On the Road Again

With the advent of webinars, it's a fair question to ask: will the ease and convenience of webinars ever replace remote conferences with their unpleasant tendencies towards uncomfortable plane rides and uncertain hotel service?After all my years on the road as a business traveler (I'm approaching 400,000 frequent flyer miles!) this is not an academic question to me. The idea of leaving the suitcases in storage and substituting a telephone and an Internet screen has certainly gotten some consideration as this new technology has gotten better. (How many of you have started an Internet presentation, couldn't access the url, and asked to have the slides e-mailed to you so you can follow along? But that's happening less and less.)The short answer is this: webinars will not replace live conferences. But they absolutely have their place.Humans are social beings. It will always be easier to do business in person than remotely (that's why salesmen always want to come in to see you). It's also helpful to get out of the office once in a while and into the real world, to see old friends or put a face to a name. We're wired that way, and that isn't going to change.Plus, a full-scale conference isn't just about the sessions. I've often heard it said "the real meeting is out in the hall." Essential business networking takes place in the exhibit hall, most prominently, but also in restaurants and cocktail parties and golf excursions scheduled around the conference. These aren't replicable at a webinar.And, traveling has its charms. Pleasant cities (San Francisco, Palm Springs, Miami and Atlanta come to mind), tourist opportunities, comfortable hotels, great dining, all these things can be wonderful on a trip. (Of course, the actual traveling itself can be tiring and nerve-wracking.) I've had the opportunity to travel and see all 50 of these United States, mostly on the mortgage beat, and I wouldn't trade that for a headset and a PowerPoint on a monitor.That being said, the webinar has its good points as well. It needs to be really focused to one topic, and to be long enough to be comprehensive but not too long to make the eyes glaze over. And it has to have great speakers. At a remote show where you might go to ten sessions, one or two duds isn't a catastrophe. But for a webinar, everybody's got to really have game!I've participated in dozens of live events put on by our affiliate SourceMedia Conferences over the years, but last month, we put on our first editorial webinar. (I've participated in a bunch as an attendee.) The topic was a hot one: the first month's experience of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct.My colleage Brad Finkelstein, managing editor of Origination News, moderated, and I listened in. Our speakers were Alan Hummel, senior vice president and chief appraiser, Forsythe Appraisals, Tony Pistilli, chief retail appraiser for US Bank, and Brian Coester, CEO of Coester Appraisals.The webinar went off very well. The speakers were knowledgeable and articulate, there was no "dead air" time, which can be deadly, and the attendees deluged Brad with questions for the panelists. You always worry there won't be any audience participation at an event-this one had to be called on account of darkness as we ran out of time to get to all the questions.So, I still see the value of the traditional two or three day mortgage meeting in an interesting locale. But I look forward also to doing more interesting, focused, lively webinars on the hot topics in mortgage lending.