The Webinar Blog

I Look At iLinc

On Monday, iLinc Communications announced that they had sold the majority of their audio conferencing assets to Premiere Global Services for $4.1 million. The press release also said that the company had implemented an overhead reduction program. I wanted to find out more, so I contacted the CEO, Dr. James Powers, Jr.

It's no secret that iLinc's stock price performance has been disappointing over the last year. They are currently trading around the $0.25 level, on a steady decline since last October. Dr. Powers said that while the company has to take responsibility for their performance, you have to attribute about half of the stock price woes to the general market conditions, especially for small-cap stocks during that period.

He told me that iLinc looked at what it could do to improve margins overall and came up with a coordinated set of strategic decisions. The first was to concentrate their sales efforts on hosted licensing for their web conferencing service. Often referred to as SaaS (for "Software as a Service"), this lets companies use the software's functionality without installing anything on their own computers and servers. They pay ongoing usage fees for the right to hold meetings.

iLinc had previously sold a lot of traditional software-as-a-purchase licenses. This gives the purchasing company ownership of the software for a single up-front fee. iLinc could recognize all the revenue at the time of sale, but then only made additional revenue from support and maintenance contracts. Dr. Powers pointed out that organizations have become used to thinking of web conferencing as a SaaS offering, since WebEx, Live Meeting, GoToWebinar, and other heavily marketed products in this space have built that up as the usage model of choice. Unfortunately, the change in emphasis from purchase licenses to SaaS licensing always causes a drop in short-term revenues on the books, as the company can't recognize a big ticket sale price up front.

The second strategic decision was to divest their audio business. There is a lot of overhead involved in operating, maintaining, and upgrading audio bridge software and hardware. Price competition on audio conferencing is fierce, and customers wanted more features, such as increased VoIP (internet streamed audio) and international access numbers. By selling the audio business now, the company gets an infusion of cash during the transition to the SaaS sales focus to compensate for lower cash income. It also lets iLinc eliminate positions related solely to the audio side of things, such as event operators and bridge technicians. There is still a small percentage of audio operations maintained in-house for full-service audio event assistance, but that will probably end up on the block as well, helping to eliminate additional positions and support needs.

The third strategic decision involved an increased emphasis on sales through channel partners, both domestically and overseas. iLinc has significantly ramped up the number of people in the organization devoted to extending and supporting channel sales. The company's internal direct sales efforts will be focused on their sweet spot strengths in areas such as higher education and governmental organizations. Don't expect to see a lot of broad horizontal advertising and marketing coming out in the near future.

Finally, I asked Dr. Powers about the possibilities of iLinc as an acquisition target. I have written before that iLinc seems to be an obvious choice as one of the bigger names in the remaining (and dwindling) field of pure-play independent web conferencing providers. He agreed with me that it certainly seems like a logical target. There are plenty of big companies interested in getting a piece of the Unified Communications pie, as that buzzword remains the darling of the high tech set. They could use an established, mature web conferencing technology as a part of their offerings. He said, "I know that it's likely that someone will come knocking pretty soon... I'm not trying to hurry that process though."

We'll just have to wait out developments and see if Dr. Powers can get things back on an upward trend. For now, they have eliminated some of their low margin operations and overheads, they have a cushion of cash in the bank, and they have a sales strategy for more consistent revenue growth. Bookings and new business appear to be strong, according to Dr. Powers. Now it's all about execution and the whims of the market.

 

Technorati Tags: iLinc,James Powers,web conferencing,web conference,webinar,web meetings

ON24 Grows Volume

ON24 published a press release today that was focused on management changes in their sales organization. Fair enough... Congratulations and best of luck to the new guys heading up North America and EMEA.

What was more interesting to me was their statement that their worldwide delivery of streaming audio and video webcasts grew by 40% last year, hitting 16,000 total for 2007.

With the recent spate of consolidations and acquisitions of web conferencing providers by big multi-business companies it is getting harder and harder to get a handle on the health and state of this technology segment. Try to find raw data on the growth in web conferences and webcasts as a business when reading an annual report from Adobe, Cisco, Microsoft, or IBM. Fuggedaboutit.

I'm happy with a 40% increase from a dedicated provider. Thanks for the info, ON24... And keep up the good work!

 

Technorati Tags: ON24,webcast,webcasting,streaming audio,streaming video,web conferencing

PresenterNet Adds Animation

The support team at PresenterNet quietly sent out email notifications this week that their technology has been upgraded to allow additional functionality for users.

The big enhancement is that PresenterNet now supports animation effects on PowerPoint slides. Many business presenters use (and abuse) animations to spice up their slides. Support for animations seems to be particularly desirable to marketers.

I tested the new functionality with my standard PowerPoint Torture Test. This combines outrageous amounts of text, graphics, and fancy animations in an attempt to run conversion software through a worst case scenario. PresenterNet uses an interesting approach to uploading and storing your presentations in your conference room. You start with a self-service upload step that transfers your PowerPoint file to their server. Then PresenterNet staff manually run the conversion process that turns slides into the Flash files that are used inside a conference. The company says that conversion staff are on duty from 6am to 6pm California time and they advertise a turnaround time of less than two hours. My slides were complex, but there are only 15 of them and my conversion was completed and ready for use in about ten minutes.

I was pleased that graphics and text all came out with high quality. Edges were sharp, colors were accurate, and there was no color banding on smooth gradients and fills. Images were placed exactly where they had been on the original slide, with no pixel offsets that plague some conversion algorithms. Advancing to the next animation on a slide is simply a matter of clicking your mouse anywhere within the slide area. I like that I don't have to concentrate on clicking a specific screen button that could pull my focus from the content as I'm presenting.

I managed to find three misconversion artifacts. A very minor one was that a movement animation that starts automatically as soon as the slide is displayed in the PowerPoint slideshow required a click to start it in PresenterNet. Hardly worth mentioning, and not something likely to give anybody a problem. Another minor discrepancy showed up in a fancy point-to-point movement animation, where the object briefly redisplayed at the starting position after the movement. A more obvious problem was that some "callout boxes" displayed improperly after being animated, ending up with lines running through the text. Other than those little items, all other PowerPoint features showed off very well, and I would have no hesitation in showing off my PowerPoint content with this software.

The second enhancement is more of a convenience issue than major new functionality. Sometimes you need to convene a conference quickly and you might not have time to wait for PresenterNet to convert your slides. They have a workaround you can use for immediate access to your slides. If you use your PC to convert your slides to PDF format, you can upload the PDF and display the slides without any further conversion.

The drawbacks to displaying PDF uploads are:

1. Animations are not supported. Each slide becomes a static image.
2. You need a software application on your computer that can convert slides to PDF format. Big businesses will probably use Adobe Acrobat, but smaller businesses can avoid that cost by using cheap/free alternatives such as NitroPDF or PrimoPDF.

I spoke to PresenterNet CEO Doug Wolfgram, who shared two other points with me. The first is that the PresenterNet support staff will work with customers on special PowerPoint display requirements to do hand-tweaking of the content in order to make it display as desired in a conference... Just in case the automatic conversion doesn't give you what you want. The second item is the fact that the company now uses the Wowza Media Server, which he says gives meetings better performance as well as more flexible access for participants trying to watch from behind a firewall.

These recent enhancements should make PresenterNet more attractive and appropriate to a wider range of users and conferencing applications. I'm sure the extra investment by the company will pay off for them.

 

Technorati Tags: PresenterNet,Doug Wolfgram,web conference,web conferencing,webinar,web meetings,web events

New Features In Adobe Connect Pro

Adobe just announced a new release of Acrobat Connect Professional that is supposed to be available by the end of the month. I got a briefing and demo of the software, but I have not had a chance to play with it firsthand yet.

Connect Pro 7 takes care of two drawbacks that have inconvenienced me for some time. Meeting participants can now provide feedback to the presenter without seeing the names of other participants in the meeting room. Previous versions coupled the feedback feature to the Attendees pod, so that you had to use up valuable screen real estate and potentially raise privacy concerns if you wanted to collect audience feedback such as “Speed Up” or “Speak Louder.” It also gave away the fact that you might not have many attendees in the audience at times when you would rather keep that a secret.

The feedback feature has a fixed set of responses that are not customizable. These include standard things such as “Agree” and “Disagree”, but they also threw in some choices that seem a little too cute for typical business use, such as “Laughter” and “Applause.” If I’m running an investor relations call, I don’t think I want financial analysts to see a little smiley face and the word “Laughter” in their console.

The other major enhancement is the ability to download meeting recordings to your hard disk in Flash FLV format. These can be hosted on your own website or distributed on CD. Previous versions of the software required all recordings to be hosted on the Adobe servers and they could not be downloaded for distribution.

Adobe also embedded a very basic recording editor that allows you to cut out sections of your recording. You might want to get rid of the technical introduction and overview you gave your live audience, or instructions and pauses while waiting for them to complete polls or quizzes. The granularity is to the nearest complete second and the editor is certainly not as sophisticated as third-party dedicated software for audio/video editing, but it’s free and will suffice for many basic excisions.

Behind the scenes, Adobe made a huge advance in customization and configuration options for administrators. You can now choose what meeting features and functions are available for use by meeting hosts throughout your organization, and you can also set certain options to be automatically enabled or disabled for all meetings. So you might set all meetings to be automatically recorded, or you might disable the ability for any meeting host to share files or active links to websites. This is part of a general emphasis on compliance for organizations that have to adhere to governmental or industry regulations. You can even set your own Accept/Decline disclaimer for all meeting attendees before they are allowed to join a conference. Administrators can also create limited administration roles for subordinates to take over some of the functions necessary to creating or managing meetings.

All that is good for general web conferencing use, especially in large enterprise deployments (Adobe’s clear target audience for this product). But the bigger takeaway impression for me was the obvious concentration Adobe is making on the use of Connect Pro for training and eLearning applications. The title card in the PowerPoint briefing I saw said “Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro: High-Impact Rapid eLearning & Virtual Classrooms.” Adobe found that the bulk of their customer use was for training functions, and they spent a lot of time enhancing this aspect of the product.

Meeting organizers can now prepare any number of breakout rooms and either assign attendees to the sub-rooms manually or have the product distribute them evenly. Attendees get presenter rights in the breakout rooms so they can collaborate on whiteboards, file sharing, and the like. If you are working with a preferred Adobe partner for audio conferencing (such as MeetingOne), the product will automatically subdivide the audio conference into the same breakout groups as the web.

Adobe Presenter is a separate product license, but is closely tied in with use of Connect Pro, especially for curriculum development. It has also received enhancements to formal testing and scoring functions. The product can randomly reorder questions in a quiz and reorder multiple choice options within a question to reduce the chances of students copying each others’ work. There is more feedback to students as they take tests, more configuration options for the appearance of text and buttons, and the ability to publish and run tests on mobile devices or in interactive PDF files.

Presenter and Connect Pro also integrate with several Learning Management System (LMS) products from other suppliers including SAP, SumTotal, Blackboard, and Plateau.

Another new area of external integration is in the realm of instant messaging and presence. Connect Pro can interface with major premise-installed instant messaging systems such as Microsoft Office Communicator. You can import “buddy lists” from your instant messaging account, see if those people are online and available, and chat back and forth from your meeting room to their IM screen. You can also send them an “instant join” link that lets them quickly come into your meeting room, bypassing all login requirements.

Working with video is also easier in the new release, with the ability to accept and configure streaming video inputs from any camera device connected to your computer and the ability to import and display prerecorded video clips in Flash, WMV, or Quicktime formats.

I was informed that Adobe plans a major marketing push in conjunction with the new release to raise awareness and adoption of the conferencing software. I’m interested in how this will affect the competitive positioning of Connect Pro. It is has typically played against the major general use enterprise conferencing products such as Cisco WebEx and Microsoft Live Meeting. The increased emphasis on eLearning should now put them into direct competition with training-focused solutions such as Saba Centra and Elluminate.

Customers using the SaaS Adobe-hosted version of Connect Pro will find themselves upgraded automatically at no additional charge. Customers who install Connect Pro on their own servers will receive upgrade discs as part of their standard support and maintenance packages and can do the upgrade installation on their own schedule.

I’m a big fan of Connect Pro for the flexibility it gives me as a meeting host and administrator and the ease of access it gives presenters and attendees from just about any operating system and browser. It has lots of functionality and this release takes away a few restrictions that I had been working around. The biggest remaining drawback for me is Adobe’s separately-priced event management option and its limited functionality. I prefer to add on a third-party event manager such as AMP from Corvent to take care of registration, login, audience communications, and reporting. But other than that one area, Connect Pro is a solid solution for large-scale meetings and should be on your short-short list for consideration when choosing a conferencing product.

 

Technorati Tags: Adobe,Connect Professional,Acrobat Connect,Adobe Presenter,web conferencing,web conference,webinar,web seminar,web events,elearning

Webinar Scheduling Survey Available

I just put up a post on Webinar Wire announcing availability of a survey designed to find out whether common assumptions about webinar scheduling are accurate or not. I urge you to go and follow the link to take the survey. It only takes one minute... maybe two if you are really detail oriented and want to add a comment.

I get the question all the time: "What are the best days and times to schedule public webinars?" Most everyone in the industry tends to give the same answer. "Mid-week. A little before lunch for the West Coast, a little after lunch for the East Coast." That's why you get so many invitations with events competing against each other in the same time slot. It forces you to pick and choose which one you will attend at the expense of others.

Now I'll tell you a dirty little secret. None of us really knows if this answer is verifiably correct or not. It's based on some common sense assumptions... People may take a Monday or Friday off for a long weekend. People are too busy getting into their work week on Mondays. People are scrambling to finish up projects on Fridays. Too early or too late a start time misses people who work flex hours.

But to test the theory is almost impossible as a statistically valid exercise. You would have to run the same event for the same audience using the same invitation at a variety of different times and see which date/time slot got the best response. Except that you'll tend to get a drop-off in registrations for whichever slots you offer as follow-on opportunities after the first show. That's because the really interested parties sign up for it as soon as they see it. And then they don't have to sign up again. I watch this happen all the time, as I'll give a public webinar with fantastic response. Then I'll offer the same webinar a month later on the same day of the week and time slot, promoted the same way. It gets fewer registrations. Because I've exhausted part of my potential audience. If I tried the second showing on a different day and time I might assume that it was the fault of the time slot, when actually that was not the determinant in response rates.

If you can't run valid experimental tests, you fall back on asking a sample of the population. And that's what I'm doing. If we get enough people responding, we'll be able to validate our assumptions and maybe get some surprises. Perhaps people are ready and willing to close out their work week with a webinar on Friday afternoon? I don't know any company willing to try running one then on the off-chance it might be successful.

If you are a webinar vendor reading this, I hope you'll promote the survey to your customer base as well. There is no branding on the survey and it doesn't mention Webinar Success, Webinar Wire, or anyone else. I do not ask for names or emails from respondents, so there's no chance of being added to a list. This is a true altruistic exercise for the public good. I'll share the findings publicly and we can all start scheduling events with more confidence that we're matching the preferences and availability of our public.

Technorati Tags: webinar,web conferencing,web conference,web seminar,event scheduling,web events

Brainshark Offers Content

Brainshark recently unveiled an online service that lets users access recorded presentations by subject matter experts in various fields. It's called the Brainshark Content Network and is officially in beta (according to the logo at the top of the page).

I already use Brainshark's presentation recording technology to create and host on-demand presentations for my own Webinar Success website and for my clients. So it was easy for me to check out the new offering.

If you want to get your content listed on the site, you have to submit an application to Brainshark. Their team reviews your qualifications and approves you as a content publisher ("Subject Matter Expert" in their parlance). That helps to make sure that visitors to the site don't have to plow through spam submissions and have a better chance at finding quality material. Publishers sign a contract with Brainshark that includes a revenue sharing model. Each recording submitted to the network can be configured by the publisher to be free or to have a charge for viewing. You can also elect to make the content available for reuse and modification by others (usually at a substantially higher price, but it's entirely up to you).

I already had recordings that were appropriate for the network, so for me, the act of publishing them was as simple as clicking a checkbox on each recording's profile in my authoring account. I confirmed the title, description, and cost along with a category for search indexing. That's it. They were up and available to the public.

If you are not a Brainshark customer but feel that you have valuable material of use to the community, you can get the use of the Brainshark technology once you are approved as a publisher. I took a look at the tutorial for creating a presentation for newcomers to the technology and it is well constructed and easy to follow. You can get going with nothing more than a PowerPoint slide deck and a telephone. I prefer using digital audio files for a cleaner sound, which is permitted by the technology. It takes more work, but makes for a cleaner soundtrack.

Visitors can search for content in 13 high level categories or by keyword. So if you'd like to see my recordings, you can follow this link to immediately see my four short presentations (All of which are free. You're welcome.)

Brainshark is not trying to be a generic presentation listing and syndication portal for all presentations on the web. They leave that to sites like EventSpan. They are only hosting Brainshark recordings, which of course helps them show off their technology while giving some extra value to the user community. And if enough people are willing to pay for the value-add they get, it creates an additional revenue stream for both Brainshark and the content authors. Admittedly, this will have to turn into a high-volume site for that money to be significant. Most pay-to-view recordings have relatively low prices, ranging from $1 to $25. Brainshark handles the payment processing via credit card or PayPal and you always have a chance to preview the first few slides of a fee-based recording to judge whether it's worth the money for you.

Viewers can add ratings to presentations they have watched, although this feature doesn't seem to be getting much action so far. I might wish for a few advanced search and listing features, but those may get added over time. For instance, you can't order your listing by price or by reverse order on title or date (title is always A-Z and date always shows most recent first).

I'm going to be very interested in whether the Brainshark Content Network takes off. If it does, you'll be seeing more content from me!

 

Technorati Tags: Brainshark,Brainshark Content Network,on-demand presentations,recorded event,event portal

ReadyTalk Adds Event Management

ReadyTalk just announced the addition of event management to their web conferencing service. I got a chance to go through the new features with Mike McKinnon, the Social Media Director for ReadyTalk.

Event management distinguishes an ad hoc meeting from a more formal, structured web event. It allows you to schedule an event in advance, collect registrations from prospective attendees, send login instructions and reminder emails, track registration and attendance, and so on.

Many web conferencing companies offer separate solutions for events as opposed to impromptu meetings. WebEx has Event Center as a higher priced alternative to Meeting Center. Citrix offers GoToWebinar at a higher price than GoToMeeting. Mike was eager to emphasize the fact that ReadyTalk has a single web conferencing solution without added cost modules or options. All users of the service automatically get access to the Event Manager without requiring an upgrade or additional payment.

The basic functions required of web conference event management tend to be well understood, and the differentiation lies in implementation details. I'll try to skip over the obvious and concentrate on specifics of interest in ReadyTalk's version of the functionality. Suffice it to say that all the basics are well covered... You can schedule an event for a date and time in the future, send emails to registrants, generate reports, and customize landing pages.

You can create a new event from scratch or you can clone an existing event, making changes to details as needed. ReadyTalk lets you pick the time zone that your event date and time is expressed in on all generated pages and invitations. There is no facility to automatically convert it to other time zones or to list multiple time zones. Event duration can be specified down to 15 minute increments, but the event must start on a half hour mark... You can't override the time selection popup.

The Event Manager lets you schedule an event with web login information only, telephone audio conferencing information only, or combined web and phone. The scheduling screen reformats with your choice to cut down on unnecessary information. You can also choose to use ReadyTalk's automated PIN-access telephone conferencing or a full operator-assisted conference line. While you can add in an external toll number and toll-free number if you use a third-party audio conferencing provider, it's momentarily confusing to find the entry boxes under "ReadyTalk Operator Assisted."

ReadyTalk has access to a worldwide network to use for the audio side of things. I love the feature that lets you automatically include local toll-free access numbers for your choice of countries in your confirmation emails. Or you can check a box to include a link to a list of all access numbers in the world. Simple and integrated international access is a big plus for many enterprise conferencing users.

You get 2000 characters to play with for creating your event description text. ReadyTalk lets you enter this in a formatting entry field (you can change fonts, add bold and italics, create bulleted lists, etc.). But I noticed that there was no hyperlink button to easily enter a web address. It doesn't automatically convert addresses to a hyperlink or let you enter HTML tags, so if you want a hyperlinked phrase you have to copy it in from something like a Word document where it is already linked. The paste operation preserves embedded hyperlinks.

You can establish a security passcode for your event of 4-9 alphanumeric characters. The code is the same for all attendees... There is no functionality for assigning individual passwords to each participant (typically used for paid attendance functions to make sure registrants don't forward the login information to friends and colleagues).

You can add a logo image to your registration page and you can even hyperlink it to the web page of your choice. You can also specify multiple presenter names, bios, and photos.

You can customize registration questions to a certain degree. ReadyTalk forces required fields for Name and Email as the first two choices. I expressed surprise that Name was held in a single field, as this makes it difficult to export registration information to an external database or salesforce automation tool that expects separate first and last name fields. A bit of discussion on the issue resulted in a statement that they would change the registration field to two separate fields in the next update, probably in 30-60 days. After name and email, there are another 16 standard demographic fields that you can optionally display and/or make required. After that, you can add any number of custom fields in your choice of formats (text, drop-down menus, radio buttons, checkboxes, and multi-select lists).

What bothered me a bit was the fact that I could not reorder questions. If I use the preconfigured demographic fields, they show up in the order that ReadyTalk lists them. If I use my own custom fields, I can't change the order after the fact. I would have to delete everything above my desired entry and re-enter all the questions after it. By the way, this is a common limitation of integrated registration builders.

You get the opportunity to preview the complete layout of your reg page and make additional changes as desired.

Advanced event settings let you control several functional aspects. The first is to customize confirmation emails that are sent to participants. ReadyTalk formats the confirmation email and includes all the relevant information from the event scheduling details. You have no control over the display of this information. The only customization possible is to add paragraphs of text at the top of the invitation. The confirmation email is highly formatted for HTML display and I haven't had a chance to check what happens if a registrant accepts text emails only. There is a link to add the event to your calendar and a system compatibility test link is included as well. You can also specify up to five files that will be added as attachments to the confirmation email. That's a nice feature and not very common.

You can also choose whether you want an email notification every time someone registers and whether they should get an automatic confirmation message or whether you want to approve registration requests.

Most event management systems have a way to send reminder emails, and ReadyTalk does as well. You specify an absolute date and time for reminders to go out (rather than a number of days or hours before your event). If you want to send out multiple reminders, you need to wait until after the first one has gone out, then re-edit your event to change the reminder date. That's a bit more manual effort than I would optimally like. It would be nice to set up your event once and not have to worry about coming back to the management and setup pages.

I did admire the fact that you can create a post-event survey page with text, customized questions, and a set of files available for download by your attendees.

A final settings feature deserves special mention. While each event typically has a dedicated URL for its registration page, you can auto-generate an arbitrary number of registration URLs and associate each one with a named marketing campaign or source. So you might send emails to different lists and use a specialized URL to track the performance of each list. Another URL might be used for clickthroughs from a Web banner ad. And another URL would be used in a newsletter sponsorship. As far as the audience is concerned, they all see the same registration page you customized for the event. But you get tracking information that is invaluable for adjusting future marketing and promotion efforts. Too few conferencing systems have this feature, and I think it's a must-have for use in marketing contexts.

ReadyTalk will do an invitation email blast for you, which is a very nice (and uncommon) feature. You can upload a file of up to 1000 email addresses at a time and associate it with one of your defined campaigns (to auto-insert the proper registration link). You can do as many of those uploads as you want. You don't get the same detailed tracking information as you would get from a third-party emailing house, but you don't have to pay extra either!

ReadyTalk only tracks clickthroughs to the registration page. You won't get stats on the number of bad email bounces or email opens. By the way, ReadyTalk automatically adds an opt-out link at the bottom of all invitation emails and specifies that the email came from ReadyTalk at their street address. This complies with CAN-SPAM regulations, but means that you can't fine tune the customization to have the email perceived as coming directly from your company.

There is also a button that lets you send a message to all current registrants, in case you have to send out an update.

The system includes standard reporting on the number of invitees, registrants, and attendees, along with reports summarizing chat messages used during the event. You can view data on the screen and export it to a CSV file for loading into another application.

The last type of email that companies often configure is a post-event message. ReadyTalk lets you set up separate emails for attendees and no-shows. Again, I was mildly disappointed that you can only create these emails after your event has completed. This means another visit to the event management system. I prefer to do all my setup and configuration for an event at one time. But this is a convenience issue rather than a lack of functionality.

All in all, ReadyTalk has created a nice, usable interface that makes the product much more suitable for large structured events. My favorite features are the ability to set up international telephone access, create multiple URLs for tracking promotional channels, and the option to use ReadyTalk as a bulk emailer for your invitations.

Technorati Tags: ReadyTalk,Mike McKinnon,webinar,web conference,web conferencing,web events,event manager,event management

Brush Up On Your Webinar Skills

My series of free educational webinars about organizing and presenting in online seminars continues in March and April with three opportunities to learn tricks of the trade. Sit in on one, two, or all three and bask in the glow of free information.

The three upcoming topics include a classic crowd favorite (Online Presentation Skills), a recent addition that got good response in its debut showing (Comparing and Contrasting Online vs. In-Person Presentations), and a brand new topic suggested by our audience members (Making Webinars More Interactive).

I invite you to click on an interactive banner below (courtesy of EventSpan... and why wouldn't you list your events there??). You'll be able to see details about each one and register. My sponsoring technology partners for this series are Adobe and ReadyTalk. It's a nice opportunity to see the conferencing software in action.

 

 

Technorati Tags: webinar,web conferencing,web seminar,web conference,presentation skills,Adobe Connect,ReadyTalk

ON24 Supports Self Service SaaS Solution

ON24 issued a press release today announcing a new version of their hosted webcasting technology. The new service is labeled Webcast Center Pro (WCC Pro) to distinguish it from Webcast Center Enterprise (WCC Enterprise). The basic operation of the two versions is the same, but Webcast Center Pro removes a few "bells and whistles" (according to marketing communications manager Cece Salomon-Lee) in favor of a lower price and easier entry point for smaller webcasts.

The promised comparison page between the two versions was not yet active on their website when I wrote this, but Cece led me through the main differences.

WCC Enterprise includes extensive customization as a service offering to make the viewing console, lobby area, and registration pages completely match a company's web look and feel. WCC Pro will allow customers to do their own more limited customization - basically adding a logo to a predefined template and adjusting some of the color selections on the page.

ON24 hosts recorded events for viewing after the live webcast. WCC Enterprise includes three months of hosting in the base package pricing. WCC Pro reduces that to one month.

ON24 includes an initial maximum audience size that is covered in their base price. Events can easily expand to allow more participants, but at additional cost. The Enterprise base package allows rooms of up to 250 people when using streaming audio and 100 people when using telephone audio. Pro reduces the base package capacities to 50 with streaming audio and 25 with telephone conferencing.

ON24 does not publish "rack rate pricing" (to use a hotel term), but Cece said that the new Pro option can let companies get started with webcasts for as little as $600, with pricing increased to match greater audience sizes and event durations.

This distinction in solution packaging matches similar approaches by web conferencing providers such as WebEx, Adobe, and Citrix. Choice is a good thing and ON24 is smart to give their customers additional options to suit their business and budget requirements.

Technorati Tags: ON24,Webcast Center,webcasting,webcast

CIO Magazine Looks At Virtual Meetings

Esther Schindler has written a long column on CIO.com discussing tips for "Running an Effective Teleconference or Virtual Meeting." I was one of the people interviewed and quoted in the article.

Esther covers a lot of ground, taking a look at telephone conferencing, video conferencing, and web conferencing. There are certainly commonalities between the communications methods and tips that apply to all three, but a meeting leader should be aware of the differences as well and make an effort to work with and within the capabilities of the chosen medium.

It's worth a read, just to remind yourself of some common mistakes we all make that frustrate participants. You may pick up a pointer or two that you had overlooked in your own meetings.

Technorati Tags: Esther Schindler,CIO,virtual meeting,web conferencing,collaboration