Once you've decided that a webinar is the right tool for you, you'll need to assemble a team of staff members to help you run it. In general, there are four main players in a webinar: the organizer/facilitator, the presenter or presenters, and assistants. You might fill all three of these roles yourself, you might assign them to three different people, or you might need more than three. Bear in mind, though, that while some presenters can handle all of these roles on their own, we only recommend the going-solo approach for an experienced trainer addressing a small audience. In most cases, you should at the very least divide up the organizer and presenter roles, and for large, complex webinars you'll often need one or more assistants.

Organizer/facilitator. The organizer is the person responsible for developing the webinar topic, locating a speaker, marketing the event, setting up the registration, and communicating with participants. The organizer usually participates in the webinar itself somehow: introducing speakers, interviewing the subject matter experts, moderating audience questions, and encouraging audience participation. The organizer also monitors the overall situation and helps to troubleshoot logistical and technical problems. In other words, the organizer does most of the hard work, and most of the steps outlined in this article.
Presenter(s) (also known as subject matter experts). Ideally, presenters should concentrate their efforts on preparing their demonstration and their PowerPoint slides. During the webinar, their main focus should be the presentation itself, as well as fielding questions from the audience. Worrying about the webinar software, event registration, troubleshooting, and other logistical details detracts from the presenters' ability to give an engaging presentation. In certain formats (for example, a panel discussion), you might have more than one presenter.
Assistants. Experienced organizers often produce webinars without any assistance, but there are at least three scenarios where you should consider asking for help: When you or your audience is unfamiliar with webinars and webinar tools; when you plan to play a large role in the conversation (either as an interviewer or participant); and when you expect a large audience. Assistants can help by answering questions that the organizer and the presenter don't have time for. Often, assistants focus entirely on answering technical and logistical questions ("I can't hear the audio," for example). In this case, you can recruit and train the assistant yourself, and anyone moderately tech-savvy will do a good job. However, for webinars where you expect a large audience and where you anticipate more audience questions than the presenter alone can answer in the time allotted, you may need an assistant who understands the subject at hand to help with answering chat questions. (An alternate approach would be to refer all unanswered questions to an online forum where the presenter can respond at a more leisurely pace.)