Three ways the Experts on Mission Critical webinars blew my mind

Airbus arranged five webinars about mission critical push-to-talk in the autumn of 2020 and another five webinars in 2021. For me, as the host for the webinars, three things really blew my mind!

Because the autumn 2020 webinars on critical push-to-talk were so successful to compensate for the lack of in-person events, we received many requests to continue the series in 2021. Armed with lessons learned, comments, and feedback, we started planning the Experts on Mission Critical webinars in March 2021.

Every webinar episode was planned to have its own unique topic. Interesting topics were easy to find because so much is happening in mission critical communications today! These were the final topics selected:

• Public safety broadband
• Mission critical user experience
• Professional apps
• Communication security
• IoT and AI for public safety.

This was the first mind-blowing realization:

I hold my professional contacts and colleagues in high esteem, but I still was amazed at the positive and open-minded attitude of every expert that we asked to participate. Guest experts were just as eager to participate as internal colleagues from Airbus. Pretty much everyone’s first reaction was “I’m in! When will the webinar be broadcast?”

This super positive attitude and support allowed us to have an amazing variety of experts in the webinar series.

Overall, the webinars featured 23 experts from around the world. Speakers came from universities, from our own R&D teams, from big and small enterprises, and from governmental institutions. Such an amazing variety of knowledge that they brought to the table!

It was inspiring for us, as organizers to see that people were so willing to be a part of our webinar series.

The second mind-blowing moment took place during the first webinar broadcast: “The next 5 things to do immediately about your broadband communications”.

There was a huge audience online already ten minutes before the webinar broadcast started: customers, partners, people from the critical communications ecosystem, and Airbus colleagues. (Competitors as well – because the webinars were open for everyone.)

As soon as the first webinar broadcast began, it was mind-blowing to see how the number of viewers grew and grew, reaching a new record of webinar participants!

The live chat was super active during the webinar itself, and especially after the broadcast finished, as the chat continued for another half hour. Great observations from the webinar were shared from participants, and we also received nice feedback.

Interesting dialogue between the speakers and webinar participants led to a lively discussion. Participants were engaged with the topic and everyone seemed to agree with the closing message of the webinar: You should get a move on it! If you don’t start now, you will not be any closer to broadband in 2025 or 2030.

When the chat closed, emails requesting feedback went out to everyone who had registered to the webinar. The feedback received was very positive, and there were some improvement ideas that we were able to implement already in the next webinar episode.

Carefully selected topics and expert speakers can bring in a crowd of participants to engage and discuss in the chat during and after the webinar.

The final mind-blowing discovery was to see how well a conversation between experts delivers a message. Presentation slides, videos, and fancier multimedia solutions can be nice, but they aren´t essential. Content may be king, but people want to see and hear other people. Real people.

Opinions and discussions are far more interesting than a delivery of key selling points in a slideshow.

I have to say, our experts were so enthusiastic about IoT, the mission critical user experience, communication security, and applications! So much about the future of mission critical communications is exciting! I wonder what we will be seeing soon – probably something we can´t even imagine yet!

It was a pleasure and an honour to host these Airbus webinars. I believe we delivered something new and groundbreaking. Even though there are hundreds of webinars available, I know in my heart that this series stands out from the mass.

I urge you to take a look if you haven’t seen these webinars yet. The webinar recordings are available to watch whenever it is convenient for you:

• The next 5 things to do immediately about your broadband communications
• Where is the mission-critical user experience heading in the next five years?
• Why the next 10 years of professional apps will smash the last 10
• 9 easy ways to improve your communication security
• IoT and AI - never before seen opportunities for public safety.

Or watch the earlier webinars – the Experts on critical push-to-talk series:

• Avoid the top 9 PTT app mistakes that could threaten your conversation security
• How to make smart PTT services really work for you
• 5 ways you can get more from your PTT services while spending less
• 9 simple tips how smart PTT services can better support your business
• 7 secret things about PTT services that you did not know