Just the Facts Please - Online Seminar Limitations

Online Seminars, webcasts, and podcasts have really exploded on the tech scene over the last year or so, but I remain skeptical about the potential of these to change things very much. An "old style" online information gathering approach still works very well. Generally it takes only a few online minutes to search, find, and quickly scan a topic you need to understand better or learn about for the first time. If you need to become an expert in a topic I'd suggest it is better to surf a lot of sites and participate in blogs and forums rather than spend the same amount of time watching a webcast, though of course there are exceptions to this. Unfortunately it is hard to know which of the millions of videos on millions of topics are great vs. a waste of your time. Sorting the wheat from the chaff - at least for me - is much easier if I'm scanning search engine listings, text snippets, and websites rather than listening to podcasts or video clips.

Webcasting and Podcasts in some way bridge the human gap we have with simple surfing where you have a very limited connection to the purveyor of the information you need. Yet thanks to blogging and forums you are able to to get direct feedback from experts by simply commenting or participating in those formats, which to my way of thinking have the huge advantage of allowing you to jump in and out and quickly scan for the good stuff without enduring a lot of information that is not relevant to you.

Certainly a podcast would be a better choice for some specific types of learning - languages for example - where audio and repetition are key parts of the learning experience. Also obviously there are times when the online picture can "paint a thousand words" and thus may trump any amount of text reading. Real time breaking news could benefit from webcasting, especially if pictures are a key part of the story. However I think these exceptions are relatively few. In most cases your best information bet, in terms of return on your valuable time, is the same as it has been for some time - good old Web 1.0 search, surf, and find.