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Webinar Tech Mea Culpa

March 10, 2010 - 9:18 pm     Print This Post Print This Post     view / write comments

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 Dr West

The transition to using new technology can have some hiccups, and today we did another webinar that had technical difficulties that required more patience from the audience and especially our unflappable presenter, Dr. Suresh Ramalingam, than I would consider acceptable.  I’ve been trying to find the online webinar/screen share service that is the best combination of ease of use, features, and low cost, but the service I’d selected had problems tonight where the screen share didn’t work properly (”This application is not functioning properly at the present time.  Please check back in several minutes.  We regret the inconvenience…“).

I spoke with my wife after the webinar, and she asked, “Who is helping out with this?”.   “Umm…nobody”, I said, “just me.”   I know that’s not ideal, but you know we’re trying to do this on a shoestring budget, so we don’t have support people to manage this for us.

Still, you should know that I strive to have the quality of our activities far exceed what you would expect just because it’s free.  To be honest, it is somewhat between frustrating and mortifying for me when we have technical glitches during a webinar, or the website freezes.  The tech guys tell me we need our own dedicated servers to support the traffic we have, but honestly, we’re trying to economize.

This isn’t meant to be a plea for $$ support, though sure - that’d help.  Right now, I really wanted to say a few things with conviction:

1) I am very confident that we can get the webinars working properly for people, and that soon they will truly be reliable and convenient.   I suspect this will be with a different service than the one we’ve used.

2) My goal is to have the content that GRACE offers, through the website, live programs, and podcast materials, consistently exceed people’s expectations, especially for a free nonprofit service.

3) For those of you who have participated and experienced glitches, don’t lose faith.  Getting through this hump is becoming my purpose in life.  Not really quite that, but I do think that this live webinar format will prove to be a great way to integrate a terrific array of other experts, and to have these programs then turned into valuable archived content.

———————————————————————————————————-

As a good will gesture, we’re offering our next webinar free.  True, it was free before… but I am truly confident that for those who will persevere, these will prove to be valuable and even, dare I say, user-friendly (soon, very soon).  Dr. Mark Socinski, who is doing our program next week on timing and choice of therapy after first line treatment for advanced NSCLC, is a terrific speaker and a tremendous leader in the lung cancer world, and we will make it a huge priority to have it work well.

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  1. March 11, 2010 - 6:18 am

    I think it’s a good idea to offer the next webinar for free:! and I’m sorry you were close to being mortified last night. I logged in a few minutes late for my first Grace webinar, it went well.
    Thank you

    catdander
  2. March 11, 2010 - 7:18 am

    There are truly greater crises in the world of cancer, but we aspire to having things run smoother.

    Dr West
  3. March 11, 2010 - 7:25 am

    Dr. West, please do not be mortified! This website and its offshoots are the most amazing resource, and you are unbelievably, inspiringly dedicated. I frequently wonder how one man, with a busy practice and a young family, can possibly do all that you do. We’re so grateful, and we understand if there are glitches. I wish I knew more about technology so I could offer to help.

    Anna

    Dragonfruit
  4. March 11, 2010 - 3:35 pm

    If you’d like to read the transcript (with notes and figures) from a previous discussion between Dr. West and Dr. Socinski, you can find it here: http://thecbce.com/podcast/winterlung/socinski.pdf

    Jim

    JimC
  5. March 11, 2010 - 8:54 pm

    Dr. West,

    Please call http://www.NPower.org - they might be able to help! And they are looking for projects, or so I have been told. “Providing comprehensive, high-quality & affordable technology assistance to nonprofits.”

    ts
  6. March 14, 2010 - 6:53 pm

    Is there a way to pull up posts by date, e.g., the last 30 days, and get them in order (oldest first, so subsequent posts can be read in order)? I love the website, but am having a bit of trouble navigating it. Thanks.

    Shy One
  7. March 14, 2010 - 8:17 pm

    Shy One,

    I guess the answer is not really very easily. If you’re talking about Forum posts, the best you can do is to click on “Forums” in the right column on the home page. On the Forums home page that comes up, click on “Latest Forum Posts” in the horizontal menu bar below the GRACE logo. That will give you ten pages of the latest posts, and if you want you can click on Page 10 (you’ll see Pages 1 2 3 …10 just above the first message and just below the last message) and read backwards. Each message has all of the previous posts in that thread linked to it, so just go to the first page of that thread to read them in order. Currently that only gets you back to March 10. You can also pick a folder from the Forums home page, and the topics will be listed in order of last post and you can scroll down as far as you’d like and start reading, but of course you’d have to do this a folder at a time.

    If you’re talking about the doctors’ posts in “Latest Grace Posts” the best you can do is, from the home page, click on “Find Info About” from the horizontal menu bar, then choose “Lung Cancer” or other topic. A list of the most recent posts, with summaries, will appear with the newest first. If you want to go back a month, just scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Previous Entries” in the lower left corner. You can do this repeatedly until you get to the starting date you want, then work forwards.

    Dr. West has plans to re-organize the site, but until then we make do. There’s a lot of info here, and it’s a bit difficult to organize. If you have a specific question or are looking for particular info, please ask and we’ll do our best to help you find it.

    Jim

    JimC