welcome your feedback on this idea.

Reading/Supplementary materials

To facilitate discovery of your work, and because it is difficult to catch a paper title and look it up in real time, I write a post and that serves as the reference for all of the advertisements for your webinar.  Something to be aware of is that access to library subscriptions are not universal, so a post-print or arXiv link is very useful to allow others to read the work.  An example post is here. Also, I can update the post a few days before, if your presentation changes slightly and new materials need to be added.

Twitter announcement

This is another area that will probably evolve over time.  One way I announce the webinars is on the TC's Twitter account.  I can tag your institution, department, you, your lab, etc., but I will want your permission to do so and the correct tags.  I can also include images, if you provide them, and/or start slide, and/or your picture. Otherwise, the announcement will list the basics.  In other words, I can do a lot, or a little, and it is up to you which way this goes. Some people use Twitter in a personal capacity (sports! cat videos!), some use it professionally, and I won't know your preferences unless you tell me.

If you are a Twitter master, the easiest way for this part to happen is that you compose the announcement with your preferred institutional tags, images, etc. and notify me and/or tag the AgRoboticsTC account.  Then I can retweet your expertly-composed webinar announcement with the TC-specific registration information on top.  Again, communication will be important here when we start to set up the announcements so we don't create a confusing chain of Twitter events.

LinkedIn announcement

I am currently advertising the webinars on LinkedIn.  The same goes here as for Twitter -- I can tag you and some of your team members, but I want your permission to do so.  I set the visibility of the post as public.  An example post is here.  I update the post once the webinar is past with a link to the recording.

My view on the webinars, advertising, and access

My view is that if you are going to go through the work of putting together a webinar about work relevant to agriculture, then the largest group of people possible should get to see your presentation.  I currently send the advertisements to three mailing lists.  The YouTube streaming allows some to join who would not be able to otherwise, but as YouTube is blocked in some countries, I also post a .mp4 recording as well.  I welcome feedback on how easy/hard it is for people worldwide to access these webinars, if you have any!  Most of our past webinars have recordings, and are found here.

Marcel Bergerman

Marcel Bergerman, previously of Carnegie Mellon University, and now of Near Earth Autonomy, was the last webinar host.  I have ported most of his practices and hope that I can channel his organizational acuity as we get the webinars going.