The Webinar Blog

WebEx Doesn't Like Windows 10

FIXED: SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM

I upgraded one of my computers to Windows 10 and ran into a problem with WebEx Meeting Center and Event Center. Attempting to join a meeting in progress resulted in the following error:

Invalid input or system error. Please try again or contact your site administrator.

A quick search on Google revealed several threads dedicated to this topic. Users reported the error with all the major browsers: Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox.

From the context of the messages, I get the impression that WebEx worked fine with the initial release version of Windows 10, but an update or system patch in early September seems to have broken the functionality. One user tracked patches back to a potential problem with KB2267602 - a definition update for Windows Defender, but that has not been verified as the culprit by Microsoft or Cisco.

Another user says that WebEx is not properly parsing the Windows 10 User Agent String.

There are workarounds that have been found for Google Chrome (installing a third-party add-in called ieTAB) and Internet Explorer (use Developer Tools to set Document Mode and User Agent String to IE 9), but these are too advanced and intrusive for most casual web conference attendees.

One hopes that Cisco or Microsoft will patch their code soon to resolve the incompatibility, but in the meantime, WebEx meeting hosts should be prepared to field calls from attendees with Windows 10.

UPDATE OCT 1: That was fast! WebEx has fixed the incompatibility with a new Release 30. It lets users join from Windows 10 computers. If you have a hosted account, you should already be upgraded or have it scheduled. 

To check your WebEx version number, log in and go to Support - Downloads in the left navigation panel. A page will display with your Meeting Center or Event Center version number. You want to see 30 as the high-level integer portion.

By the way, they altered the user interface slightly, which caused me to spend an hour with a WebEx tech rep, trying to figure out why buttons were not appearing. He didn't know about the changes either. The Participant panel no longer displays buttons at the bottom for Raise Hand and Audio. Raise Hand is now a toggle icon next to the attendee's name, and Audio controls must be accessed from the top command bar. In a nice functionality addition, people with their Chat panel closed now get a pop-up notification if a message comes in.

Technorati Tags: WebEx,WebEx Meeting Center,WebEx Event Center,Windows 10,web conference,web conferencing,web meetings,online meeting,web seminar,webinar,webcast,webcasting

Driving Webinar Registrations And Conversions

You still have time to register for my free webinar on Thursday where I will present best practices for boosting registration and sales conversion rates in marketing webinars. No BS, no fluff, and I'm not trying to sell anything. Just straightforward tips and guidelines that you can apply in your own lead generation webinars.

This educational webinar is sponsored by Chief Marketer and Adobe. It should be a fun session, and as always, I will be answering audience questions on the air.

Register at http://j.mp/1iJFEse

Details:

• Date: Thursday, October 1
• Time: 1pm New York time (click for local conversions)
• Duration: 60 minutes

Looking forward to seeing you online!

Do You Know What Your Webinar Audiences Want?

Loyal blog reader Brett wrote to ask me for guidance in building a survey for his company's customers before introducing webinars as an alternative to in-room training classes.

I was struck by how infrequently I hear of organizations actually surveying their target audiences to discover preferences. Instead, I get requests for studies of public attitudes or results from vendors about large-scale patterns across all types of events, industries, and audience segments.

If you rely only on data from a webinar vendor about viewing habits in general, you lose any insight into the needs and preferences of your own unique audiences. Corporate executives may (and probably do) have different preferences in terms of length and level of detail than administrative personnel, who may prefer different times and days of the week from programmers, doctors, or car mechanics.

If you are just running lead generation webinars out to the general public, you don't have easy access to survey populations, so you work with any data you can get. But if you are going to use webinars to bring additional value to your own customer base, association membership, or industry group - why not ask them what they want?

I have put together some sample questions I might use for polling customers or members about their webinar preferences. Please feel free to use this as a baseline to modify for your own webinar audience studies. Obviously the questions need to address the types of webinars you plan to produce.

You can get to my sample survey at the following link. If you happen to have a SurveyMonkey Pro account, I will be happy to copy it over to your account so you can edit it for your own needs.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/webinarpref

I urge you to find out what different segments of your population want for different types of webinar use. And if you have already performed these kinds of surveys, I would love to hear about your experiences in the comments section. What kind of response rate did you get? Did you find any surprises? Have you ever checked preferences for one type of webinar use against another?

If you are reading this in an external feed reader and want to leave a comment, please click this link to take you to the post on the source blog.

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,web meetings,online seminar,web training,online training,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing,market research

The Plot Thickens At Citrix

Looks like we need to hold off on speculation about the potential sell-off of GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, and the rest of the Citrix Online division. Liana Baker and Greg Roumeliotis wrote an article on Reuters the other day saying that Citrix is now shopping out the entire company in the hopes of selling it as a complete package.

Wow. That changes the entire value equation. Citrix has a market cap of $11.6 billion, making it a much tougher acquisition cost to justify. And the company has several very different lines of business, making it harder to fold in under an existing infrastructure.

According to the Reuters article (which references "people familiar with the matter"), has Citrix reached out to Dell. I would be surprised if Dell chose to expand its business operations in this much of a new direction. But honestly, it is hard to think of a single buyer who would want Citrix's complete blend of communication, networking, and virtualization services. Suddenly this looks more like a potential play for Cisco. They surprised me when they bought WebEx years ago and they could surprise me again with the purchase of Citrix. At least the product lines fit in with existing Cisco offerings.

If we believe the article, there must be deeper problems at Citrix than just a lack of support for the GoTo product line. The authors include the following foreboding sentence:

"If Citrix does not sell itself in its entirety, it will not just seek to sell or spin off its GoTo products, but it will also explore options for other assets down the line, according to the sources."

Ouch. That has all the earmarks of an emergency fire sale! The jury is out on this one, but what once seemed like a fairly simple division spin-off is now a much bigger deal.

Technorati Tags: Citrix,GoToWebinar,GoToMeeting,Dell,web conferencing,webcasting,web meetings,web event,web conference

Why The Delay On Shifting Citrix Online?

When last we gazed upon the ticking time bomb sitting under Citrix Online (home of GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting, among other products), I hazarded a guess that PGi was the most likely company to acquire the unit and technologies in a sell-off. That was back in July and nothing has happened. What could be causing such inaction when Citrix management had publicly alluded to a search for "strategic alternatives" for the division? The ongoing uncertainty can't be good for employee morale or strategic momentum.

Marc F. Beattie at Wainhouse Research has some ideas on that question. He points to the recently announced acquisition of PGi by Siris Capital Group. That's a huge transaction, costing about one billion dollars and changing PGi from a public to private organization. Beattie thinks that PGi is going to have to reduce concentration on standalone audio conferencing (how does a company make money with that anymore?) and advance their involvement in Unified Communications & Collaboration. More and faster technology/marketshare acquisitions will be key. Guess who just happens to be on the auction block for such a deal?

So the delay could be caused by nothing more than the acquirer itself getting acquired, and letting the ink dry on all the paperwork so that funds become available for the Citrix purchase. Of course we could both be wrong and the GoTo products could go to someone else or become their own independent business operation (wonderful for end users, but unlikely). Still, I wouldn't bet against the Siris/PGi/Citrix chain of events if I were putting money on the outcome.

Technorati Tags: PGi,Citrix,Citrix Online,Siris Capital,Marc Beattie,Wainhouse Research,GoToWebinar,GoToMeeting,web conferencing,webcasting,webinar,web meetings,online meeting,webcast,web conference

In Support Of Decisiveness

An unusual thing happened today. A local businessman wrote me and said he was collecting "words of wisdom" and asked if I would contribute a quick sound bite on something useful to know, follow, or do in business.

A thousand thoughts swirled around in my brain, each swimming to the surface only to be discarded as trite, obvious, overused, or too specific to be applied as a generic tip.

And then I remembered a favorite quote from some book I read as an adolescent… "The mark of a great leader is the ability to make fast decisions. If they later turn out to be right, so much the better."

I remembered that as coming from a Robert Heinlein novel. He loved tossing out pithy aphorisms of that sort. But I can't find any such quote in my Google searching and nothing even reasonably close from Heinlein. The best matches I came up with were both from military commanders:

"When a decision has to be made, make it. There is no totally right time for anything."
    --General George Patton

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."
    --Napoleon Bonaparte

No matter the attribution, there is a great underlying truth to be found in the concept. In business, the vast majority of people don't want to make a decision. Making a decision makes us feel vulnerable. "What if things don't turn out well and I get blamed for the outcome?" So people solicit group discussion, tossing around the possibilities and delaying making a decision until backed into some kind of deadline-induced grudging consensus.

I run into it with my enterprise webinar clients all the time. I ask something like: "Do you want to add an audience poll?" or "Do you want to hold questions to the end or take breaks along the way for questions?" Instead of a simple answer, it turns into a ten-minute discussion group topic, wasting a lot of valuable employee time.

The one that really makes me shake my head is when I am moderating a webinar and ask a presenter "Would you like me to refer to you as Robert, Bob, or Mr. Smith?" They hem and haw and finally say "I guess it doesn't matter… Whatever you like." Every presenter should have the answer to this question ready for immediate use. Pick one. If it doesn't matter, then get the question off the table so you can move on to something worthy of your time and attention.

Of course many (if not most) business decisions have greater importance, subtlety and impact than those trivial examples. But even in these cases, the thing that separates leaders from followers is the willingness to make a choice. That doesn't mean "act rashly" or "ignore facts." It simply means that after taking note of available information and considering possibilities, you need to choose one of your options. Do it. Of course you don't know whether it is the right decision at the time… If you knew that, there wouldn't be a need for a decision!

"But what if it turns out badly?" I hear you cry. Then you will have gained new information, insight, and data you didn't have earlier. So you use that to make a new decision. You can't change the past. All you can do is incorporate the latest and best information to make new decisions. This is an ongoing process. Sometimes the new information you get is that following the previous course of action produced bad results. Okay, now you know that and are ready to make a new decision (Not a "different" decision… A "new" decision. That's an important distinction.).

So that's my word of business wisdom for the day. Take a chance. Separate yourself from the safety of the pack. Make a decision when it needs to be made. If it turns out to be right, so much the better!

Technorati Tags: decision making,leadership,management,Robert Heinlein,Napoleon Bonaparte,George Patton

Product News From Adobe And ReadyTalk

Ah, the fall season. Kids back in school, workers back from summer vacations, and businesses cranking up their promotional work to bring in that all-important end-of-year revenue before the holidays. It's true for users of web conferencing (Labor Day to Thanksgiving is my busiest time of year) and it's true for vendors of web conferencing.

Yesterday we saw a new competitive program launched by ON24. Today we have announcements from ReadyTalk and Adobe.

ReadyTalk published a press release announcing ReadyTalk Webcast and ReadyTalk Webinar Professional Services. The announcement makes it look like the webcast product is just the previously existing (and still available) webinar product with the addition of streaming video. But I asked ReadyTalk director of marketing Bo Bandy for details and found out that Webcast supports PowerPoint animations, localization for 17 languages, and audience sizes up to 10,000 or more (compared to 3,500 for webinars).

ReadyTalk Webcast can be licensed for self-service ongoing use or as a managed service for full production of a one-time web event. In the self-service options, I noted with surprise that ReadyTalk created a lower-cost plan that limits webcasts to two speakers per event. That is the first time I have seen such a limitation, and I am not sure how they enforce it.

ReadyTalk's professional services offering is designed to put me out of business (grin), providing help with scheduling, customization, moderating, and technical support.

Meanwhile, the Adobe Connect team has been keeping busy with improvements to their core web conferencing product. A blog post today introduced Adobe Connect 9.5, highlighting improved access to and convenience for HTML5 content and MP4 webinar recordings. As a "point release" this is not intended to introduce major new functionality, and is more likely to be understood by and important to existing customers than new prospects.

A full four years ago I wrote about Adobe's strategic move towards HTML5 on mobile devices, with a shift away from Flash as a core technology seemingly inevitable. HTML5 adoption has been slower than expected, as many end users have been surprisingly content to hold onto old versions of operating systems and web browsers. People are not upgrading to HTML5 browsers in a large enough majority to make the new technology self-sufficient as a universal delivery platform yet.

Adobe Connect 9.5 cautiously advances the HTML5 story by allowing HTML5 content produced in Adobe Captivate and Adobe Presenter to be played in an Adobe Connect virtual classroom. That designation is important… You must be using the virtual classroom version of the product and users must download and install an add-in in order to see the newer content.

Using Virtual Classroom as a test bed to track adoption makes sense. Instructional content designers are often more interested in incorporating fancier interactive components than other end users of web conferencing, so they can appreciate the advantages and be willing to put up with tradeoffs or extra steps in accessibility.

I spoke with Peter Ryce, my long term contact as an Adobe Connect product evangelist, and he showed me examples of new third-party "custom pods" that use HTML5. This is a nice enhancement for mobile users, as many of the older Flash-based third-party extensions ended up showing as "unsupported content" on mobile devices that didn't support the Flash Player.

Adobe Connect had previously allowed customers to convert webinar recordings from the proprietary Adobe interactive format to a "view-only" standard MP4 video file. But you had to request the conversion as a paid service from Adobe. The new 9.5 release allows users to locally convert recordings to MP4 for free as a self-service option. Thank goodness! Interestingly, you can tweak video options in order to balance file size vs. quality, but there are no corresponding adjustments for audio. It seems like a strange oversight.

Additional enhancements include better integration between Connect and Adobe Experience Manager, improvements to streaming video performance, and some cosmetic and reporting updates.

 

Technorati Tags: ReadyTalk,Adobe Connect,webcast,webcasting,webinar,web seminar,online event,web event,web conference,web conferencing,web meetings

ON24 Will Pay For You To Switch Webinar Platforms

ON24 put out a press release today announcing a new competitive marketing promotion. Taking a page from the mobile carrier wars, ON24 says they will pay the remainder of your contract with a competitive web conferencing vendor if you switch to ON24.

The press release gives a link to a web page saying "full details on the offer can be found here." But when you go to that page, you don't get many details. The sum total of the explanation is:

Switch to the ON24 webinar marketing platform today and we’ll buy you out of your old contract. Offer valid until October, 31 2015. Maximum savings of $5,000. 2 year contract required. Offer subject to verification of eligibility. Additional terms and conditions apply. Talk to an ON24 sales representative to learn more.

That's not really enough to qualify as "full details on the offer." I think it's interesting that ON24 is requiring a two year commitment to their platform… Just about every vendor in the industry has settled on a one-year commitment period for customers who don't want single-event or month-to-month pricing. This could push commitment discounts out to two years as a new standard if other vendors follow suit.

Another thing I find fascinating is that ON24 is directly targeting customers of Cisco WebEx and Citrix GoToWebinar. This is part of ON24's ongoing strategy to expand their sweet spot from the old days when they were known primarily for giant webcasts (often focused on publishing events or investor relations calls). They used to compete with giant-audience webcasters such as TalkPoint and Thomson Reuters. Now they want to position themselves as appropriate for more frequent, smaller-audience webinars where WebEx and GoToWebinar have established strong marketplace brand recognition.

The repositioning is explicitly referenced in the press release with a quote from Chief Marketing Officer Joe Hyland: "Previously, technology of this caliber was only available to large enterprises: we are democratizing the industry's best webinar marketing platform for companies of all sizes."

The strategy of going after a larger cut of the marketplace seems to be paying off, according to the press release. They point to 90% revenue growth for their Webcast Elite product in 2014, with more than 40,000 webinars hosted that year.

Feel free to post in the comments section whether you would be tempted to take a vendor up on a contract buyout offer as a way to facilitate switching your web conferencing provider mid-contract. I think it's an interesting idea.

Technorati Tags: ON24,WebEx,GoToWebinar,Joe Hyland,webinar,web seminar,web conference,web conferencing,online seminar,online conference,webcast,webcasting

Digital Samba's International Perspective On Web Conferencing

If you are one of my American readers, I'll bet you've never heard of Digital Samba. It is a 12-year-old web conferencing vendor with a product called OnSync. Still not ringing any bells? That may be changing soon.

Digital Samba is headquartered in Spain, making it one of the relatively few web conferencing manufacturers not based in the United States. US sales have been handled by a channel partner operating independently, and in the way of such things, have gone through several acquisitions making it hard to trace the lineage. Most recently the North American operations were handled by Access Fiber Solutions.

But that is not the only reason OnSync and Digital Samba have been flying under the radar. They haven't done much advertising and marketing to the direct end user segment, concentrating instead on offering OnSync as a "white label" technology that can be rebranded and resold under various names by other companies (most commonly Telcos and other communication service providers). If you use a proprietary web conferencing product from a communications company, you may actually be using Digital Samba's OnSync.

Last week the company issued a press release announcing that they had bought back US operations from Access Fiber Solutions and were seeing revenue growth averaging more than 25% per year. I thought it would be interesting to get a perspective on the web conferencing business from a non-US viewpoint, so I had a talk with Robert Strobl, the Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of Digital Samba.

We set the stage by identifying what types of applications OnSync is best suited for and where it competes in our fragmented industry. Digital Samba's OEM partners compete with the usual big names in the marketplace to satisfy the need for peer-level web meetings and structured webinars, offering the technology along with service and support, which they can deliver locally.

Digital Samba also offers these types of services directly to end customers, but this is a relatively small portion of its overall business and they prefer not to compete with their channel partners in this space. Instead, Digital Samba focuses on virtual classrooms and large webinars supporting 1000 participants or more, both of which are a competitive strength for the company.

Sales are strongest in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, and the US, with significant contributions from South America and the remainder of the European continent. Interest from India and Far East Asia continues to rise as well. The product is offered with a user interface supporting more than 10 languages, and Robert says more can be added on demand.

I asked Robert for his opinion on the understanding and acceptance of web conferencing in the different geographies they serve. He said that at a very general high level, North America is probably 3-4 years farther along the adoption scale than Europe, which is 3-4 years ahead of Asia. But most of Digital Samba's sales are made to customers coming off bad experiences with other web conferencing solutions rather than to companies just getting started with web collaboration, so the OnSync sales cycle does not include much persuasion to adopt and use a web conferencing product.

I asked Robert about the support burden associated with having customers in so many cultures, languages, and geographies. Digital Samba runs its own support department internally rather than using outsourced first-level responders. But in a way, they get the same advantage… The concentration on white label resellers means that those companies take on the task of providing primary support for end users. Robert thinks end support is getting easier anyway, as computer users become more familiar with multimedia issues, use of audio/video peripherals, and web-based applications. As he put it, "Web conferencing is a lot less scary now than it used to be 10 years ago."

Robert echoed a sentiment I have heard from many other web conferencing vendors. We are on the cusp of a major shift in platform functionality and interoperability with WebRTC. We are going to see more innovation and startups investing in niche applications for web and video conferencing. For instance, "Click to talk buttons on websites are going to be huge."

Robert thinks this will lead to more fragmentation and competition as newcomers race to leapfrog older technologies that can't transition as quickly, creating a social shift in the way we use video and audio over the web. He says that Digital Samba is tracking the gradual stabilization of WebRTC standards and business adoption of newer WebRTC-compatible browsers before trying to make the transition itself. He thinks we are probably 3-5 years away from practical widespread use and Digital Samba will be working on prototypes and beta-platforms during this transition period so they are ready to take advantage of improved technical opportunities.

I closed by asking whether European customers demanded strong multilingual features from their web conferencing products. Do they need multiple language streams, provisions for simultaneous translation, multiple language captioning and other specialized functionality? Robert surprised me by saying that there is minimal call for such software support. English acts as a lingua franca for businesses across the continent, and presentations are usually designed for one country at a time so that visuals have text in the proper language and cultural touchstones and priorities can be incorporated that will be most persuasive for the targeted audience.

It will be interesting to see whether OnSync develops stronger name recognition among North American users now that Digital Samba has pulled it back "in house." Possibly not, given the company's focus on supporting OEM use under its clients' branding. But at a minimum, I may be featuring more press releases under the company's own name as it continues to grow and develop its international business.

 

Technorati Tags: Digital Samba,OnSync,Robert Strobl,web conference,web conferencing,webinar,webcast,webcasting,virtual classroom,online meetings,web meetings,online seminar,web seminar

G W Bush Lives On At RHUB

Does anybody remember "Bushisms?" Once a great source of delight for grammarians and presidential detractors, they have faded from memory for most people. But I was skimming through the RHUB Administrator Manual today* and found the following amusingly catty examples used in the section on setting up webinar registration pages:

Notice the Subject and Host for the example webinars?

But wait, it gets better. RHUB also shows an example of the resulting registration page as seen by potential attendees. Look at the top of the page for their one-line description of the sample webinar series:

I guess this is what happens when technical writers get bored. No lesson or moral here. I just thought I'd share the snarky political digs that live on deep in the heart of an otherwise dry tech manual.

* Oh yes… This is how I spend my free time. Doesn't everyone?

Technorati Tags: RHUB,R-HUB,technical writing,web conferencing,webcasting