Videoconferencing Makes Markt In CE

"There is no question there is a future for this," observed the instructor Herb Lustig, senior partner in the firm Lustig & Brown in Buffalo, N.Y. "I not only think this is the wave of the future, but the future has come. This will prove to be the best way to disseminate information to agents in the future."

While the technology has been available for years, Ms. Macheda observed, until recently, the "cost has been prohibitive," running up to $30,000 for the use of the production studio alone.

Last year, the association began to talk about videoconferencing again and contacted members of the State University of New York system about attempting a CE program. Finding the cost more acceptable, in the few-thousand-dollars range, the association went ahead with making plans to conference the very popular Errors and Omissions Loss Prevention Seminar from Albany, N.Y., Alfred E. Smith office building production studio to 14 locations throughout the states university system.

In the 15 years that he and his staff have conducted the seminar, this was the first time Mr. Lustig and Jim Keidel, senior partner and managing partner in the New York City and Stanford, Conn., office of the firms, have ever done this or any seminar through videoconferencing.

"We sacrificed the live audience and the kind of contact that allows impromptu questions in the past," Mr. Lustig noted. However, one thing he did not miss was the six months spent by his firms attorneys traveling to different locations throughout the state.

Mr. Lustig confessed that it took a little adjusting, speaking into a camera lens instead of to a live audience, and he missed "the impromptu questions as in the past."

There were other learning curve issues, said Ms. Macheda. One involved getting the participants to take their seats promptly. Once the satellite feed began, there was no waiting for people to take their seats, she explained. In the future the association would do a little more prep work with those attending the classes so they understand they cannot return from a break at their leisure, Ms. Macheda acknowledged.

"If the agent returned after the presentation got started they would have been a little lost," Ms. Macheda observed.

Another area to be addressed in the future is answering questions from agents during the lesson.

During this seminar, questions from the agents were faxed to the Albany production studio from the individual locations. The instructors answered most of them during the airing.

A major challenge the association ran into was that agents sent in their questions during breaks in the three hour course, instead of during the sessions, Ms. Macheda explained. She said many participants did not seem to realize they could hand the questions in during the session. The association did consider using e-mail, but the facilities did not exist in all of the locations to accommodate computers near the presentation.

However, despite the faxing process, Mr. Lustig said the instructors received more questions than they ever have in the past. He speculated that the anonymity might have helped. Those few who did not get their questions answered were later contacted by phone or e-mail.

Another problem cropped up when one location lost the transmission. Those agents will be able to review tapes of the presentation for the education credit, Ms. Macheda said.

Despite a few complaints about not having the human contact, overall most agents viewed the experience as a success, Ms. Macheda reported. The other complaint was that parking on a large college campus was not as convenient as a hotel, she noted. But for an agent residing in the far northern reaches of the state, having the CE program close to a nearby college more than made up for the inconvenience in parking, she observed.

It also helped that the organizers picked a session on subject matter taught by instructors familiar to the agents.

"This would probably not have worked very well if it had been the first time (meeting and discussing this subject)," Mr. Lustig observed. "It would have been more difficult if we had never done this (class) before."

The association will take what it learned from this experience and put it to use next year on another subject yet to be determined, Ms. Macheda said. With an approval rate running at 90 to 95 percent, she said there was a good chance they would continue the videoconferencing CE program in the future.

"Maybe there will be another continuing education course or a meeting through videoconferencing," Ms. Macheda noted. "There are a lot of opportunities."

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, September 23, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.