Posted by Back in 2008, Oprah Winfrey hosted a series of webinars with Eckart Tolle to discuss his book A New Earth.
There were 10 online sessions. Each recording was streamed live on the Internet and viewers could skype in with their questions which were answered in real time or they could leave questions on the online forum on her website. The webinars were put up on oprah.com so that people coming late to class could catch up in various formats: video, audio, and transcript. Users can still access these various formats , along with a workbook, book club discussion, and other meditation recordings at oprah.com’s bookclub.
Oprah ended The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011, and inspired by her New Earth webinars and using lessons, revelations and aha moments from the show’s history, began Lifeclass in the same year. Oprah had been inspiring viewers to be their best selves from her TV show, and technology had caught up with her.
Season One Lifeclass aired weekdays on her wonderfully named TV network: OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) with nightly webcasts on oprah.com to complement each on-air lesson. She was joined by spiritual teachers and self-help experts. Viewers would skype in. Previous guests of The Oprah Winfrey Show sometimes appeared to share their life learning. And Oprah would read comments and questions off her facebook wall or oprah.com online. It was a completely new way of broadcasting and interacting, especially since the emphasis was on the self-actualisation of viewers.
Lifeclass went on tour for Season Two so that most of the webinars were filmed in venues with enormous studio audiences. Season Three took place in Chicago and Texas. And Season Four Lifeclass debuted The Social Lab website online community. It is an example of directed learning with questions and journals for viewers who can then connect to the broadcast as usual live via skype, facebook, and twitter with the discoveries they have made about themselves already shaped ready for them to communicate. And if something they have written resonates with a topic on Lifeclass, then a producer may get in touch with them to be on a class, or to use the words they have written.
OWN’s other uplifting show, and the heart of OWN, is called Super Soul Sunday. Viewers can tweet Oprah when it airs and it is filmed for TV and is available on the Internet on-demand for a period of time. This is a direct TV extension of her radio talk show on Oprah & Friends, Radio Sirius XM called Soul Series, where she talks to spiritual writers and teachers to discuss the big questions in life: Why are we here? What is it all about? The archives are amazing and available to download to listen as a podcast.
Sometimes one of the teachers, as in the case of Dr Maya Angelou, is profiled at the same time in her O Magazine which you can read online, on your ipad subscription, or in print. And throughout the program whether on OWN TV, or on the Internet, or on-demand on the web, Oprah invites viewers to tweet or facebook her and to watch the movie shorts provided by Soul Pancake which started life as a website for users to create and think on life’s big questions.
If you follow Lifeclass, or belong to Oprah’s online community, OWN will send you email to invite you to the next class, or Meditation Challenge, or read a blog about what’s in it for you, or preview content which will be broadcast on OWN. Follow her on twitter, and you get lots of interesting links there. And best of all, when a program airs, Oprah will be tweeting along, giving her opinion, and responding to the opinions of others.
OWN is demonstrating how to collect and use the various strands social media at its best. It is a masterclass in participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness whilst giving people something good of which to be a part.
Online doesn’t get better than this.
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