Veterinary Professionals Are Jaded By Tired Webinar Formats And Seek Higher Standards
12 months ago 
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It’s time for change on veterinary webinars claims Toby Trimble of veterinary-led communications company, Trimble Productions which has recently rebranded as the Trimble Group. The company has observed a shift change in thinking about webinars in the wake of the COVID pandemic. While a plethora of (often free) CPD was made available during lockdown and offered welcome support, the profession is now becoming increasingly selective about the digital CPD they commit to watch. With so much choice available, webinars need to stand out from the crowd. Embracing high production values, improved storytelling, and the latest communication techniques, ensures a more cinematographic experience can be delivered and it’s becoming the norm against which other sessions are measured.
Toby Trimble says starting up his production company during lockdown was an enlightening experience, “Suddenly everyone wanted to support vet teams by providing webinars and at that time it wasn’t unusual to have registrations in the thousands and watches in the high hundreds or more. But now the world has gone back to a new normal and while there are still many webinars and other forms of digital CPD available, the pressures of practice mean that time is limited, and current formats just don’t fit our needs. The appetite to learn remains but dissatisfaction and lack of engagement with current webinar formats is a story we are hearing from all over the profession – from those who consume CPD, to those who want to offer it.”
As Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham and European Specialist in Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia, Toby has always had a passion for high quality communication, “It’s all too easy to lose the attention of your audience and the signs are easy to see – lack of engagement and early drop offs on a webinar, or in face to face presentations even people nodding off! As a profession we can simply do better in getting across important concepts and embedding learning.”
Toby has recently rebranded his company as the Trimble Group to better reflect the company’s aspirations, moving beyond a focus on creating high quality productions to include providing expertise at every stage of the process, whether that is coaching speakers to develop professional presentation skills, scriptwriting, illustrations, animations and more.
He explains, “Until now, the assumption has been that CPD is all about the topic and how attractive that is to audiences, and there has been a reliance on people having a tolerance for poor quality presentation in order to access the speaker’s knowledge. However, we all need to shift our thinking on this. Our competition now comes from the field of entertainment. Disney, Netflix, and Pixar all offer significant distractions and occupy our time and it’s the standard that industry content will be increasingly judged against. It’s only respectful to value how vet professionals use their time and to deliver the kind of rewarding experience they deserve. We even include new elements like podcasts, quizzes and interviews to complement live or recorded webinars filmed in our studio. The feedback we receive on our courses that aspire to these higher standards and work that bit harder to meet the profession’s new expectations, is excellent and people come back again coming back again and again, allowing us to develop the format and keep innovating. When people working in practices are striving so hard to do their best, it’s important that we do too.”
More information on the Trimble Group is available at https://www.trimblegroup.io/
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