Last week, Derek and I gave what I thought was a pretty successful series of presentations about CMEpalooza and our use of Google Hangouts On Air during the World Congress on Continuing Professional Development in San Diego.
We participated in one of the conference’s two “Innovation Lab Demonstrations” where session attendees were split into groups of approximately 10-15 individuals, rotating between each station for a 15-minute presentation.
Kudos to the conference organizers and especially Tym Peters from the University of California at San Francisco (our moderator and timekeeper) for being willing to try a new format and adapting between Day 1 and Day 2 to make a better experience for learners. Essentially, they turned the tables around so that each presenter didn’t have to raise his/her voice to be heard over the noise in the room – an easy fix, perhaps, but it made a big difference.
My rough estimate was that about half of the attendees had heard of and/or were familiar with CMEpalooza – not bad for an international audience. There were a variety of questions about our events and the potential use of Google Hangouts On Air (GHOA) for accredited educational activities. It was nice to see the wheels in the minds of some of our attendees churning as they thought about how to leverage the platform for their own purposes.
While there are certainly some nuances that take some getting used to as a regular moderator of the GHOA platform, both Derek and I have found it to be a very user-friendly platform that simply requires some experimenting and testing to master.
As part of our World Congress presentation, we developed a handout that walks through the basics of how to set up a GHOA session – basically, it’s your beginner’s guide. You can access the handout by clicking on this link. If you want to start tooling around, this should hopefully get you started. We’re always interested in hearing from others who are dipping their toe into the GHOA waters and answering any questions you have about it, so feel free to reach out to either of us if you really get stuck.
CMEPALOOZA 