COVID-19 AND SOMETHING ABOUT INFORMATIVE WEBINARS

Knowledge is powerful and intrinsically democratic. It serves both the possessor and the persons whom desire it and this democratic attribute of knowledge makes it appealing. Whatever is appealing will always be desired, admired and sought after. It is impossible to live in a world without satisfying the curiosity to know and to learn or develop what is already learned. This is why well-read individuals, experienced veterans of their crafts and highly cerebral individuals all of whom have knowledge to share or insights to provoke out of us, will always inspire admiration and follower-ship – they are metaphors for mental sophistication. The need for these people is unending as so is the desire to share and monetize knowledge. Given the slightest opportunity, different platforms will be utilized to realize this human need – workshops, webinars, seminars and what not?

But the world is faced with an insidious disease that has developed into a pandemic. To fight the spread of this virus, people have been constrained in many cities of the world, to remain at homes, work has tempered down for many, and it would appear that this may be the right time to develop as many skills as possible or gain as much knowledge as practicable. Also, many institutions of the world have contributed their bits to ensure that the devil may not fester in idle minds: Harvard University has reportedly made about sixty (60) online courses free for people to benefit from globally, Udemy has cut off a significant 95% off its course prices so that many persons could acquire knowledge almost for free. As people cannot hold seminars or have physical meetings, webinars have become the mainstay for sharing knowledge with people. However, apart from the alarming increase in the number of informative webinars, the quality of webinars has partly sparkled off the article, the other part being the alarming monetization of knowledge and information amidst the pandemic. This work therefore aims to shortly offer a clamour for the need to re-evaluate webinar contents and put a human face to the monetization of knowledge in these critical times.

Value

It is impossible for humans to not get tired by anything incessant. To maintain value, quality and time are critical factors. Recently, the media has been abuzz with several webinars and outlets of intellectual engagements – from the genuinely helpful to the spectacularly sordid – and whilst it may seem that each of these webinars are targeted at specific people, the overall effect can be overwhelming for people especially as they all fly in the face of both who need them, specifically, or those who need some others. Many times, people are interested in several webinars as they come but the frequency of these webinars can initiate a human conspiracy for mental rebellion; consequently, people are burnt out from saturation and ultimately unproductive.

Also, the realization of its pervasiveness may undermine the value. The justification may be that people have more time to organize these webinars given that everyone is at home and, of course, it is good business to monetize our values provided there is a ready market. But the problem is much more systemic than such a justification can solve; the world is united by the media and the respective inclinations of facilitators to push their various agenda eventually aggregates to overwhelm the participators and undermine the value. Rom the perspective of a facilitator, it is simple; people who think I have something to offer will indulge me but from the participator’s perspective, the question is simply “how many more webinars can I attend and pay for?” Indeed, the only way to maintain value of premium webinars, in spite of pervasiveness, is to ensure that qualitative contents are canvassed for engagements – qualitative in the sense that a webinar is not constituted by a topic that can be easily answered by a simple google search; qualitative in the sense that the insights to be shared come from a place of superior learning or hands-on experiences that can hardly be approximated. This experience gap usually would excuse top practitioners and leading individuals who have seized this opportunity to hold webinars especially coupled with the fact that if there were no lockdown, it is unlikely that these big guns can make out time to offer insights from their marvelous wits. I know a couple of them and I have supported same as good. Sadly, however, there seem to be a huge number of webinars on the media which, if well-considered, could be summarized in WhatsApp statuses or twitter threads without contributing to the already tensed academic climate. It becomes worse when such webinars are ridiculously monetized.

Incessant Monetization of Webinars during the Pandemic

It is audacious to ask people not to monetize their values. I would not accept such an adjuration. This work is to partly implore intellectuals and facilitators of webinars to moderately monetize webinars, if necessary, in view of the fact that the pandemic has generally levelled financial hits to many persons. People who have been home for weeks may need all the money they can conserve, and many interested persons could simply not afford them. Understandably, matching the desire of reputable individuals to monetize knowledge with the lopsided ability of people to key into such opportunities can be a daunting task. There is no proof that people are complaining, and the monetization of this webinars is not necessarily to make money but to instill some discipline in the participation process. Besides, if it works for anyone, why should such a person bother with how it pans out for others?

 However, as earlier noted, the problem is systemic. It takes one person to exorbitantly monetize a knowledge-sharing process for others to follow. Other individuals who would have otherwise been more generous in their offer of knowledge, suddenly feel stupid. It would then appear as though they are pricing themselves less and this is made worse by the alarming number of people who now monetize webinars – from the qualified practitioners to undergraduates – to the extent that one can no longer tell the place of mentorship as it has become a monetized dog-eat-dog situation. When it becomes too pervasive (as it has veered towards already), the value diminishes. Also, the final burden bearers or participators can only pay for so much. Nigeria is not a country with predominantly rich people. Eventually, people value the webinars less or simply ignore them since they cannot begin to pay for every knowledge proposed; certainly not when a large chunk of these webinars, as it now seems, have been summarized on blogs and Wikipedia. Doubtless, some webinars could not possibly be done if people were not asked to pay for them considering the caliber of the speakers and the rarity of insights to be shared. However, quite a handful of these webinars could be less monetized or non-monetized.

Conclusion

Webinars are good and should be encouraged to the hilt. Although, it may be tempting to believe that a major flaw of African technocratic elites is the focus on personal branding, CVs and careers than in improving societal functionality and growth. If this is true, we may all be guilty, and justifiably so, as the African technocrat is only genuinely noticed when there is undeniably evident branding to show for. So, many webinars are about the facilitators and not the knowledge to be shared. Many webinars serve the facilitators more than they serve the participants because, for one, it is incredibly difficult to effectively lecture through some of these online platforms such as WhatsApp and secondly, there will always be more demand than supply of these insights. It is to bridge this gap that many institutions of the world have offered free online courses and reduced fees for online courses to incentivize utility as we collectively battle to subdue the begrudging pandemic.

Consequently, the purpose of this work is to hope that we do not unnecessarily take advantage of this lopsidedness in the face of a pandemic where people can scarcely make money. It is hoped that in monetizing our brands and crusading our values, we are mindful of the quality of contents we populate the media with. We should also realize that if we have the slightest concern for the productivity of people, perhaps we may consider how asymmetrical productivity is to a tensed environment, particularly when heavy financial burdens behoove on people. Finally, we should organise webinars and inform people by all means, monetize it when we have to, but at the same time, we should invest heavily in the quality of contents we sell and try not to silence the reproofs of conscience in the face of this pandemic.