The Webinar Blog

Is "Good" Web Conferencing Available?

Michelle Murrain wrote a post in her "Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology" blog last week in which she summarized her "search for good web conferencing." She had set several specific criteria and some fuzzy desires in selecting a web conferencing product to support free and fee-based webinars. The biggest technical challenge was sharing her Linux and Mac desktop with the audience. The biggest business challenge was that she wanted it to be inexpensive (although that is a relative term).

Michelle evaluated six products and came up with this conclusion: "Every one of them comes up short in one way or another."

That is a sad statement, but Michelle doesn't know the half of it. There are dozens more products on the market that she hasn't tried, but I have. And you know what? Every one of them comes up short in one way or another.

Admittedly, I have outrageously high expectations when it comes to software for webinars (I am distinguishing this from software designed to support collaborative small group conferences). I have had a chance to see great single-feature implementations from different vendors. But for every product that has something done really well, there is another area where you have to accept a tradeoff.

It's not fair to speak only in generalizations, so here are just a few examples taken from some of the more well known names in the business.

WebEx - Might as well start with the biggest name. My favorite thing about WebEx is its integrated tracking features. Parameters in the registration URL are transferred into your registration and attendance reports so you can set up source tracking to gauge the effectiveness of different promotion channels. WebEx also does pretty well on integrating their phone and VoIP audio streams. And they have a good slide annotation system. But there are a vast number of tradeoffs. PowerPoint uploads have bugs in the conversion process. Tracking doesn't work with lists of events under a named program. VoIP audio isn't supported on several Linux flavors. And recordings are in a proprietary format.

Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional - I like almost everything about the implementation of this Flash-based system. It has great cross-platform flexibility, is amazingly configurable in layout, and the slide upload and conversion process is unparalleled in the industry. All slide animations work and slides remain loaded and available for a repeat session. But VoIP audio is notoriously scratchy and recordings can only be viewed online... There is no option to download them for distribution on CD. I also want audience members to be able to show feedback indicators without seeing all other attendee names.

Raindance - Does anybody even remember that Raindance exists? They have the best tech support team I have worked with and a question handling implementation that is unique and spectacular. You can flag questions, assign them to a panelist, or choose to ignore them. Great for moderated Q&A sessions! I also love that it shows you how many animations remain to be executed on a slide. But the presenter interface is confusing and multiple access modes make it tricky to train panelists. I have also had issues with multiple audience logins to a single event.

Citrix GoToWebinar - The undisputed champ at desktop sharing. If I'm showing a live demo, this is my "go to" product (pun intended, but not very funny or original). You also can't beat its pricing and the registration/event setup is the most intuitive and fun to use of any vendor. Tradeoffs are a lack of flexibility. There is no provision for VoIP audio, cross-platform support is extremely limited, and question logs require manual reformatting to be useful.

I don't mean this to be a comprehensive list... I just wanted to give you a taste of the kinds of strengths and weaknesses that every product carries (whether I mentioned it here or not).

So if you are looking for "good" webinar software, you might just have to settle for "good enough." It's a question of your own requirements and priorities. Sigh. I may not have the engineering staff, the technical expertise, or the interest in developing a webinar product myself, but I sure have the makings of a heck of a Marketing Requirements Document!

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Technorati Tags: Acrobat Connect, Adobe, Citrix, GoToWebinar, Michelle Murrain, Raindance, vendor selection, web collaboration, web conference, web conferencing, WebEx, webinar

Big, Blue Web Conferencing News

...And the independent web conferencing market shrinks by one more player. WebDialogs just got acquired by IBM, which is trying to expand the reach of its Lotus Sametime line to reduce barriers to entry for smaller shops and companies that don't want to install the application software on site.

Lotus Sametime has most commonly been used by loyal IBM enterprise-sized customers with dedicated IT departments used to supporting business applications for their employees. In one of two press releases issued today, Big Blue says that it will be moving Lotus Sametime from a single monolithic product to a product family approach that allows companies to choose the solution that is right for them. This is all part of IBM's strategic "Unified Communication and Collaboration" (UC2) philosophy.

While the U in UC2 stands for Unified, it is safe to say that IBM would also like it to be "Ubiquitous." And to get their communications strategy adopted by a wider business audience, they needed to offer easier use options. Many small businesses don't want to install a big on-premise communications package. That is why WebEx and Live Meeting and the other conferencing companies have been able to grow market share... They can offer the use of the software on an as-needed basis, without requiring customer-based IT support and maintenance.

That paves the way for the second press release, announcing IBM's purchase of WebDialogs. WebDialogs operates in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) mode, giving IBM an instant offering for that target audience. IBM says right in the announcement that WebDialogs will be integrated with Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime to provide the new functionality. I guess the first part of the integration is simply making a name change. The old WebDialogs Unyte web conferencing product is now IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte. What a pity they stopped there... I'm sure the marketing gang could have added on a few more brand identifiers if pressed.

So now IBM has its SaaS web conferencing offering safely added to its unified collaboration story. Cisco made their move months ago with the WebEx acquisition. And Microsoft just announced an October 16 launch date for its Microsoft Office 2007 unified communications suite. That takes care of the holy trinity of unified communications monsters. Troops, equipment, and ammunition are being moved into place. Supply lines are being hardened. Once the battle is joined in earnest, it's going to be a mess out there as these three fight it out for marketplace supremacy.

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Technorati Tags: collaboration, communication, IBM, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, WebDialogs, Unified Collaboration, Unified Communications, Unyte, web collaboration, web conferencing

New Web Conferencing Comparisons From Publicare

Publicare's web conferencing comparison site (www.webconferencing-test.com) has been updated with comparisons of additional conferencing software and some adjustments to their scoring system. They now have "User-friendliness" and "Speed of setting up a meeting" as the two most highly weighted components, with feature/functionality and cost coming in as lesser items.

User friendliness is of course a very subjective matter, and the relative importance of these factors may well be different in your list of considerations. That is why I am always leery when I see a single-figure summary of a complex evaluation (I'll bet Roger Ebert kicks himself for ever coming up with the silly "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" summary that has largely replaced his fully considered reviews in most people's minds). Still, let's see what came in at the top of the heap for Publicare.

Citrix GoToMeeting and WebEx MeetMeNow come out at the head of the class. Following them are Netviewer one2meet and Acrobat Connect. Strangely, Microsoft Office Live Meeting rounds out the bottom of the top contenders. I say "strangely" because the primary function of the other software packages is collaborative group meetings, while Live Meeting (nee Placeware) was created primarily for one-to-many webinars. It should really be going up against Acrobat Connect Professional, Citrix GoToWebinar, and WebEx Event Center with a different set of criteria.

There are additional solutions presented on a secondary page that were not included in the overall listing. Again, the comparisons of like to like are a bit curious, for instance pitting Acrobat Connect Professional against something like BeamYourScreen in the same criteria battle is like putting an SUV up against a golf cart. They each have their place and their applications, and I wouldn't want to swap them between intended use environments!

When I first saw the webconferencing-test site I was critical and cynical. But I must say that the site looks great now (I wish my website looked that good!) and carries some excellent information that is valuable to anyone seeking additional data to help them narrow down their conferencing provider choices. I applaud Publicare for taking the time, effort, and expense to make the results available for free to the general public. That is true public care!

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Technorati Tags: collaboration, Publicare, webconferencing-test.com, vendor selection, web collaboration, web conference, web conferencing, web meeting, webcasting, webinar

From Convoq to Zingdom

In my last post, I briefly mentioned that Convoq has changed its name to Zingdom and is no longer selling the ASAP line of web conferencing products. The co-founder and CTO of Convoq, Christopher Herot, was kind enough to speak with me about the change.

Chris says that when he and Chuck Digate formed Convoq, they never intended to create a web conferencing company. They were working with the general concept of bringing people together online and thought that the big draw would be "applied messaging" -- basically the idea of using instant messaging for business and social applications. Convoq created patents on finding people online for spontaneous communication sessions. They decided to build their communications functionality in Flash, which was used mainly for entertainment and animated movie clips at the time. This was a prescient move, as Flash developed into a nice business application platform with great flexibility and cross-platform compatibility.

Although Convoq built in rich meeting capabilities such as text and voice chat, they found that most of their customers were using the software to deliver slide and narration presentations. In response to market demand, they added event scheduling, invitations, and Outlook integration. Suddenly they had a product designed to support scheduled online events for webinars. When Salesforce came out with its AppExchange concept to link external applications to their Sales/CRM package, Convoq jumped on that bandwagon as well.

Of course WebEx was quickly developing itself as the 800-pound gorilla in the web conferencing space during all of this activity. As WebEx spent more and more on sales and marketing, becoming synonymous with web conferencing to many people, Convoq tried to differentiate themselves with their "no download" approach via the Flash platform and a slightly lower price. But as Citrix became more of a force with its low-priced, all you can meet business model, Convoq found itself caught in a pincers move by competitors. On the high end they were up against a company willing to spend vast amounts of money on feature development and niche product versions, with a massive sales and marketing budget. On the low end, they were facing a company that was willing to offer online meeting functionality at a truly disruptive price point. Chris says he decided that trying to simultaneously fight on both price and functionality was going to result in lower and lower returns, so he made a decision to go back to his company's core competency and origins, with real time person to person communications taking the forefront.

Zingdom is the result of that decision. Although Chuck has gone his own way, Chris and CEO Steve Brand are working to push the instant communications framework into new areas. One of the interesting core features of the new technology is the ability for people to sign up in a directory with phone numbers that are known only to the automated system. If two parties want to talk to each other, they can click a button and have the software dial out to their telephones, connecting them in a phone conversation without either party ever knowing the other person's number. This has obvious applications for things such as dating or online transactions (think about a potential eBay buyer contacting the seller to ask a quick question before making a bid). Chris points out that the Zingdom business model is primarily designed around selling the functionality as an embedded technology for application companies to use. So who knows? You might see this new kind of instant communication on eBay or Match.com some day soon [I hasten to add that I picked those company names out of the air for example purposes only... Chris did not share the names of any potential partners with me].

I asked about the wrap-up on the old ASAP business and Christopher told me that he has retained his engineering and support staff, so existing customers will continue to get technical support for the remainder of their contract periods. But they are making no new sales and will not be renewing support contracts. He says that customers were informed about the switch-over and were allowed to withdraw from existing contracts if desired.

And there it is. Convoq is dead. Long live the Zing.

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Technorati Tags: Christopher Herot, collaboration, Convoq, instant messaging, telephone conferencing, web conferencing, web event, web meeting, webinar, Zingdom

Comings And Goings In The Web Conferencing Market

Lots of action this month among web conferencing vendors.

As David Chao reported in his blog today, Convoq has stopped selling its ASAP line of web conferencing products (look carefully and you'll see the simple little phrase on their home page).

   

One of the co-founders (Chuck Digate) has left and the other (Christopher Herot) has renamed the company to Zingdom Communications. The new company focus will be in the area of online instant communications via chat and telephone. At a casual glance, it seems to lie somewhere along a spectrum occupied by Skype and all the instant messaging vendors.

PrecisionIR - the company that owns web conferencing vendor Vcall - has bought webcasting/streaming media vendor Vodium. According to the company press release, "platform integration will begin immediately."

And while some products are disappearing, others are being born. NTT-IT has teamed up with VRMeetings to bring its MeetingPlaza web conferencing product from Japan to the US market.

It's like watching the Tea Cup ride at Disneyland!

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Technorati Tags: Convoq, David Chao, PrecisionIR, MeetingPlaza, Vcall, Vodium, VRMeetings, web collaboration, web conference, web conferencing, webcasting, webinar, Zingdom

Another Webinar Search Engine Launches

Today Finervista came out of beta mode with a press release announcing full production availability.  This is another search engine for upcoming and recorded webcasts/webinars. Simplicity seems to be the keyword here. You get to enter a search term, which scans against the title and short descriptor on the events in their database. Click on an event and you go to the landing page for that webcast. That's it.

Finervista chooses which events are stored in their search database. The sources seem to be WebEx and a few portal sites that have web event listings. Interestingly, I found several events sourced from Insight24, which could be said to compete with this site in functionality! Although I think Insight24 is still listing only archived recordings, while Finervista offers upcoming live events as well. There is no information listed to help companies submit an event or a set of events for inclusion in the database.

I was pleased to find some of my recorded public web events in their database, but searching for them was frustrating. One came up under a search for "Molay", another in a search for "Webinar Success", and a third was found only by a keyword in the topic, without either of the other terms having any luck. Because the source listing mentions the portal site from which the event was taken, you can't always be sure of finding the company or speaker doing the presentation itself.

I could find precious little information about Finervista itself. No phone number is listed on their website and no corporate information is found on the About Us page other than the fact that it is based in San Francisco. The press release goes into slightly more detail, saying that the company was founded last year by Felix Litman, who previously held a position in product management and marketing at WebEx.

What I can't figure out is the business profitability angle on this venture. There doesn't seem to be any advertising on the site, although there are two events listed as "Featured"... so maybe they pay for the visibility. It's free to all end users for searching, and I certainly can't think of any reason not to use the functionality!

I'm all for anything that helps to promote and improve the usefulness and acceptance of webinars in the business world. One of these utilities is going to gain some market attention and build traffic - at which time it is going to be bought out in a flash by a major search engine. But the race is still wide open at this point!

Good luck, Finervista. I hope you have more success than I did with WebEventSearch.com!

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Technorati Tags: Finervista, search, search engine, Felix Litman, web conference, web event, webcast, webinar

Evaluating Web-Based Sales Demos

For some reason, I have suddenly been getting a string of inquiries as to whether Webinar Success can help companies improve their sales demos delivered via web conference. This surprises me a bit, as I figured my business would naturally gravitate towards public marketing and lead generation webinars. But I'm happy to help out with sales presentation web conferences. Who am I to ignore a market demand?

The companies with these inquiries tend to be software vendors who want to show off their applications to sales prospects. Sometimes they just take their audience through the software and leave it at that. Sometimes they add PowerPoint slides. I'm very familiar with the routine, as I created and delivered software demonstrations via web conference when I was a product marketing manager for a software company.

My primary assistance in these situations is twofold:

First I make sure the content and flow of the demo is clear, concise, and effective. Many companies make the mistake of treating a sales demo as a training session. Your prospect should not emerge from your sales demo certified in operation of every aspect of your software. He or she should be enthusiastic and convinced of the soundness and usability of your product, along with its value and benefits to his business. I like to create a "storyboard" with a very specific set of functions to show off in a set order, along with an associated benefit point to mention for each.

Then I concentrate on the delivery style of the presenters. This is an extended version of the same presenter coaching I do for public event speakers. Tone is much more conversational in a small group demo, but persuasiveness and enthusiasm are vitally important. There are also many things to think about in running your software for a remote audience. I help presenters interact with the software with the audience in mind, so that vital information is not lost and so they are not distracted during the demo.

If requested, I can also work with the materials surrounding the demo, from meeting invitation templates to slide editing to handouts and leave-behind documents. I remain flexible to accommodate the specific needs of each client.

My most recent sales demo client was Centrieva, a company that relies on web conferencing to demonstrate its WEAVEonline assessment management software for higher education. I worked with their presenters to refine both the content and the style of their sales demos.

If the current trend keeps up, I'm going to have to add a new section to the Webinar Success website to focus on this service offering. But in the meantime, you now know there is a resource available if you need it!

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Technorati Tags: Centrieva, demo, sales, sales demo, sales presentation, online demo, web collaboration, web conference, web conferencing, web meeting, webcast, webcasting, webinar, Webinar Success

Small Business Marketing Report From PresenterNet

PresenterNet just sent out an advance invitation to preview a publication entitled "Seven Steps To Small Business Marketing Success." I downloaded a copy, expecting the usual marketing department puff piece about how the vendor's product solves all the world's business problems in one fell swoop. Imagine my surprise when I read the white paper and found it to be a cogent, well-organized piece of business education!

In just twelve pages, the report lays out real, useful advice about how to maximize your marketing effectiveness in several areas. And many of them have nothing to do with buying PresenterNet! I found myself nodding in agreement on each page with their summary descriptions of best practices for creating marketing strategies and messages, connecting with your audience, moving leads to sales, and planning for growth. Although the report is targeted at small businesses, I can't imagine an enterprise marketing professional not finding something of value in the simple, clear ideas.

Of course the report focuses on the use of web conferencing as a marketing and lead conversion medium, since that is their business. The use of PresenterNet's unique "always on" Showrooms gets a brief mention, but it is not overbearing at all and fits nicely into the general conceptual framework. Another exclusive feature of PresenterNet is the ability to embed interactive controls in your presentations to let audience members do things like setting sliders and answering fill-in-the-blank questions. It is a big step up from the simple multiple choice polls that have become the standard in the industry for audience interaction. The report is so subtle on this subject that you might miss it completely, but this is an area where PresenterNet can improve audience engagement and retention, as well as helping with lead qualification.

You can request your copy of the report from this link: http://www.presenternet.com/info/7steps/index.php

This is one of the few vendor papers I can wholeheartedly recommend as a useful marketing reference. Take advantage of it.

(I almost hate writing things this nice about a vendor because of the inevitable questions I get... No, I have no business relationship with PresenterNet and I don't get any kickbacks, commissions, or investment income from them. I simply got a mass-distribution email from them and liked what I saw.)

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Technorati Tags: lead generation, marketing, PresenterNet, small business, web conference, web conferencing, web event, web meeting, webcast, webcasting, webinar

Babel (Or Babble)

In my last post, I mentioned that I had added a public domain widget to do automatic translation of my blog page into other languages. It's quick and it's free. I believe I also used the phrase "dubious accuracy."

Daniel Watson of IAL Services decided to check out just how dubious the translation was. Since IAL is a full service translation and interpretation company (for a discussion of the differences in terminology, check out this post) with linguists versed in all the major international business languages, he asked two of his team to look at the automatic translation of my post and see how it read in the translated language. The results are hilarious. Here are the English equivalents of my post as closely as they could get the sense from the translated text. I put editorial notes from the translators in italics.

KOREAN:

To the bottom, just now added a small tool lower. It shows several flags sorted in a box without a name. You can click on the flag and see the page’s automatic translation in another language. Very convenient, very cold, in doubt accuracy, not that you everything [or everyone: in this case it’s not clear] can not. If you typically forecast this blog in meal subscriber, you to an active website, have to navigate to use translation function. Go, throw it suddenly at my position credit with expired it, to give to me Top David Chao in [or to] web conference blog and like purely because it is, and I can not wait to see automatic interpreter with words suddenly thrown what says “,” .

ITALIAN:

I have added just a widget little wonderful down towards the right of the inferior part of the frame page of Webinar Blog. Shows that quite a lot of small flags of the country grouped in untitled the box [as in a box to move things]. You can sprint on a small flag and see an automatic translation of the page in another language. Very cheap. Very cold. Dubious exactness, but you [plural] not can [third person singular] have everything. If you observe normally this blog in a reader of nutrition, you will have to cross at Web site active to use the translation function. For give to him accreditation where it is due, saw the widget on communication Blog of light receptor of David Chao and pleasant it so much that plunked [word left in original language] it on my location. And cannot wait [literally “cannot wait” as if you were waiting for someone] to see what the automatic translators make with the word “plunked." [left in original language].

Ah yes... Very cold, in doubt accuracy. What prophetic words!

Maybe -- just maybe -- there is a reason to use live translation services rather than automated ones.

Oh, by the way, a big shout out to those of you who forecast this blog in meal subscriber. I appreciate your loyalty!

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Technorati Tags: IAL, IAL Services, Daniel Watson, translation, Webinar Blog

Now Available In Your Choice Of Languages!

I just added a wonderful little widget down towards the bottom right of The Webinar Blog framing page. It shows several country flags grouped in an untitled box. You can click on a flag and see an automatic translation of the page into another language. Very convenient. Very cool. Dubious accuracy, but you can't have everything.

If you normally view this blog in a feed reader, you'll have to navigate to the active website to use the translation function.

To give credit where it's due, I saw the widget on David Chao's Web Conferencing Blog and liked it so much that I plunked it onto my site. And I can't wait to see what the automatic translators do with the word "plunked."

 

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Technorati Tags: translation, web conferencing, webcasting, webinar, Webinar Blog