On Wednesday night, I participated in a webinar about growing your subscriptions. It was scheduled from 8 pm to 9 pm EST. This is prime bedtime for Scarlett and not really a good time for me but I thought it might be valuable to grow my core audience. So, I made the time. I plopped my daughter in front of the television (good parenting choice, I know) and signed in.

For the first 15 minutes, I sat there as the guy running this thing tried to figure out how to use the technology for the webinar. Each moment that passes, I’m getting more and more pissed because 1. I’m being a bad parent and I know it; then 2. YOU’RE WASTING MY TIME!

Finally, this guy figures out how to get the camera to view him – not the power point he had planned to put up on the screen – and he moves forward. As the presentation moves forward in his presentation, it becomes clear to me that he is referring to a power point. However, since I can’t see the power point presentation, I have no frame of reference for what he’s talking about. I managed to get a couple of things out of it but since I was clearly missing vital bits of this presentation, I’m not entirely sure who helpful they’ll be.

At 8:50 pm, I had to leave and put my daughter to bed, you know, since this thing was supposed to be winding down. I probably missed some things but that couldn’t be helped. I came back after I turned her lights out and the webinar continued for another 30 minutes until we got to the point where he said that if we didn’t want to do the work, we could just hire his company to do it for us. Then he would take questions.

After an hour and a half of this bullshit, I actually snorted in disbelief. Why would I hire someone who can’t get the tech to work, who doesn’t believe that my time is valuable, and who isn’t prepared?

Seriously, you’re giving a webinar. TEST THE PROGRAM FIRST! Don’t wait until you go live to figure out that there are problems.

At that statement, I closed it down. I didn’t even stay for the Q&A because I was tired,  annoyed, and needed to wash my face.