Last Updated on October 4, 2020 by Paresh Gupta
I delivered my first virtual boot camp between 14th– 24th September 2020. The topic was Cisco SAN Analytics and DCNM SAN Insights. This was not even thought earlier this year. Ideally, I would have traveled to global locations, get 15-20 attendees in an office room for 2 days, and dive deep into the subject. In fact, I had my tickets booked to Spain in March 2020, the same week the country went under lock-down. Back then, I was still hoping to get back on track by October. But it did not go that way.
The show must go on
Waiting indefinitely to deliver the education wasn’t the best strategy. It has a direct impact on product sales, services, and support. In July, I started accepting the reality that doing a virtual boot camp may be the only option. Back then, it was a terrible idea to deliver 16 hours of in-depth technical education over WebEx. But I was about to be proven wrong.
In summary, via the virtual boot camp, we achieved:
- 1200+ hours of active participation by sales, services, support teams, etc.
- 184+ registrants (Daily attendance range: 155 – 56)
- 400+ slides of training content
- 10, 000+ words of how-to, FAQ, best practices, and troubleshooting content – all written in the last 4 weeks.
- 22 recorded videos
- 15+ live demos
- Install and config of DCNM SAN Insights, live during the event.
- We even built our own analytics app, live during the event.
When organized, I estimated 20 attendees and was afraid that the participants may not interact over the virtual event. Clearly, the end-results are very different. I also sent out a feedback survey. Below, is a summary of the feedback mixed with my own thoughts.
What worked well
Slow learning
The boot camp continued for 2 weeks, Monday to Thursday, 2 hours every day at 8 AM PDT. Long WebEx sessions are a perfect recipe for losing the audience. In this case, most of the audience loved the 2-hour cap. There were a few who mentioned that it was a bit long and 90 mins would have been better. Overall, the format turned out to be better than 2 full days of power learning. Honestly, I have rarely seen the attendees able to pay attention during the afternoon sessions, especially the one after lunch. Spreading the learning over 2 weeks gave enough time for the participants to absorb the content.
Global reach and interaction
The virtual WebEx meetings were able to cover the US in the morning hours, Europe in the evening hours, and India in the late evening hours. Also, any unanswered questions from a day were answered the following day with the help of the extended team.
Open conversation among global peers
Just like an in-person classroom setup, I wanted the attendees to talk when they wanted. We constantly encouraged the attendees to contribute and let them go on tangents a few times. Logistically, the event was organized as a typical WebEx meeting, not WebEx training or WebEx Event. There were no panelists or attendees. All were participants, exchanging thoughts among peers from the US, Europe, India, and other locations.
Lower cost
The virtual event did not cost me anything. I am sure WebEx gets paid at an organization level but for me, I had no expenses to file due to travel, hotel, social hours, etc.
Recorded sessions
All the sessions were recorded. I spent a few hours creating an animated intro banner and video editing. Finally, the videos are published on a Cisco internal portal and will help the teams for many years. Recording in-person events are out of reach, primarily due to high cost and logistics.
Also, I created an internal chat room for all the participants and requested them to post their questions there also. This approach worked out very well to take meeting notes. Later, I took all the questions from the chat room and moved to a single page in a FAQ format.
More than a boot camp
Because it was virtual, I was able to involve the extended engineering teams for presenting in-depth troubleshooting sessions. As the event was going on, the team wrote extra content on best practices, troubleshooting, FAQ, etc.
What could have done better or missed
The human interaction
The online interaction was great but could not match the in-person experience. This was the only comment in the survey results that the participants wrote as a suggestion to make the event better. From my perspective, I missed looking into the eyes of the participants to feel their excitement or their confusion, at times, when they show hesitation to ask a question. Also, the coffee and the social hour conversations were not heard at all.
90 mins, not 120
Some of the participants mentioned that the 2-hour session was long. Next time, I will prefer 90 mins.
Learnings and tips on logistics
Use two laptops
Use two laptops to host the event. Present from one and use the other one to make sure the screen is visible and the text is readable. Avoid asking: Are you able to see my screen? Also, ensure that text is visible during live demos or from the CLI.
Don’t be afraid to mute the noise
There are always a few folks who forget to mute their lines. Asking them to mute does not work all the time. I kept a watch on the unmuted lines and frequently used the “Mute all participant” option. Doing this from the 2nd laptop works seamlessly.
Get a virtual whiteboard and pen to draw
Ignore this if you just want to stick to the script and run the slides. But if you believe in open conversation and let the participants ask detailed questions, it is best to start drawing. Some of the questions get complicated and not all the participants may be able to visualize the ask. It is best to have a virtual whiteboard to start drawing and engaging all. I use Surface Pro with Stylus in almost all of my meetings and I am totally in love with it. On a Windows machine, it goes very well with OneNote and also with PowerPoint in slideshow mode. If this is not an option, check out some affordable options from Wacom.
+++
Overall, delivering 16-hours of in-depth technical education over WebEx worked out much better than I had imagined in July this year. However, in the future when it is possible, I would still prefer the in-person event and so do the participants as evident from their survey response.
