The Webinar Blog

Adobe Connect Ending Pay-Per-Use?

A big thank you to Matt Bovell at Vell Group LLC for alerting us to the fact that Adobe has told pay-per-use customers they will have to switch to a monthly or annual subscription starting in October. I have not seen any official announcement on the web, so I am purely going off Matt's blog post which mentions that Adobe is pointing existing Connect customers to an alternative pay-per-use offering from InterCall.

Adobe has been gradually refining its business model for several years. The company has almost completely done away with perpetual use licenses for its products in favor of ongoing subscription licensing. Adobe has also focused its sales, marketing, and support emphasis on large enterprise clients rather than individuals or small businesses. The smaller volume, smaller revenue customers are served through third-party resellers and channel distributors (including InterCall).

A few weeks ago, stock analyst firm Trefis published an updated look at Adobe forecasting a modest increase in its stock price based on some of the aforementioned business model transformations. They call out Connect by name, saying:

"The adoption of Creative Cloud will negatively impact Adobe’s packaged software, while up-selling to Adobe marketing cloud will pressure LiveCycle & Connect pro revenues. We expect revenues from these divisions to decline in the future."

Although the elimination of the pay-per-use option as an Adobe offering is a pity, it is likely to impact relatively few customers. I am guessing that webinar consultants and support specialists such as Matt and myself are fairly rare in taking the time to learn the Connect platform for only occasional one-shot use. Adobe Connect is very powerful and flexible, but there is a significant learning curve. You don't just grab it as a newbie for producing a quick webinar on the fly.

As much as I like having every possible option available to me when choosing technology for a webinar, I can understand why Adobe would want to focus its internal energies and costs on the population segment that provides the highest revenue for the product. Especially if Trefis is correct in forecasting a decrease in the contribution of Connect to overall corporate earnings. It simply makes business sense to simplify licensing options and reduce operating costs associated with Connect.

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Differences Between Video Conferencing And Video Presentation

Cisco created a cute little marketing piece designed to build awareness of video conferencing. It focuses on "5 video conferencing characters everyone knows."

It is fine as a conversation starter, but is strangely lacking in delivering helpful tips or even having a consistent viewpoint. For instance, character type 2 is described as "The Interloper" who lets animals and kids make inappropriate noises, jump on their laps, or ask a question. That sounds bad. Then in italics they say "Maybe a different species or age group can give your meeting some new energy." So is it good?

"The Hoarder" is described as having too many jumbled objects behind them, requiring use of a backdrop or close-up to hide the mess. Then the italics say "Though some may find it embarrassing, it allows you to get to know people on a more personal level."

And "The Cruncher" snacks or eats a meal during the conversation. In italics Cisco says "If you're comfortable taking bites between comments, go for it."

It's possible the italic comments are sarcastically humorous. I really can't tell. But honestly, it doesn't matter. My viewpoint is that a private videoconference between two consenting adults is like sex. Whatever both parties are comfortable with is fine and it's nobody else's business how they interact with each other.

But web conferencing companies keep confusing video conferencing with video presentation… And that can get you in a world of trouble.

A presentation is designed to accomplish an objective. To inspire, educate, persuade, or drive audience members to action. The presentation is often the audience's first contact or impression of the speaker and the business.

Training programs have existed for decades in how to use body language, gestures, facial expressions, and other techniques for being effective in person as a speaker in front of an audience. But translating those techniques to video (especially close-up webcam video) is tricky. The camera focuses a viewer's eye more closely on small details that can be overlooked in a physical setting. And things that feel natural to the presenter or look natural to an audience in a full-frame stage context can look wrong in a tightly framed camera shot. TV professionals learn specialized techniques for appearing in close framing, but they are not commonly taught to the general business population.

If you are giving a public presentation while using video, you can't be as cavalier about your video environment. Clothing, lighting, head and eye movement, facial expressions, gestures, and background all affect attendee impressions of you and your business.

If you are not completely comfortable with the added setup and performance aspects of presenting a good video image, you are probably best off avoiding it. Remember, just because the technology allows a capability doesn't mean you have to use it. If you are willing to put in the time and effort to use video effectively, that's great. It can be a wonderful tool when used correctly.

If you want some very fast "quick tips" for appearing on webcam, my old guest post on the Mr. Media Training blog is still valid. It's a very fast checklist of some of the most important items to control. You can find it by clicking this title: "13 Ways To Improve Your Next Video Or Web Conference"

Oh, getting back to that Cisco piece… If you are a Cruncher, stop it. Don't eat on camera. Ever. Close-ups of chewing are never flattering.

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WiFi Wreaks Webinar Woes

I replied today to a comment on an old post and thought I should take the time to elucidate in a longer form.

Luc wrote in on a blog post of mine from three years ago. In "Why Does Webinar Audio Stink?" I called attention to the fact that audio quality on webinars is substandard - both in live streaming and in recordings. Many people have added their frustrations and dissatisfaction in the comments section, but I have seen little in the way of technical improvement.

One of the contributing factors is still the age-old dilemma of competitive software development and sales… Performance improvements aren't sexy. Marketing departments want new features and capabilities they can show off, not incremental and intangible advances in sound quality.

But I believe a second contributing cause is the growth of wireless internet connections (I'll use "WiFi" as a convenient shorthand for all the different types of wireless networks and ask the technology lexicography police to let it slide).

I regularly work on client webinars with both presenters and attendees connecting via WiFi. In many locations it is getting well-nigh impossible to find a hardwired Ethernet port. People regularly watch and present from hotel rooms, office conference rooms, commuter trains, and field locations around the world.

The problem with WiFi for streaming content is that it is inconsistent. Even running the standard pre-webinar quality tests is no guarantee of performance thirty minutes (or thirty seconds) later. A little bit of interference from other signals on the same channel, a small shift in your device's antenna orientation, or instantaneous local load as your neighbor starts to stream a movie or download a giant email attachment can interrupt the flow of data to your system.

As individuals watching recorded content by ourselves, that's normally not a big deal. We may notice occasional brief interruptions or buffering pauses, but most of us have become so used to them that they don't even register consciously. Our brain smoothes over the little pause or we accept the need to buffer a bit more data before proceeding with our content.

But in a live webinar, everyone is supposed to see and hear everything at the same time. If a presenter asks a question of the audience, s/he wants to see comments coming in right away. If we display a poll, we need to collect and display accumulated responses immediately. If we show a video clip, we need to know that it has finished playing for all attendees before we resume our live presentation narration. You can't let each participant accumulate their own little buffering pauses, as eventually nobody is seeing or hearing the content synchronously with anybody else.

So what is a technology vendor to do? They need to plan for worst case scenarios, attempting to create a trouble-free synchronous, interactive experience for all users. At the same time, they are actively promoting the use of ever more bandwidth intensive features, such as live webcam video, presentation of video clips, collaborative whiteboards, and more.

What does that translate to? More compression, lower sampling rates and frame rates, and a search for any and every opportunity to cut corners. What we end up with as users is an experience carefully calculated to achieve the minimally acceptable levels of quality that won't make customers actively leave. And indeed, why should we change vendors based on average audio quality? It is likely to be just as bad with the next technology, as they all face the same dilemma.

If there was a brilliant solution to this problem, someone would have implemented it by now. It may be quite literally insurmountable until we get some new global high-throughput wireless internet infrastructure, used by every person on the planet. In the meantime, the webinar vendors can only look enviously and longingly at the dedicated site-based video conferencing products from Polycom, Cisco, and others.  "Oh, what we could do if we knew that every participant in a meeting was connecting via a dedicated hardwired broadband connection!"

I'm still looking for a webinar vendor willing to differentiate themselves based on having noticeably superior audio quality in both live meetings and recordings. So far I have not found one.

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