Draperies & Window Coverings announces a break-through in industry education. Our Jacksonville, FL, Designer & Workroom Conference has migrated to the Web and is now an online conference event. Over two-weeks, 10 days, our slate of seminars and our growing list of exhibitors will present live over the Internet via webinars.
    The advantages of doing this are many. Everyone, everywhere can attend without the expense of traveling beyond their desktops. There will be more live seminars and product demonstrations scheduled Monday through Friday, August 17 to 28 than ever before in this industry. It’s a great deal and a great advantage for everyone involved. You can get all the information you need here.
    I’ve been attending a lot of webinars lately, and I have to say they’re pretty cool. I can attend wherever I am as long as I have a computer, Internet connection and maybe a phone. In this day and age, that’s just about everywhere including most Starbucks and McDonald’s! For me, I’m completely wireless so I get comfortable while I’m at it.
    For some webinar sessions I listen to the presenter over the phone while I watch his or her PowerPoint sides on the computer screen and take notes. But many webinar Web sites include the audio portion, so I listen through my computer speakers. This might sound impersonal at first, because you don’t actually see the person speaking. But one of the coolest things about webinars is that, instead, they strike me as very personal. It’s as if the presenter were speaking just to me, one-on-one. The slides are right there in front of me, too. I don’t have to look over or around anybody at a screen several rows away. For most of these sessions it feels like it’s just me and the presenter. If I want privacy, I plug in the headset.
    Many webinar Web sites, such as GoToMeeting.com, feature a dropdown instant message panel that lets me type in questions during the session. I can type one in as soon as I think of it and when the session is over the presenter can do a few minutes of Q & A. And it’s even cool when I hear answers to questions I didn’t ask. It’s a reminder that many others actually have been attending with me. I wonder where they’re at—California? Maine? Fiji? Wherever we are, we all are connected to the same place at the same time and for the same reasons.
    Here’s another cool thing: If there are friends or colleagues who can benefit from the webinar’s content, they can join me! (This is the great deal part!) We can just gather around the computer and take the session together—for the one price of admission! How cool is that?
    Webinars are great tools for the presenters, too. For one, they can speak to any number of attendees from anywhere the Internet stretches without leaving the comfort of their own homes or offices. Also—and this is a big one—they know their laptops and software work and how to use them. They don’t have to worry about using someone else’s equipment, downloading their presentations or fretting if their laptops will work with the projection equipment, which may or may not be compatible.
    As the benefits of online webinars are realized by more attendees and presenters alike, their availability and scope have increased rapidly. There now are sessions available on just about any topic you’d like to know about—just check out our schedule! One piece of advice: It’s best to know the people behind the webinar program: their commitment to education, their experience with seminar sessions, their track record at presenting information you need and can use (that’s where Draperies & Window Coverings come in!) Way cool!