Acknowledgments

This is the first book for Tom and me, and it couldn’t have been possible without the help and support of many people, including all the online participants who have brainstormed their ideas with us over the years. Thank you for the inspiration to bring them together in this book.

When Hunter Gilliam said to me, “You do it, you’re the actor. Just make it sound great, like you’re on the radio!” he inspired me to make my first virtual training in 1999 engaging, rather than worrying so much about the technology. Thank you, Hunter.

Without Cindy Huggett’s support, guidance, and cheerleading, this book would still be inside my head, rather than in print. Many thanks, Cindy!

Thank you to Jennifer Hofmann for giving me the freedom to creatively teach online and present ideas at conferences, while gaining years of experience. It’s more than I ever dreamed of and exactly what I was hoping for at the same time!

Thank you to Nanette Miner for inspiring me to be a better trainer. Your masterful instructional design showed me how much more I could get out of training if I followed my trainer manual.

Thank you to Rich and Elaine Karakis of ExecuTrain for requiring me to learn software accurately and quickly. These are skills I still use every day.

Thanks to countless others from the industry whom I have learned from and worked with over the years: Jane Bozarth, Elizabeth Rigney, Leslie Rawlins, Jacqueline Ferras, Roger Courville, as well as the many online participants who let me test these activities on them!

Justin Brusino’s patience will go down in history, because he and I began this book conversation in early 2011. Thanks to him, Jack Harlow, and the team at ATD involved in the production of this book.

While Tom and I wrote this book on weekends and evenings, we’d like to thank all of our Dale Carnegie colleagues for their support and encouragement throughout the process. Most of all, I’d like to thank Dan Heffernan, vice president and general manager of Dale Carnegie Digital, for building such a great team, giving me the opportunity to share what I know about Live Online delivery and design and to continue to grow in this exciting field.

In addition to colleagues, we’d also like to thank our family—George and Charlotte Sanford, Paul and Cathy Stone, and Wyatt LaBorie—for their patience, as we spent long hours on this book project. We know it meant less time together than we would have liked.

And finally, I’d like to thank Tom Stone for joining me on this journey as book co-author. Tom provided some of the writing, lots of editing and structure, and all the encouragement a gal could ask for.