Webinar Software Users Blog | Webinar Reviews

New Adobe Connect Webinar Features Coming Soon

2012-01-14T04:19:00.000-08:00

Adobe announced a limited public beta program for the upcoming release of Adobe Connect for Webinars. Codenamed Maple, this release is designed to be targeted at the webinar lifecycle, including registration and some new interactivity features. The beta also includes their new mobile version of the software for Android devices.

Read more about the Beta program

ReadyTalk Previews Video Clips In Webinars

2012-01-02T05:38:00.000-08:00

ReadyTalk just announced beta availability of a new feature letting webinar hosts share prerecorded video clips during meetings. Video clips must be uploaded to the ReadyTalk server where they undergo a conversion process. The Quick Start Guide says that conversion can take up to two hours, and ReadyTalk recommends doing the conversion at least a day in advance and testing the converted output before the live session.
Once uploaded, videos can be played as part of a webinar session. Attendees hear any audio in the clip and the playback audio/video is included in the session archive recording.
Details and links to documentation are available in the announcement on the ReadyTalk blog.

15 Ways to Bring Social Media to Events

2011-11-29T04:39:00.000-08:00

Do you host online events or Webinars? Social media enables event attendees to connect in powerful ways. Social media can help promote events and empower attendees to share. This article from the Social Media Examiner includes 15 ways you can infuse social media into your events.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/15-ways-to-bring-social-media-to-events/

Annoying PowerPoint Survey Results

2011-10-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

Dave Paradi’s annual PowerPoint annoyances survey results are in. The results this year are not much different than in past years. Dave’s top-five audience annoyances once again generally fall under the banner of presenters effectively writing white papers on PowerPoint slides. Presenters write out their speech in full sentences on the slides and are left with nothing to do but read those sentences out loud to their audience. Sometimes they cram in data-filled charts, tables, or graphs to support their statements with a mass of evidence.

Creating and delivering presentations in this way makes a tremendous amount of practical sense. It’s quick… You don’t have to waste time thinking about design issues or finding graphics. It complies with corporate guidelines… You just fill in the bullet points on your company’s “Title and Content” slide layout. It doesn’t require much, if any, practice… Your script is right there in front of you to be read. And it works great as a handout, allowing offline audiences to read through the information for themselves later.

If you are going ask your audience to commit their valuable time to listen to you, create a presentation. Not a white paper that happens to be written on sequential slides.

Adobe Connect Reviews: Double Winner at the Best of Elearning! Awards

2011-10-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

Last week, at the Enterprise Learning! Conference & Expo, the Best of Elearning! 2011 awards results were announced. Program recognition is significant because nominations and winners are determined by executives and business managers engaged in the areas of enterprise learning and workforce technology.

Adobe Connect was recognized in two categories:

Best Web Seminar Solution – Winner

“Nice interface, great performance that allows in-depth learner interactions.”

Best Virtual Classroom – Winner

Nominations and voting were conducted over a three month balloting period. This years awards featured 1,750 nominations, covering 56 products across 20 categories.

To read more about the awards and results, please see the press release from the Elearning! Media Group here.

Conference Call Greetings Get Personal

2011-09-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

Communique Conferencing, Inc. just made its services a 'little more personal' by taking another innovative step forward and introducing a new feature that that allows users to digitally record a personalized greeting to welcome participants joining their conference calls.

In a press release, Adelphi Kennedy, Director of Corporate Communications, said, "We’ve been offering company level branding for audio conference calls for several years now. We’re excited to add personalized greetings as another way for our clients to further customize audio conference calls and add an element of professionalism.”

Now participants will be greeted with a recorded message that informs them of the conference details and other announcements relevant to conferencing. No sophisticated equipment is required for recording, the standard telephone handset is sufficient.

One thing that is very important about the new feature is its flexibility. Greetings can be changed as often as required and there is no stipulation regarding the length of the personalized greeting.

The new features can be added for $25/month.

Communique Conferencing provides industry leading audio and web conferencing, Webinar hosting as well as virtual event solutions such as Virtual Trade Shows.

Cisco Targets Skype With Low-Priced WebEx Package

2011-09-09T04:26:00.000-07:00

Cisco’s new WebEx 8 solution offerings online meetings for up to eight people for $19 a month, and enables Cisco to compete more strongly with Skype for smaller companies and individuals.

Cisco officials on Aug. 17 announced a new package that offers meetings for up to eight people for $19 a month. Until now, the standard package offered up to 25 people in a meeting for $59 a month

The new WebEx 8 offering includes all the features found in other WebEx offerings, including desktop sharing, high-quality video, recording capabilities, integrated Outlook scheduling and compatibility with WebEx Mobile, enabling both hosts and attendees to use the free mobile apps to participate in a meeting.

For many businesses and individuals—including freelancers and mobile workers—the primary alternative to WebEx was Skype. Skype’s free service was primarily directed at consumers, though in recent years the company had been making moves to add more commercial features. Still, Skype doesn’t offer the scope of corporate capabilities that WebEx does.

Skype currently is in the process of being bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. That deal has yet to close.

Communique Conferencing Announces Audio Conferencing Integration With Microsoft® Lync Online

2011-08-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

Communiqué Conferencing, Inc., the world leader in audio, web and video conferencing services, today announced the availability of integrated audio conferencing with Microsoft Lync Online, a part of Microsoft Office 365. By combining Communique’s award-winning audio conferencing services with Lync Online, customers around the world will be able to automatically launch a group voice conference call from any chat, web or video conference within the Lync Online interface.

The integrated audio conference call solution for Microsoft Lync Online delivers:

Call scheduling via Microsoft Outlook
The ability for meeting participants to join for external locations and multiple devices
Dial in/out
Mute/unmute
Lock/unlock
VoIP/PSTN integration, including combined recording of web and audio content
*0 in-call operator support

* All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

For more information, please visit http://www.communiqueconferencing.com/lync.

Citrix has announced this week that it has introduced Citrix® GoToMeeting® with HDFaces

2011-08-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

The service will allow up to 6 users to experience high definition group video conferencing over the internet simply via a webcam.

Brett Caine, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Citrix Online Services Division says “GoToMeeting with HDFaces changes the definition of face-to-face meetings from ‘a place you go’ to ‘a thing you do […] That is the essence of our integrated collaboration vision and the promise of our unique HD experience. Once again, we are changing the rules in the market, and customers everywhere will win as a result.”

Citrix list a number of new features that have been introduced to the product, including:

Real-time collaboration with web, video and audio conferencing is enabled in just two simple clicks.
All existing GoToMeeting customers and trial users can now use HDFaces at no additional cost. Existing customers can simply login to their accounts and click a link to upgrade to HDFaces.
Uers just need a PC or Mac computer, webcam, Internet access and GoToMeeting. It is designed for the way everyday businesses operate – enabling impromptu real-time collaboration with its “Meet Now” feature from anywhere, without the need of expensive and complex room-based solutions.
Multistream HD™ technology: The highest resolution video conferencing quality available on the market among web conferencing providers: up to six streams at a resolution of 640p x 480p each, for a total maximum resolution of 1920p x 960p.
The video conferencing streams are integrated into the content screen so attendees can collaborate on shared content and see each other at the same time without the need to switch between the two. The high-definition video experience combined with user adjustable zooming and resizing makes the experience easy to use and very compelling for quick conversations and all day meetings. Now as individuals present ideas or solicit feedback from their team they can interact as if they were actually sitting across the table.
Video optimization: Adjusts automatically to fit the hardware and network each participant is using when video, audio or screen sharing are in use.
Resizable viewer and layouts: Easily adapts to numerous monitor and projection configurations.

HDFaces is included at no additional charge in all GoToMeeting subscriptions.

Live Meeting vs. Lync Online Comparison

2011-07-13T07:16:00.000-07:00

Microsoft launched Office 365 last month which brings together cloud versions (which means hosted in Microsoft data centers and accessed through a browser) of it's communications and collaboration products into one offering. Office 365 includes:

Microsoft Office Hosted Online: Excel, Word, and Power Point delivered via the Web and accessed from a PC, Phone and Browser.

Exchange Email Online: Exchanged e-mail server hosted by Microsoft with always-up-to-date protection from viruses and spam.

SharePoint Online: Microsoft's intranet tool now hosted online for creating sites to connect colleagues, partners and customers.

Lync Online (formerly Microsoft Office Communicator): Cloud-based instant messaging, presence, and online meeting experiences with PC-audio, video conferencing and desktop sharing.

A lot of Microsoft Live Meeting customers have been asking what the difference is between Lync Online vs. Live Meeting. We had a team of six business users test both products for the past two months. The end conclusion is that, for Web conferencing needs (share presentations, documents, web browser or entire desktop), Lync Online is not even close to Live Meeting in terms of functionality and ease of use. The following includes a summary of our findings:

Live Meeting: Probably one of the best web conferencing services on the market. Live Meeting is ideal for both smaller collaborative meetings as well as hosting larger Webinars. Scheduling meetings is easy through the live meeting website or integration with Outlook and Lotus Notes. For Webinars Live Meeting includes handy features such as attendee registration, reminder emails, polling, recording, Q&A online and capacity for up to 1,250 attendees per meeting.
Lync Online: Lync is the new name for Microsoft Office Communicator. Lync Online is more geared towards instant messenger and presence (knowing who is at their desk) than web conferencing. Lync installs a rather large instant messenger (IM) client (MACs not supported). This seems to be ideal for a business that wants to connect to employees, clients and partners via instant messenger and webcams. Within the IM client you can do very basic web conferencing such as sharing a power point presentation or desktop. Lync does not include any features required for conducting webinars such as attendee registration. Also Lync Online is limited to 250 attendees per meeting. One final, and very important, note to make is that Lync online does not include any live phone support. Everyone that tested Lync required assistance to set up and use. The only support available is posting your problem or "how to" question to an Office 365 community blog for someone to post a response. This was extremely frustrating as a Lync user. It took three weeks of back and fourth posts to get my Lync working. Further, what about external attendees that you invite to join a Lync Online meeting? There is no one for them to call if they have problems or questions joining.

Features	Live Meeting	Lync Online	Notes
Meeting Capacity (Max attendees per meeting)	1,250	250
Features Before Your Meeting
Microsoft® Outlook & Lotus Notes Integration	•		Only Outlook integration is available with Lync.
Schedule Meetings via the Web	•		The only way to schedule a meeting via Lync is Outlook
Online Attendee Registration	•
Phone-based Training and Meeting Assistance	•		Live Meeting has 24/7 live suport for presenters and attendees joining. Lync Online has no phone support.
Features During Your Meeting
Instant messaging (IM) and presence		•
Power Point Presentation & Document Sharing	•	•
Desktop & Software Application Sharing	•	•
Web Browser Sharing	•	•
White Board Sharing	•	•
Instantly Make Any Attendee a Co-Presenter	•	•
Remote Mouse Control (Desktop Support)	•	•
Online Q&A	•
Polling and Surveys	•	•
Virtual Breakout Rooms	•
Advanced Testing	•
Handouts Distribution/File Transfer	•	•
Webcam Video Sharing	•	•
Two-Way or One-Way VoIP Audio	•	•
Audio Telephone Bridge Integration	•	•
Recording (both audio and web) to your PC	•	•	* Note: Lync online documentation states that recording is included but none of the testers could figure out how to record a meeting.
Hosted Recording Online Storage & Playback	•
Live 24x7x365 Live Technical Support	•
After Your Meeting
Attendance Reporting	•

Here is the link to the Lync Online community support site regarding the ability to record a meeting http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/164/t/3881.aspx.

In summary Microsoft Lync Online is more instant messenger and one-to-one webcam video than web conferencing.

Go Hollywood With Your Webinar - Create a Promotional Trailer

2011-06-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Lots of planning goes into a webinar. One of challenges is attracting attendees. One way to help with registration acquisition is to produce a short Webinar promotional trailer. This is a short 2 to 3 minute video presentation that basically communicates four specific messages and a "call-to-action" slide.

Just like any good meal that you prepare for others, you need the basic ingredients for viewers to consume the message and action in your webinar trailer.

- What is the webinar about?

- When is it?

- Who should attend?

- Why should I participate?

Your last slide is the "call-to-action" - the registration link or landing page. Keeps your webinar trailers fresh, concise, and ready to be placed into a variety of channels - web, email, mobile, social and print.

Citrix GotoMeeting Adds Webcam Video

2011-06-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

Today at Citrix Synergy™, the event where virtual computing takes center stage, Citrix Systems CEO Mark Templeton announced the open beta of its highly anticipated, high-definition video conferencing solution Citrix® GoToMeeting® with HDFaces™ to new and existing customers. General availability is slated for end of July.

Representing a market first by combining high-definition video, web and audio for a simply integrated and natural, real-time collaboration experience, the company believes HDFaces will fundamentally change the way people communicate in the workplace – by effectively bringing telepresence to everyone.

GoToMeeting with HDFaces provides the highest resolution video conferencing quality available on the market: up to six streams are provided at a resolution of 640p x 480p each, for a total maximum resolution of 1920p x 960p. A superior and simple user experience is delivered at any bandwidth and video optimization automatically adjusts to fit the standard hardware and network each participant is using when video, audio or screen sharing are in use. No specific or proprietary hardware configuration is needed; users just need a PC or Mac computer, webcam and HDFaces for a telepresence-quality experience.

Production availability is targeted for late July. As previously announced, there is no additional cost for webcam video. It will be a standard feature of GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar.

Banckle Online Meeting Widget for Facebook

2011-05-23T04:37:00.000-07:00

Banckle Online Meeting is a web-based solution for web conferencing, webinars and video conferencing. But now you can conduct meetings with your Facebook Friends using the meeting widget for Facebook.

Read full story..

How to Pick the Right Day for your Webinar

2011-04-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

One measure of a successful Webinar is how many people actually attended. Scheduling your event for the best day possible can positively influence the percentage of people who attend your Webinar.

Mondays are often stressful and filled with meetings, so are usually best avoided for that reason.

Fridays are usually another poor choice because people just want to get through the day at work and start their weekend.

Our experience shows that Tuesdays and Thursdays are usually the best choice for holding a Webinar, at least without specific factors or evidence to the contrary. The best time of day for a nationwide audience is 1:00 PM Eastern time. Mid day is generally free of meetings and attendees can join during lunch.

To actually find the best date to schedule your webinar, why not ask the people you invite? Consider adding a ‘best day?’ survey question to your webinar registration form.

SlideShare Goes Next Step: Zipcast, Turns the Slides into a Webcast with Video, Audio and Chat

2011-04-02T05:14:00.000-07:00

SlideShare, a presentation-sharing community, recently launched new service with Zipcast buttons on every public slideshow that turns the slides into a Webcast with video, audio and chat. Zipcast is a fast, simple, and social web conferencing service that enables users to meet on the web with just one click. It requires no downloads – just an updated browser (No Internet Explorer 6) and Flash 10 and higher.

Zipcasts work on both PC and Mac computers. The basic SlideShare account is free, and every SlideShare users will have free, unlimited access to Zipcast for conducting public and private meetings. SlideShare Pro, starting at $19/month, offers additional functionality like password-protected meetings accessible only to people invited by the host.

GotoMeeting Review: Lacking Customer Support

2011-03-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

We did a detailed product review of GotoMeeting / GotoWebinar last fall. There were a number of issues we encountered that were outlined in the review.

I attended a Webinar yesterday that used gotowebinar. I have a new lap top so I needed to download the plug-in to join and for some reason I kept getting an error. I called the customer support number for GotoMeeting and waited on hold for seven "7" minutes before my call finally went to voice mail! Let me get this straight. I need help joining a Webinar that is in progress so I wait on hold for seven minutes to only leave a voice mail message for someone to call me back? Needless to say this resulted in an incredibly poor impression on the company hosting the Webinar. It's like going to a physical seminar at a hotel conference room and the host company picked a cheap hotel that was hard to find with bad food.

I don't think that buyers place enough consideration into critical things beyond the list of features and price such as reliability of the hosting on the back end and customer support. There are just too many operating systems, browsers and security firewalls, etc. these day so attendees are going to need help from time to time. At least if they can get help right away joining the experience turns from negative to positive. If not, you lost a key relationship with a client or prospect. Good luck getting them back.

I called GottoWebinar customer support from my iPhone which has a recording feature. Click here to listen to my entire customer service call experience.

Microsoft Office 365: One Reason to Look Forward to Summer

2011-03-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

In case you have not heard Microsoft is moving “to the cloud.” Some of you may be wondering what the cloud is. Simply put, it’s the Internet. Yep, that’s all it is. Sure, you could get more technical and debate the merits of the “public cloud” versus the “private cloud”, but we’re not going to do that here.

The consumer market has embraced the cloud for email (think Yahoo and Hotmail), instant messaging (AIM/AOL, Windows Live Messenger, etc.) and social networking/sharing sites (YouTube, Facebook and Flickr). And on the business front, marketing and sales automation tools are often hosted in the cloud (Salesforce.com and Eloqua to name just a couple).

The business benefits are pretty clear when it comes to this approach: no need to buy or maintain software or hardware, no need to worry about upgrades (you’re always on the latest version!) and no need for dedicated IT staff to manage the solution—they can focus on other, more important issues. Plus, you can access information no matter where you are.

With the launch of Microsoft® Office 365, an upcoming cloud offering expected to be available this summer, the solution combines the Office applications you’re already familiar with, like Word, PowerPoint®, Excel® and more, along with Exchange® (Outlook email) Online, SharePoint® Online and Lync™ Online.

Lync, in case you didn’t know, is the next-generation of Live Meeting, combining instant messaging and PC-based conferencing into a single application.

We’re looking forward to the launch this summer, and we‘ll be sharing more information with you as that time gets closer. Be sure to stay tuned!

Survey Results From Webinar Attendees

2011-03-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

UK based WTG Webinars conducted a survey of attendees coming to a variety of web events. The company says they had over 10,000 registrations in 2010 and they received more than 1,000 responses. Their audiences are primarily from the UK and Europe, followed by North America, with representation from other geographies as well.

Read the complete article with survey results at http://www.wtgnews.com/2011/01/who-what-where-why-webinar-2/

There are a few items I found interesting:

1) 21% of the respondents said they find out about upcoming webinars on LinkedIn.

2) There is a fascinating disparity in the answers to two closely linked survey questions. One asked what drives people to register for a particular webinar. The overwhelming response is “Topic.” It has a 62% response rate, with “Speaker” coming in at 13%. But when asked “What do you use webinars for?” the respondents put “Opportunity to hear from leading industry speakers” in the lead at 39%, followed by “Educational resource” at 34%.

You can access it through this shortened link: http://bit.ly/WTGarticle

omNovia Adds Features

2011-02-26T04:58:00.000-08:00

omNovia has recently added the following features to their webinar software:

1) Polling Improvements: Increased the number of slots for response choices from 5 to 8. They also added an option to allow “Select all that apply” kinds of questions (“Select one answer” questions are the other option). New reporting lets you download polling results into spreadsheet format and programmers can integrate the results into database/CRM systems through an API.

2) Custom Music for eCurtain. omNovia has the concept of an electronic curtain you can drop over your display space. Attendees see the curtain and your desired custom message telling them to wait for the show to go on. You also have the option to play music, and now you can upload your own mp3 file to play while the curtain shows.

3) Content Divider Resizes For All. An event organizer can set up the room display to have two side-by-side content display areas. This is pretty snazzy. You could show a live or recorded video on one side and slides on the other, as an example. The presenter can choose whether to show side 1 or side 2 taking up the entire screen or to show them side by side. The new enhancement is that the presenter can move the divider line to the right or left to expand and shrink the areas given to the respective content, and the display will change accordingly for all participants. It used to be individually controlled for each participant.

4) Instant Invite For Presenters. You used to be able to invite attendees to join a meeting already in progress. Now you can invite presenters the same way and they will get a link giving them appropriate authority when they enter.

GoToMeeting Enhances Video

2011-02-17T13:10:00.000-08:00

Add another player to the increasingly crowded HD video conferencing field. Citrix is added HD video conferencing to its GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and GoToTraining web conferencing products.

The new functionality which will be included at no additional cost and will run on any hardware and software platform. It is dubbed HDFaces and enables participants to view up to six high-resolution video conferencing streams in a high-definition session for a total maximum resolution of 1920p x 960p and also allows participants to view video and the presenter’s shared desktop on the same screen.

“Citrix Online’s core strengths have always been easy-to-use and affordable products,” said Roopam Jain, principal analyst, Frost & Sullivan's North America Information & Communications Technologies Practice, in a statement. “ With the introduction of video conferencing, including high resolution, one-click video and simple controls, the company maintains its ease of deployment and use, which are increasingly important in a market moving beyond a niche status. Simplicity has been a key differentiator for Citrix and is sure to enhance its market momentum in web and video conferencing.”

“When customers say they want video capabilities combined with web conferencing, they don’t mean tiny choppy images – but that’s what they currently get with the products on the market today,” said Bernd Christiansen: CTO, in a statement. “What they actually want is to see the details in others’ facial expressions just like in a face-to-face meeting or training session. That’s why it was so important to us to incorporate high-resolution video into our collaboration products. I’m confident that we’re the first to combine web and video conferencing the right way and – most importantly – to make it delightful for customers to use.”

HDFaces is based on technology from Citrix Online Germany GmbH, formerly VidSoft GmbH, a Dresden, Germany-based video conferencing provider that was recently acquired by Citrix.

Citrix said that HDFaces will include the following key features:

•Multistream HD technology, which Citrix says is the highest resolution video conferencing quality available on the market among web conferencing providers with up to six streams at a resolution of 640p x 480p each, for a total maximum resolution of 1920p x 960p.
•A video conferencing viewer that is integrated into the content screen so attendees can collaborate on shared content and see each other at the same time without the need to switch between the two.
•One-click web, audio and video conferencing.
•Video optimization that automatically adjusts to perfectly fit the hardware and network each participant is using when video, audio or screen sharing are in use.
•A resizable viewer and layouts, which can be adapted to numerous monitor and projection configurations.

DimDim: The Risk of Using a Free Webinar Service

2011-01-13T07:34:00.000-08:00

There is a lot customer discontent about the news that Dimdim's free service will be discontinued after the closing of the sale to Salesforce.com.

DimDim simply sent a five sentence email notifying customers that the service will be deactivated on March 15th. Not very impressive in terms of customer communication. The email contained an FAQ that has 11 questions and answers to inform customers about the service's discontinuation.

Dimdim's closing is a study in the risks of using free Webinar and conference call services and a wake up call about using free tools for business use in general. They do go away. You can't make money with free by adding volume.

New Tool for Reporting Webinar Service Interruptions

2010-12-09T08:42:00.000-08:00

Link to report a Webinar problem: www.webinardowntime.com
Link to view the report results: http://www.wsuccess.com/company/downtimethanks.html?PHPSESSID

The link brings up a short form letting you report an unexpected loss of availability for a webinar, webcasting, or web conferencing service. It is completely anonymous.

Submitted data is immediately available to the public for reference and comparisons. If enough people use the form, it will give us an insight for the first time into service reliability from various hosted web conference vendors.

It seems like the Webinar technologies all look a like on paper. Since the services are all hosted in the cloud I do not think that there is a good way for buyers to "look under the hood" and compare critical factors like reliability and customer support. Here's hoping this lifts the veil on some important and hidden information and service about our industry.

Getting Your Point Accross: Webinar Presentation Skills

2010-11-30T05:06:00.000-08:00

According to The Book of Lists, the fear of public speaking is the number-one fear in the minds of the majority of people. (Yes, above the fears of death and disease.)

In high school, I had the same fear. I would rather accept a failing grade than speak in front of the class. Between high school and college, however, I learned some skills for public speaking and instructional techniques. By college, I was so comfortable in front of the class that, during my second year, one of my professors invited me back to her class of first-year students, to speak to them about public speaking.

The two most useful acronyms that I recall from that experience (and the two that I use to this day, whenever I have to speak publicly) are ICEPAC and CREST. One is to help you remember principles of instruction, and the other is to help you remember the most useful types of verbal support or training aids.

ICEPAC
ICEPAC is an acronym that represents the Principles of Instructions [CFP, 1992]. Each of these principles must be addressed in your presentation to make it successful. Here is what each letter means, as well as some tips to help address the related principle:

Interest
The members of your audience will pay closer attention to your presentation if they are interested in it, so you must find a way to generate interest. Some methods to generate interest include:

· Making them understand the personal value of the information in the presentation. How will it benefit them in their day-to-day lives? How, where, and when will they use the information?

· Making them understand the impact of not understanding the information in the presentation. As an example, if you are presenting to an audience on the importance of reliable software, explain that unreliable software can cause death (as in the Therac-25 Incidents) [Virginia Tech, Jan 2007]. The threat of death, injury, or other negative consequences often generates interest as a natural result of wanting to avoid it.

· Finding a new and innovative way to present your material. Avoid "death by PowerPoint."

Comprehension
You must ensure that your audience is ready to receive your presentation. Before starting into the meat of your presentation, try to ask questions of your audience members, to gauge their level of knowledge and expertise as it applies to the subject matter at-hand. If your audience does not have the requisite background knowledge to comprehend your presentation, you have only two choices:

· Adjust your own presentation to correspond to their level of knowledge.

· Raise their level of knowledge to a level that is required of your presentation.

Emphasis
Use presentation aids to emphasize important points. This will help the audience get the critical points of your presentation. Some suggested methods of emphasizing a particular point include:

· Using a visual-presentation aid such as Microsoft Office PowerPoint.

· Doing something out of the ordinary, or involving your audience. For example, I once had to teach a class the proper technique for teeth-brushing. To make it interesting and ensure that the students paid attention, I had a bunch of them line up shoulder-to-shoulder at the front of the class and used a (clean) automotive snow brush as a toothbrush to demonstrate (on the students' teeth), the proper technique.

· Using one of the verbal-support techniques described later.

· Repeating the point (this is a sure sign to the audience that something is important).

· Saying, "This is important."

Participation
People learn and remember by "doing." Get your audience as involved as you can in your presentation. Physical participation is best, but it is not usually appropriate for the type of presentation that an architect will likely give. As an alternative to physical participation, ask questions. Ask your audience questions about what you have said so far; ask your audience for their own views on the subject of the presentation. Do not just talk at your audience; get them thinking by getting them involved in the presentation. Use leading and thought-provoking questions to promote mental activity in the audience.

Accomplishment
In a teaching situation, it is vital that the students have a sense that they have accomplished the goals of the lesson. In a presentation situation, it might be helpful to review the agenda at the end of the presentation and help the audience review where each thing that you presented fits into the agenda. That is, they have accomplished the goal of the presentation, whatever it was.

Confirmation
Confirm that the members of your audience understand what you are saying, and do not continue your presentation until they do. Your presentation should be broken into stages (discussed later), and each stage should build upon the previous one. This means that you should not leave the current stage until its contents are well understood and the audience has the proper base of knowledge to support them as you move to the next stage.

By following these basic principles of instruction, you can ensure that your audience gets the most out of your presentation.

CREST
CREST is an acronym that represents some of the most effective verbal supports or training aids that you can use during your presentation. Try to use a variety of different elements. Each critical point you are trying to make in your presentation should be backed up by at least one verbal-support mechanism. Here is what each letter means:

Comparison
Compare the concept, item, or process you are trying to describe to something else that the audience understands and can relate to. Along with providing emphasis, this can also track back to the principle of comprehension.

Reason
Provide a valid reason that the information you are presenting is important. Along with providing emphasis, this can also track back to the principle of interest.

Example
Provide examples to illustrate your point. In this article, I have used this method in describing how to teach people to brush teeth.

Statistics
Provide simple statistics to support your position. Do not rely too heavily on statistics; often, competing statistics are available, and the audience might find too many charts and numbers boring. Remember "Fear of public speaking is the number-one fear amongst the majority of people"? This is a simple statistic that helps emphasize the importance of the contents of this article.

Testimony
Bring in an expert from outside the group to provide testimony that what you are saying is true, and present that expert's perspective on it. You could also quote experts to support the information you are presenting.

Planning a Webinar - Best Practices

2010-08-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Follow these simple steps to conducting an effective Web seminar. The key to a successful seminar is selecting a valuable topic and content for the audience and having a good speaker.

Determine the goals of your event – educate clients and prospects, generate sales leads, product launch.
Determine compelling topic that will make the right people want to attend
Choose your technology – You’ll want a web conferencing solution that works with a variety of operating systems, is reliable, can scale to a large number of attendees, and has the features you need including polling, chat, Q&A, and recording. There are two options for delivering the audio portion of your seminar, which include a teleconference call or audio streaming. Audio streaming is less expensive for large audiences, however, only allows for one-way communication and not everyone has a sound card with speakers. A teleconference is more reliable and allows for two-way interaction. Beware of "free" telephone conference call offers. You get what you pay for. Find a provider that delivers the audio conference call over traditional phone lines for peace of mind reliability.
Select your speaker and meeting support team. (a) Speaker: It’s preferred to have a speaker who is recognizable to the audience, credible and has good speaking skills. (b) Moderator: A Web conference is much like a radio show to your audience. A skilled moderator improves the flow and feel of your event in several ways. A moderator will put a nervous speaker at ease with easy questions and prompts that will help them stay focused on their presentation. In addition, a good moderator can read the audience's mood by viewing the questions and comments submitted by online participants. This gives the moderator cues about speeding up the program, or taking time to answer pressing questions raised by the audience. The moderator can also monitor the questions (c) support person: Have a support person on hand to handle any technical issues experienced by participants.
Select an appropriate time for your event: For events based in the U.S., 10:00 am PST, 11:00 am MST, 12:00 pm CST, 1:00 pm EST is usually a good time. Skip Mondays and Fridays.
Establish your registration process: Streamline the registration process as much as possible – make it quick and easy. Online registration is effective and convenient. Also, make sure the technology can separately track who attended the meeting for follow up.
Invite and engage in a mix of offline and online promotions early and follow up, follow up, follow up. Send confirmation e-mails immediately after registration and at least two reminder e-mails prior to the Webinar. Reminder phone calls the day before the event is also effective.
Pre-seminar walk-through – Practice your Web seminar with your speaker(s) and content at least once prior to the actual event. Do a sound check with the phone or microphone that you plan to use.

For some reason many companies hosting Webinars do not put in the same amount of time planning and choosing the venue (technology) with a Webinars as they would an onsite event. Putting in the time to plan for the Webinar and use a technology that is reliable will result in happy attendees.

Promoting Webinars

2010-08-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

MarketingSherpa has a fantastic case study on a company’s methodology for promoting their webinars, encouraging attendance from registrants, and following up to enhance interest in future webinars. They cover using their methodology to accomplish both long and short term measurable objectives which takes planning, effort, and attention to detail. It’s more than just sending a quick email blast.

The report requires membership but a free trial is available.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31672

Webinar Reviews: Comparing GotoWebinar vs. Microsoft Live Meeting

2010-06-11T06:15:00.000-07:00

After trial runs with both GoToWebinar/GoToMeeting and Live Meeting, I choose Live Meeting hands down.

Here is my take on these two services.

GoToWebinar / GotoMeeting
What I Liked:

- The user-interface was very easy to follow and figure out.

-They offer fully integrated tools for promoting your events, tracking registration, sending automated reminders, etc., although not all of the system emails can be customized as much as I would like.

-The fixed monthly fee was very appealing, because it would allow me to budget for the expense regardless of how many webinars I did per month, or how many people attended. I see that as a big bonus for some nonprofits too.

-They have advanced tools to monitor participants during the webinar. For example, you can tell how long your webinar was the top window on someone’s computer and how often they were working on something else.

-GoToWebinar lets you poll the audience live by presenting multiple choice questions on the screen that participants can click on, giving you instant, compiled feedback about what people think about various topics. Several participants in the webinar I did said they really loved the instant polling feature.

What I Didn’t Like:

-The system crashed several times which is a MAJOR issue (and I only had 9 attendees).

- While all the data on participants is nice after the fact, for me, all of those monitors and icons were in the way during the live event. I couldn’t present the webinar and monitor all those panels at the same time, so they were distractions more than anything else.

-Other than sending in chat messages, there was no way for me to know which specific participants had questions or would like to participate in exercises with me.

-To record the webinar for later viewing, I had to record the audio on my own hard drive, and then allow GoToWebinar to integrate the files. It worked OK, but seems fraught with potential for problems. It also took several hours to convert the recording format to something useful such as .wmv. Otherwise attendees would need to download a codec to view the recording.

-The "free" toll audio conference call service HAD MAJOR PROBLEMS. The quality was poor and it dropped callers.

-My attendees called customer service to get help joining and no one answered the phone. It rang for 7 minutes and went to voice mail.

Live Meeting
What I Liked:

- The customer service is VERY responsive. We tested Live Meeting through Communique Conferencing. They were extremely helpful with setting up our webinar and also very responsive to any attendees that needed help.

-The “Raise Hand” feature allows me to see the name of the person who has a question, allowing me to ask that person to unmute their line and ask a question or participate in an exercise.

-There was web-based option that uses Java, instead of a program requiring a download (like GotoWebinar), which makes it very easy for everyone to join.

-The audio and video recordings are fully integrated. There was no need to combine separate files. Also, the format is a windows media file (.wmv) which is the most common format.

-The audio quality was exceptional and very reliable. The free computer audio (VoIP) service works very well and the telephone audio was flawless. It's not free like gotowebinar but having an attendee have such major technical problem is not worth saving a few dollars.

What I Didn’t Like:

-Live meeting offers virtually no support for promoting your webinar. Although most people probably have this covered already.

-The user interface is rather sparse. It’s easy enough now that I have figured out where everything is.

Why I Ultimately Chose Microsoft Live Meeting
I decided that Microsoft’s technology works better for my needs than GoToWebinar’s. The reliability and customer support is well worth the price. Live Meeting has also made significant inroads into the corporate and nonprofit community, which means that many of you who will be registering for my webinars will already be familiar with their system.

New Webinar Listing Website

2010-04-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

WebinarListings.com has launched as a clearinghouse site where companies can list webinars they’re hosting, so participants can seek out Web-based seminars in one location online, the startup said this week. Read more

7 Tips for Using e-mail to Promote Webinars

2010-03-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

7 tips for using e-mail to promote webinars
By Karen J. Bannan on BtoBonline.com

GoToMeeting Firewall Issues

2009-12-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

Using GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar with personal firewalls

If you have a personal firewall (ZoneAlarm®, Norton Personal Firewall™, etc.) installed, make sure that GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar is not being blocked. If so, unblock GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar and try again.

Additionally, you can enable your personal firewall so that GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar can access the Internet every time you need it to.

Enabling GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar to access the Internet

The first time you run GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar on a PC that has a firewall installed, you will set off the firewall and be prompted to allow GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar to access the Internet.

Select the check box to Remember the answer each time I use this program.

Click Yes to enable GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar to access the Internet.

Using GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar within a Business Environment

If you do not have a personal firewall but are in a "Business Environment," you may have a hardware firewall. Please provide the document found at www.citrixonline.com/iprange to your IT department so that they may allow GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar to connect.

If a connection still cannot be established, please contact Customer Care for support

Customer Care
(800) 263-6317 (US and Canada, toll free)
+1 (805) 690-5753 (direct dial)
gotomeetingcare@citrixonline.com

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/default/help/g2m/troubleshooting/connection_test_help.htm

Results of the Fourth Annoying PowerPoint Survey

2009-11-05T08:14:00.000-08:00

Power Point presentation expert David Paradi just posted the results from his fourth biennial survey of what annoys audiences about bad PowerPoint presentations. A total of 548 people responded to the survey over a six week period.

In the survey, David lists twelve annoyances and ask people to select the top three. Here are the details of the top five things that annoy audiences about bad PowerPoint presentations. The percentages refer to what proportion of the responses listed that item and the percentages don’t add up perfectly since some people selected more or less than three.

The speaker read the slides to us 69.2%
Text so small I couldn’t read it 48.2%
Full sentences instead of bullet points 48.0%
Slides hard to see because of color choice 33.0%
Overly complex diagrams or charts 27.9%

It is no surprise that reading the slides came first again by a large margin. It has topped the survey every time I have done it. Click here to view the full story.

3 Ways to Promote Your Webinar on a Budget

2009-10-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

It’s been said every possible way over the past few months—money is tight. This goes for households as well as small and even large businesses. What are you going to do to save your company money in 2009? Are you conducting lead generating webinars? (We’d really like it if you did!) But, more importantly, will your webinars be well attended? How will you get the word out about webinars and how can you be sure people will attend? Here are a few ideas on how you can promote your webinar on a budget.

1. Promote to your customers. Your customers already think you’re great. They like you and they trust you. So go ahead and tell them about your webinars. You may find new contacts within your existing base of business. Chances are, if you’re providing good information, your customers will want to tell their customers about you, and so on. So, tell them! This can be done in a variety of ways:

Newsletters – if you already do monthly or quarterly newsletters to update customers on product changes or promotions, include a small tout (with a link to register) about your webinars.
Invoices – you have to send out invoices, either electronically or via snail mail. So, include information about your next webinar within the invoice. Customers may enjoy seeing the words “free webinar” instead of just “balance due”.
Your web site – don’t forget to include information on your web site. You can also create an archive section with replays of past webinars.
Email – if you have select customers who have chosen to receive promotional information from you, send them a quick invitation.
Your sales people – make sure your sales force is promoting the webinar series when they go on visits to current customers or prospects. Giving your sales team an invitation template to use at will is a great tool.

2. Take advantage of social media. There are experts out there, like David Meerman Scott, Mari Smith and Jeremiah Owyang who can tell you a lot more. But here are just a few starter ideas that we’ve explored.

Facebook – if you have a company page on Facebook, post a little tidbit (again, with a link to register) on your page. If you have an especially poignant webinar coming up, send a message to your fans letting them know about it.
Twitter – if your Twitter following is a market that would be interested in your webinar topic, send out a link or ask a fellow Twitter user to do so for you.
LinkedIn – every LinkedIn profile has the option to post a URL. It can be your company website or blog, etc. Choose your links wisely.
Company blog – if your company is currently publishing a blog, create a post with a synopsis of the webinar.
EventSpan – this is a web site that calls itself “the virtual event network”. You can publish a listing for your event and promote it here.

3. Invite a guest speaker. If you are having a guest speaker (someone outside of your employee base), ask for help in promoting the event. Here are a few ideas on how partners can help and make it a win-win for everyone:

Partner promotions – if your guest speaker is an author with a new book, ask them to give one away during the web presentation. Or, if they are offering a training program, perhaps all attendees can receive a 15% discount.
Guest speaker’s publications and business outlets – your guest speaker, if they choose, can promote their speaking engagement just like you promoted the webinar. They can do this through newsletters, email invitations, their social media outlets, etc.

There are always news ideas formulating out in the great big blogosphere. So please feel free to add what you are doing to promote your virtual events in 2009!

WebinarHero Service for Find And Promoting Webinars

2009-09-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

WebinarHero offers businesses the opportunity to not only list their webinars in a searchable directory, but to help promote them for extra visibility online.

2009-07-31T11:49:00.000-07:00

Taking videoconferencing beyond boardrooms

As enterprises realize the benefits of videoconferencing, it is time to look at how they can connect their mobile employees and top executives into high quality videoconferencing sessions without too much of a hassle, writes Varun Aggarwal

Today, conferencing is limited to large boardroom set-ups—Delhi office boardroom talking to a boardroom meeting in Mumbai and so on. People have to rush to the room to participate. The market is full of great conferencing technologies that give a 360-degree view of the room, great sound effects, high quality experience, but these are prohibitively expensive for companies to provide to a large number of people in the organization. Then there are lower end Web conferencing tools available but these limit the impact of the true conference experience.

There are three clear segments in the videoconferencing market. The higher end of the segment is the real immersive market, where you talk about video applications that need 2 to 5 Mbps—these are high on the bandwidth at the same time offer high definition (HD) resolution so that you get a truly immersive conferencing experience. This is where telepresence and the real presence exist from the players like Cisco, Polycom etc. The medium side of the market is the high definition market, where video streams on a 1 Mbps pipe. Lastly, there is desktop conferencing where there is a lot of action.

People realize that in order to set up room-to-room conferencing, they need to put the equipment in place. In addition, a lot of money is spent on equipping boardrooms. Amit Mehta, Director-Unified Communication, Microsoft India, said, “One is the cost of setting up room-to-room. Second, is the inability to provide impromptu access to videoconferencing—it’s not always possible to have a video conference whenever you want to have one as the room is not always available. These are the major problems that have led to the concept of desktop conferencing tied to room-to-room conferencing—basically enabling an impromptu and ad hoc videoconferencing experience.”

Observing this untapped potential in the market, Microsoft, along with its partners such as Tandberg, is bringing the power of videoconferencing to the desktop in order to enable true anytime, anywhere conferencing straight off the desktop. In this way, there is no need to travel to a conference room or boardroom to participate in a video conference. This saves time for each employee, further increasing productivity and cost control. “Microsoft’s strategy is to democratize unified and videoconferencing. This means that we have to make the technology available to as many people as possible. That’s why we have a conferencing solution with Office Communications Server that provides VoIP, Presence and chat, audio, video and conferencing capabilities as well,” Mehta added.

Capabilities of desktop conferencing

Mehta explained, “In terms of capabilities we are able to, within the OCS, show the presence and integrate the same into room-to-room conferencing devices. Let us take the example of a manufacturing company that has three-four conferencing rooms. Assume that I am the R&D head of an Indian company in the US and I need to contact someone in my company for a critical issue. All I need to do is plug my laptop into the hotel broadband connection and with a variety of cameras (depending on the available bandwidth and the resolution required, you can choose one), I can activate OCS. The moment I do that, I have presence status of the conferencing equipment lying in, say, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. In this manner, I have the presence status of my colleagues, whom I want to contact; I will have presence status of the rooms where the conferencing may be happening. So now I can ask my colleague in Delhi to go to room No. 2 and another colleague in Mumbai to go to Room No. 4 and initiate a conference sitting right in my hotel room.”

In OCS R2, the latest version of this software, Microsoft can deliver 1 Mbps videoconferencing to the desktop so that a HD conferencing experience can be achieved from your desk. “We ensure that customers can leverage current investments. If an organization has already invested in a Polycom or Tandberg solution, we can interoperate with them. We have a strategic alliance where we do interoperability with them, and enable organizations to an impromptu conferencing experience,” Mehta added.

Another way of using desktop conferencing is through video phones available from vendors such as Cisco, Tandberg and Polycom. The Cisco Unified Video Advantage is a personal video telephony solution that allows users to place and receive video calls at their desktop. It consists of the Cisco Unified Video Advantage software and the Cisco VT Camera II, a video telephony USB camera that connects to a PC. “Users can then make calls from their Cisco Unified IP phones using the familiar phone interface, and calls are displayed with video on the PC. With Cisco Unified Video Advantage, video calls are as easy to make as telephone calls, without the complications of room videoconferencing systems or the need to press PC keys or click the mouse,” explained Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager, Unified Communications, Cisco India & SAARC.

Getting started

For using Microsoft’s solution you need a camera, which costs anywhere between Rs 3,000 to Rs 20,000. The second piece that you need is the OCS server. The third piece that you need is the OCS CAL licenses. Depending on the category of client, or the volume, the price is decided. These licenses are of two types namely OCS CALs: Standard and Enterprise. The Standard CAL has the IM and presence capabilities including new group IM and rich presence features and costs roughly $21 for the average enterprise. The new Enterprise CAL provides all of the new conferencing and VoIP call management features and costs roughly $97 for the average enterprise. The Office Communications Server Standard and Enterprise CALs will also be included as part of the Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite, a group of several Microsoft server CALs available at a discount. For most customers, the Standard and Enterprise servers cost about $488 and $2,791, respectively.

Today on OCS R2, Microsoft can deliver CIF based video capability, which requires 352 kbps of bandwidth; it can deliver VGA quality on a 680 kbps link and HD on a 1 Mbps link to the desktop.

The other thing that Microsoft has done is that it has been able to integrate videoconferencing with Web conferencing. For instance, if you’re a sales leader and you’re doing a field readiness review or training, then you can from your laptop, initiate a Web conference or a live meeting session, which is integrated into the e-mail calendar in Exchange Server. Microsoft offers a USB device called RoundTable (now being sold by Polycom as the CX5000), which can be plugged into a laptop and you can integrate video within it from the Web conference itself, so that people are able to see you while you speak. Alternatively, they can have 360-degree view of the room where you are speaking (there’s a panoramic view integrated). “That is how fruitful and ad hoc we have made videoconferencing in our environment,” Mehta commented.

Desktop vs. room-to-room

Looking at the enormous benefits that desktop conferencing brings to the table, one might assume that it may cannibalize the market for traditional room-to-room conferencing. However, experts believe that people would still want to do room-to-room conferencing. Mehta opined, “There are some things that will happen only in a room-to-room environment that will continue to happen. The only thing is that people now have a choice. With capabilities of the desktop reaching 1 Mbps, you will have some degree of cannibalization that can happen but not much. If you want to setup a conference with multi-party at one end and multi-party at another end, you would require room-to-room conferencing. Wherever there is a need for mobile workers to join a conference, that’s where you will need desktop conferencing.”

According to Zia, “Customers who would benefit most from Cisco Unified Advantage are multisite, geographically distributed customers who want the capability to communicate face to face with people at branch or remote offices, who have converged networks for increased productivity and reduced costs, and who want to use an existing installed base of Cisco Unified IP phones.”

Key considerations

With too many people getting access to desktop conferencing in an enterprise, bandwidth provisioning may become a daunting task for the administrators. This has to be done with care to ensure that the network does not become choked and that the conferencing experience is not compromised. Mehta said, “In the case of OCS, we can provision what bandwidth is allocated to which user. For instance, you don’t need to give 1 Mbps video to a sales person. You might want to give 1Mbps on the desktop to just a few senior people. You might keep just a VGA quality video for the medium level staff. With this kind of capability, you can easily manage who consumes what.”

If you look at what is required to setup desktop conferencing is, first you need the server and client side application along with the associated hardware. Then there is how you provision bandwidth between two locations because bandwidth provisioning is critical. This means that if you are looking at a good conferencing experience, you need to ensure that adequate bandwidth is provisioned. Other than this, desktop conferencing is straightforward. The biggest factor driving desktop conferencing is the culture. If the topmost people are using desktop conferencing more aggressively, then it permeates down to the rest of the organization. “Unified communications and some of the new tools are all culture and top brass driven. If it is driven well, then it permeates down, if it is not, then it is not a success,” concluded Mehta.

Source: http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20090803/technology01.shtml

2009-07-10T15:01:00.001-07:00

VoIP Gives Me A Headache
In recent weeks I have fought with VoIP difficulties on webinars using three different web conferencing technologies. Is VoIP truly ready for prime time?

A bit of background first for those unfamiliar with the terminology and concept. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. In our particular niche - looking at web conferencing – it refers to letting participants use a microphone or headset connected to their computer as a way to let other meeting participants hear their voices.

This is subtly different from “broadcast audio” or “streaming audio”, which deals with the transmission of sound out to participants’ computer speakers. The sound in that case may come from a telephone call patched in to the web conference or from recorded audio clips being played as part of the meeting content.
VoIP is a great concept. When it works correctly, it offers several potential advantages:

It removes a separate technology (telephones) from your meeting equipment requirements and places focus solely on the computer.

It reduces the complexity of instructions you need to send out to participants, since there are no telephone numbers and codes to remember.

It can reduce costs by eliminating telephone connection charges.

Unfortunately, VoIP is prone to several disadvantages as well:

Not everyone owns a computer headset/microphone. If your participants don’t have the right equipment, they are helpless (I think it’s fair to say that everyone has access to a telephone).

Computer-connected headsets require configuration for use. Many web conference participants are not experienced or patient enough to go through the right steps. You are dealing with a computer peripheral that has drivers to load and interactions with Control Panel settings. Simply getting your computer to select the headset as the input/output audio device to use can flummox users on occasion.

The interaction between the conferencing software and the headset can potentially be confusing (to use a charitable term). I have had cases where the order of connection can mean the difference between success and failure. I’m not saving myself any time in connection instructions if I have to tell participants to connect their headset first. Then select it in Control Panel. Then start the conferencing software. Then confirm a popup box that lets Flash recognize the device. Then run a test step to set audio levels.

This isn’t a fair ding against the technology itself, but the nasty fact is that most of the computer headsets I’ve come across out there in the general community are of appallingly low quality. Businesses all too often seem to tolerate purchases of VoIP headsets as a lowest-possible-cost toy rather than as a valued business asset.

Even when everything else works, computer headsets in webcasts sometimes exhibit random behaviors that are nothing short of mysterious. I was on a webinar yesterday where my headset worked fine until I had to replug it right before show time. Then it switched to a feedback mode where my audio was picked up by the mike and rebroadcast. I sounded like I was talking in a giant tin can. I had an event where my client as the primary speaker could use her VoIP headset right up until I connected mine on another computer under a different login, at which time she was blocked out. The vendor couldn’t explain it at all. I gave a training session where we used collaborative participation with audience members on computer headsets. One person could never get his headset to broadcast through the software. One person’s mike was live the entire time, even when explicitly muted in the webcast software.

When these things happen, you can easily spend long, frustrating periods of time trying to diagnose and repair the setup by long distance. And that’s a recipe for disaster with your audience. As soon as they start concentrating on the technology rather than your topic and content, you have lost the battle for effective achievement of your goals in holding the meeting. With my training class, I spent a short time trying to solve my audience’s problems, but ended up rescheduling the session with the promise of a telephone dial in.

All in all, I’ll reserve VoIP participation in webinars for internal business sessions with coworkers I know. Ones where I can tolerate some fumbling and frustration if things get muddled. But for public sessions and webinars where I need to rely on voices actually making it all the way into the web conference without exception, I’ll stick with the telephone as the input device of choice.
Source Webinar Success

2009-06-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

Verizon Small Business Center Presents Free Webinar on June 17: 'Social Networking for Small Business - Marketing and Connecting With Customers Through Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn'

NEW YORK, June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Small-business owners should plan to connect with the Verizon Small Business Center for its fifth free webinar in its every-other-week series keeping businesses informed and engaged about current issues in small-business management. The upcoming webinar takes place Wednesday (June 17) and features small-business coach and author of "DuctTape Marketing" John Jantsch.
http://smallbusiness.verizon.com/webinar/

Citrix relaunches Vapps HD conferencing service

2009-05-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

Citrix Online is "launching" the HiDef audio conferencing services it acquired when it bought Vapps back in November. The flat-priced, monthly-billed service will support up to 500 participants, with larger companies able to get integrated management functions on a per-minute basis.

HiDef's biggest hook is the ability to support wideband codecs for 16kHz sound; a typical standard PSTN phone call has an 8kHz range, so wideband brings in a richer experience. The offering provides a self-service option that includes free recording and integration with Microsoft Outlook and Skype, as well as Citrix's GoToMeeting service. Conferences can either be started by logging into the service or initiated via Outlook.

Flat rate plans start at $40 per month (conference room for 10 people, 600 toll free minutes, web controls for scheduling, unlimited recording) and include unlimited Skype and local phone minutes. Participants have the option of either dialing in toll-free or via computer client, or using a local number.

visit www.hidefconferencing.com

Webinar vs. Webcasting vs. Web Conferencing Finally Explained!

2009-04-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

Web conferencing – Collaborative interacting over the Internet
Web conferencing allows a presenter to show an audience what is on his/her computer screen and collaborate in a number of ways.

Data: Web conferencing is focused on computer-based data (presentations, documents, software apps, or a desktop), which it can display and easily manipulate. That makes it easier for the businessperson to use, and makes it fit most day-to-day business meetings and events. Some Web conferencing platforms offer Webcam video.

Web & phone: Most Web conferences use an audio conference call to let the group hear the presenter. Phone audio is more reliable and higher quality than Internet audio. And it allows real-time interaction among participants in the event. But it does add the cost and effort of using the phone as well as a browser.

Small to mid-sized groups: The data-sharing and two-way interactivity work well for groups up 500 attendees. Also, costs scale with the number of users, making very large Web conferences more expensive than similarly sized Webcasts. Meetings can be hosted or attended from any PC with an Internet connection. No production or special equipment is required.

Two-way: Web conferences are more interactive, with the ability to share presentation rights and control of applications among all group members. For collaboration, in-depth presentations, sales demos and training it can’t be beat.

Webcasting (web'kast') – Broadcasting over the Internet
Webcasting technologies use streaming media technologies to broadcast audio and video or audio only with power point slides (optional) over the Internet to a large audience.

Video: The biggest difference between Webcasting and Web conferencing is the predominance of video vs. sharing desktop applications and content. That makes Webcasting preferable for high-profile public events. To make the video TV quality requires onsite production support, powerful servers, and lots of Internet bandwidth, which is why the base cost of a Webcast can be very high.

Internet-only delivery: Live or archived video is delivered over the Internet and the audio is provided via speakers on your PC.

Large events: By using high-capacity distributed servers, Webcasting companies can deliver events to audiences of thousands. The services digitize the content and then send it to servers that distribute the content to the audience. The processing steps introduce a delay between the presenter and the audience – for example, the audience is seeing what the presenter did 30 seconds ago, although it appears live to the attendee. Unlike production costs, per-attendee distribution is cheap – just the cost of bandwidth – so very large events are less expensive as Webcasts than they are as Web conferences.

One-way: Streaming media is a technology developed to compress and transfer video and/or audio data through the Internet in such a way that the file can start to play while it is downloading. The content can either be “live" or “archived”. The distribution is fine for large events in which there can’t be much interaction between the audience and the presenter anyway.

Webinar web-in-AR) - Web-based Seminar
A is a term used to describe a specific type of web conference short for "Web Seminar". It is typically one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction. A webinar can be collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line or through the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a truly web-based communication.

Power Point slide presentations

Audio through the phone (conference call), VoIP (Real time audio communication through the computer via use of headphones and speakers), or combination.

Web-browser tours

Recording for viewing at a later time)

Whiteboard with annotation (allowing the presenter and/or attendees to highlight or mark items on the slide presentation. Or, simply make notes on a blank whiteboard.)

Text chat - For live question and answer sessions, limited to the people connected to the meeting. Text chat may be public (echo'ed to all participants) or private (between 2 participants).

Polls and surveys (allows the presenter to conduct questions with multiple choice answers directed to the audience)

Screen sharing/desktop sharing/application sharing (where participants can view anything the presenter currently has shown on their screen. Some screen sharing applications allow for remote desktop control, allowing participants to manipulate the presenters screen, although this is not widely used.)

2009-03-02T14:37:00.000-08:00

Mobile Meetings: WebEx on Apple's 3G iPhone

The Apple 3G iPhone now supports WebEx Meetings. This is the first device to ever support "Mobile Meetings." Leveraging Apple's 3G Network and WebEx's MediaTone Network for "Any Device Connectivity," iPhone owners can host and join WebEx meetings.

With already over 50,000 downloads from the Apple App Store and a Top 10 Business Application rating along with the "Best in Show" Award from MacWorld, WebEx on the iPhone is taking the business world by storm.

Whether it's joining a WebEx meeting from your iPhone or accessing documents via WebEx Connect on your iPhone you are always connected and ready to do business.

In a recent survey conducted by the NASCIO Summit, one of the top technology priorities of CIO's is "mobile workforce enablement." WebEx on the iPhone or "Mobile Meetings," is right in line with this strategic initiative. Improved productivity, increased corporate performance, better collaboration and communication with customers, partners and colleagues.

Blackberry and Smartphone support is coming April 2009

Webinar Review: Microsoft Live Meeting

2009-01-29T13:03:00.000-08:00

EDITOR RATING: 9 out of 10

BOTTOM LINE:
Live Meeting is a top contender for larger-scale Webinar events and e-learning sessions. On its own, solid performance and a good feature set make it a strong competitor.

PROS:
Nice audio and video performance. Good support for large-event features like attendee registration, polling, Q&A and lead tracking. Excellent price for hosting Webinars.

CONS:
We did not need a lot of the features but its nice to know they are available.

SPEC DATA
OS Compatibility: Windows Vista, Windows XP, MAC

Microsoft has recently given Live Meeting a serious upgrade, adding advanced features like Microsoft Roundtable 360 degree video camera support, integrated full-duplex VoIP audio, and support for multiple rich-media formats—as well as a solid Web-only version for those who can't download the client.

Live Meeting provides a list of attendee, online chat capability, Q&A, a shared presentation window, and basic annotation tools. For any of the advanced features, including support for webcams and VoIP, however, you'll need the full client.

Other than the advanced features requiring client software, Live Meeting operates similarly to comparable packages such as Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional and WebEx. The product available as fully a hosted service at a low price per host license. An Outlook add-on allows you to schedule Live Meetings instantly within Outlook the same way you'd schedule regular face-to-face meetings, letting you include meeting attendees and send notifications. You can also manage invitations and contact lists from the Web via your Live Meeting account.

Once in a meeting, the layout is clean and intuitive—mostly. The product has almost as many features and controls as WebEx, and on the surface it looks easier to use, because all you see are one light menu bar and tool icons.

The recording feature has improved in this latest version of the product. Presenters can save the session to their local PCs or to the Microsoft server.

Live Meeting can compete with any major player. For the price it's the best Webinar software that I tested. The service supports up to 1,250 attendees for a single session, so you're covered for conduction e-learning sessions and events. Live Meeting 2007 includes event tools like registration, survey distribution, and meeting-role features that let you separate administrators from speakers and attendees.

Registration now supports automatic confirmations and reminders, and now, in addition to supporting ad hoc polling, Live Meeting can also send survey results to specific recipients via e-mail and export survey reports to Excel or CSV files. The ability to record entire sessions and store them on the Live Meeting service is also attractive from an events perspective. Used carefully, this can almost become an online video-presentation server. The Live Meeting meeting interface is easy to use. I really like the ability to undock its panels.

Compared with WebEx and gotowebinar, Live Meeting definitely has the edge in features and reliability.

2008-12-19T06:03:00.000-08:00

Web Conferencing Usage Survey Available Online

Webinar Success

2008-11-28T10:41:00.000-08:00

Adobe Connect Pro Gets 24x7 Support
According to the Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro blog, hosted customers now get 24x7 in-meeting support as part of their hosted subscription (active as on November 3). You can pay extra and get "Gold" support, which includes customization and integration, along with "direct access to senior level engineers and prioritized case handling."

2008-11-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Citrix Systems buys Vapps Inc. VoIP audio provider for $2.26 million
http://topnews.us/content/281-citrix-systems-buys-vapps-inc-226-million