Workers Comp Video Presentations – 10 Ways To Blow Them Up

Workers Comp Video Presentations And The Dreaded ZZZZ List

All of us have survived Workers Comp video presentations over the last 20 months.   Many of them were well done such as the 2021 NCCI Annual Symposium.  Some showed how an ill-prepared group of presenters amplify their mistake of throwing together a presentation at the last minute.  I picked up a CE hour listening to the debacle, so it was not a total loss.

I thought of writing this article just after I finished the Academy of Insurance Presentation on 7 Ways To Blow Up Your Workers Comp Program.

Many Workers Comp video presentation providers have told me they miss the old-school in-person presentations.   Due to the COVID pandemic, I have grown accustomed to watching and providing Zoom presentations.

I am supposed to do an in-person presentation with a mask on later this month.  That should be challenging.

10 Ways To Blow Up Workers Comp Video Presentations

Let us begin (With deference to Guy Kawasaki)

• Video Amplifies Death by PowerPoint – Lists of texts make me snooze like the above dog on the beach.  I love to watch text-based video presentations late at night.  I sleep like a baby.  Show some pics, please.
• Zoom Presentations Are Close-Ups – I will never get that close to a live presenter.  Unless you are a Tech God or Goddess, do not appear in a T-Shirt for an insurance presentation.  Old-school business casual still works no matter the subject.
• What Appears or Happens In The Background Counts– If you have a neat painting in the background, I am going to pay attention to the painting, not your presentation.  If your cell phone rings, then I am going to remember that I have to send a text, then I will be ignoring you totally.
• Videos Amplify Not Prepping – No one that I know of can fake it with Zoom attendees.  Preparing at the last minute is amplified by at least a multiplier of five.  I have seen presenters pull it off in person.  I have yet to see a presenter on video overcome not preparing.
• Please Read Directly From Your 50 Slides – That way I can shut down the meeting or go do something else while you are presenting.  This also looks bad in person, but Workers Comp video presentations with a slide reader make me shut them off very quickly.   Video slide readers with no context seem to be a popular thing presently.
• Have Water Available – Taking a drink of water remains an OK thing to do on video.  Talking with a dry mouth or dry coughing distracts from your presentation.
• Speed, Speed, and Jitter – Test your video upload and download speeds along with jitter.  I provided two articles with my techie background on the subject early in the pandemic.  You can find one of them here. I sit on top of my wireless modem to make sure the video does not slow down, jitter, or crash.  A great web speed test can be found here.
•  Not Showing a Headshot Video While Presenting – If you are just flipping through the slides, I tend to – see #5 above.  This one may be just my own preference.  One can tell by facial expressions what is important to the presenter.   I usually note the subject matter when I think it is important to the presenter.
• Maybe You Should Not Host Video Interviews – I watched one this morning for about 15 minutes out of an hour.  The interviewer was from a nationally recognized Workers Comp publication.  Being an interviewer takes much more experience and training than being an interviewee.
• The Rushed Presenter – I wrote an article on this subject two years ago.  A trend started where the presenters were trying to pack a one-hour presentation into 20 minutes.   The two presenters were out of breath trying to compact the webinar into ten minutes each.

Workers comp video presentations will likely at least partially remain very popular until at least the end of 2022, if not permanently.

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