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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Events & Experiential Marketing
All projects·From: Virtual and Hybrid Events: What Actually Works Now
MiniTeardown· 25 minutes

Attention Cliff: Diagnosing a Failing Virtual Session Agenda

Zendesk

Objective: Given a real-shaped virtual session agenda, find the design defects that cause the 25-30 minute disengagement cliff the lesson names, and separate them from plausible-but-fine agenda choices.

You're a virtual events coordinator at Zendesk, reviewing a draft agenda for an upcoming customer webinar before it goes live to registrants.

Read the draft session agenda, flag every defect against the lesson's attention-decay framework, and separate real defects from acceptable choices.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets
FreeList each agenda segment and mark defects against the framework

Free and sufficient for a short teardown checklist

The process

Specimens to review

Identify every defect in this agenda that the lesson's data predicts will cause drop-off, and note which elements are actually fine.

Sample output
DRAFT AGENDA: 'Customer Success Deep Dive' (60 minutes)

0:00-0:05  Welcome and sponsor thank-yous
0:05-0:50  Panel discussion: three customer success leaders discuss retention strategy (no audience prompts scheduled)
0:50-0:55  Q&A (moderator reads 2 pre-submitted questions)
0:55-1:00  Closing and registration link for next event

Registration confirmation email says: 'Save your seat, 500+ signed up already!'

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

Final deliverable

A marked-up agenda with each defect labeled by severity and lesson reference, plus a corrected version with interaction points inserted before minute 20.

See a reference example
Sample output
Nubank Webinar Teardown (excerpt)

DEFECT (critical): 40-minute unbroken product demo, no poll or chat prompt scheduled
  Fix: insert a 2-question poll at minute 15 and a live chat prompt at minute 30
DEFECT (moderate): registration email says '800 registered' with no attendance framing
  Fix: track and report watch-time completion rate instead

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Correctly flags the 45-minute unbroken panel as the critical defect
  • Correctly identifies the sign-up vs. attendance conflation as a defect
  • Does not flag genuinely acceptable elements (sponsor thank-yous, session length, closing CTA) as defects