How much time does it take to publish a webinar?

In this article I want to share with you how long it takes to produce, host and archive one of my Service Design Webinars.

In short: 15 hours

It takes about 15-20 hours to prepare, host and publish one of my Service Design webinars. 

Before the webinar: about 8 hours

Getting community questions and people excited

What are the tasks?
  1. Newsletter and marketing: 3 hours over a month
  2. Prepare the slides: about 4 hours over two weeks
  3. Get ready 30 minutes before the event: fix the haircut, the room, get something to drink, test all the tools, etc)


During the webinar: 1 hour

That's the easy part just present the slides and interact with the audience.

After the webinar: 4 hours

Making an archive of each individual content piece and prepare the next webinar

Archiving tasks
  1. Upload the recording of the webinar
  2. Cut and export each question and answer and make an individual video
  3. Upload to the Service Design Questions Library each individual video, add a description, title and additional links
  4. Upload the slides to Slideshare
  5. Update the landing page and the description page with all the links to the slides, individual questions and recommended resources
  6. Send an update email to all people who registered to the webinar to let them know the recording is available

Preparation of next webinar tasks
  1. Choose the date of the next webinar
  2. Find what time it is in UTC+2 because Podia (the system I use to host this website) only understands that time format.
  3. Create a time zone conversion page with Dateful so that people know when this new webinar will be in their local time
  4. Create the live stream setup in Youtube
  5. Create a thumbnail image for Youtube and the website
  6. Create a new Webinar in Podia so that people can register

These "after the event" tasks are the ones that could be the most easily outsourced and that are also the most boring to do. But in some way they are also the most important as they make it possible to transform the content from a live event into a library of content that can be used for years.

Written by Daniele Catalanotto on Saturday 27th of August 2022