For the person holding the hour
Hosting is a short sequence repeated for every session: open, say what the hour is for, hand to the speaker, keep time, close with one next step. Here is that order and what each move has to do.
A host is not the person who talks most. In a webinar the host is the person who protects the hour: who opens on time, says what the session is for before anyone has decided to leave, keeps the speaker moving, and finishes with the room knowing what to do next. That is a small job with a fixed order, and once you have run it twice you stop thinking about it.
The reason the order matters is that attention in a live session is spent early. People arrive with a private question — is this worth my evening — and that question is answered or ignored in the first five minutes, not in the last twenty. Everything below is arranged around spending the opening well.
Written in the voice of an ordinary session; substitute your own subject and time.
Good evening. We start now rather than waiting, because everyone here has already given up something to be on time. This runs about fifty minutes and ends at eight forty, whatever else happens.
By the end you will have seen the whole method start to finish, and you will have one page you can work from tomorrow. Nothing here needs notes taken at speed; everything is sent afterwards.
Anna has run this process for eleven years and rebuilt it twice after it stopped working. I will hand over and bring the thread back at the end with the questions.
That is the hour. Slides and the recording go out to everyone who registered in the next day, and if you want the follow-on session, reply to that email rather than hunting for a link.
Six moves. Each one has a job, and the job is not to impress anyone.
Start when you said you would start, even if the room looks half full. People who arrive late will catch up; people who were prompt will notice if you reward lateness with a delay.
Length, end time, and what the room will be able to do afterwards. Two sentences. This is where a decision to stay or drop off gets made.
Whether questions are held to the end, where people type them in your meeting platform, and what happens to anyone who has to leave early. Then let it go.
Introduce the speaker in thirty seconds with one line of standing and one line about what they will cover, then stop talking. A long introduction costs the session more than the speaker thinks it gives.
Have your own running order in front of you and check it twice. When you are five minutes over a chapter, cut something on purpose rather than letting the last section get squeezed.
One thing, stated plainly, and a note of what arrives afterwards. A session that ends with four requests ends with none of them happening.
The three things that actually interrupt a session, and what a host does about each.
Two things, both quick, both forgotten if you leave them until tomorrow. First, mark the list: who registered and who actually turned up is something you know while the room is still in your memory, and the dashboard has a status column for it. Second, send the follow-up to the registered group with the links you host yourself — replay, slides, a resource, a feedback form.
That second task is where the next session is quietly built: a promise kept in the follow-up counts for more than anything said during the hour.
How it works
Sign up or message Jitabi and describe the session: subject, date, length. The invitation page is what makes the hour look worth registering for.
Each chapter holds its own duration and takeaway, which doubles as your running order once you are live.
Any platform. Each registrant receives their own access link by email, so the room address is not sitting on the public page.
Leave reminders on so the 24-hour, one-hour and 15-minute emails do the nudging, and mark attendance on the list afterwards.
Questions
One person can do both, and many sessions are run exactly that way. The running order still holds; the framing and the handover simply become one sentence about what is coming next instead of a note about somebody else.
Roughly ten minutes in total across the whole hour: two to open and frame, one to introduce, two to bring the threads together, two to close. Anything longer and the room starts wondering whether the subject will arrive.
In the platform you are both presenting on, in its own chat, or spoken out loud when the speaker is visible. Afterwards, replies can also reach the email address you list on the page. We handle registration, reminders and the list, not the question queue.
People leaving early is normal in a live session and is not something the page can prevent. Say what is coming next so listeners can choose to stay, promise the material afterwards, and send it.
Get Started
Open on time, say what the evening is for, hand over cleanly, keep to the length you promised, close with one next step. Everything else is detail.
