LinkTADs webinars - a modern tool to engage external experts into discussions on animal health issues

It is usually impossible to attend all workshops and seminars on the vast array of interesting topics offered these days, either because of budgetary issues or lack of time. In order to overcome this obstacle, numerous technologies have been developed and have become increasingly popular over the past decade.  Webinars (i.e. interactive online seminars) have proven tremendously useful to disseminate relevant information to any corner of the world by chosen top experts.

LinkTADs is taking advantage of this dissemination mechanism to offer a series of webinars on priority transboundary animal diseases and zoonoses, as well as on policy issues. The topics were decided through internal consultation, covering priority diseases identified by the project.

So far, we have organized webinars on disease outbreak investigation (FMD-focused), on surveillance of antimicrobial resistance, and on prevention and control tools against rabies in Asia. Additional information on these webinars can be found here.

The webinars allow a high degree of flexibility in terms of duration, format or number of speakers. We have mostly collaborated with external partners and projects to ensure that we have access to the best pool of experts in each field. They usually range from 1 to 2 hours and included one to 5 speakers.

We felt that more popular webinars were those combining the perspectives from different speakers/organizations. They gathered more participants, and also encouraged more questions and comments from the audience. The best way to allow partners to interact is through them posting written comments and questions rather than using the microphones, which made things messy.

If you have any suggestion, either requesting a webinar on a specific topic, or offering to participate in one, please feel free to contact us!