The Webinar Blog

Finding Local Webcast Service Providers

I got a call today from a woman in Los Angeles. She was preparing to host a hybrid webcast, with a local live audience in the room and a simultaneous feed to remote participants over the web. She told me they were having trouble miking the room so people on the web could hear both the presenters and local audience members. I'm not sure whether she was also trying to make sure that remote attendees could be heard in the room, but that is another common request.

Setting up room audio for local/remote hybrid events is difficult. You usually have problems with volume balance, clarity, and feedback between in-room speakers and in-room microphones.

My caller said she had contacted some local service providers, but kept getting companies who specialized in music events. They couldn't understand why she would want to highlight people speaking in the audience… "Don't you want to eliminate audience noise during the performance?"

Your first inquiry in these situations should probably be with the company that supplies your web conferencing/webcasting software. Some vendors have an in-house staff of event specialists who can come on site to take care of the mechanical aspects. But be careful… These people may only be experienced with running the webcast software and not with the equipment and audio analysis needs involved in setting up audio and video gear. Other webcast vendors maintain relationships with service providers and can either subcontract the services or point you to a reputable contact.

But what happens if you need to find a local provider yourself? I was able to point my caller to a wonderful online resource. I'll tell you about it as well, along with my standard disclaimer that I have no business relationship with them, have not been provided with any incentives for mentioning them, and can't really speak for the accuracy or quality of their listings.

www.productionhub.com features a directory of service providers who focus on various aspects of event production. Use the navigation bar at the top of the page to "Find Crew & Vendors" then "Search Company / Vendor Profiles." There is a category with "Live Event Production Services" that includes all the things you could ever need for your event setup and operation. If you dig down to the sub-category of "Streaming Media" you will find companies who concentrate on web-based events so you get people who understand the needs of a webcast.

The directory lets you narrow your search to a geographic area, and most listings seem to be for the US and Canada.

If you have experience using this resource and can speak to its effectiveness in solving your event services needs, I would love to hear from you!

Technorati Tags: ProductionHub,event services,webcast,webcasting,online event,web event,webinar,web meetings,online meeting,production services,AV services,audiovisual services

Webinar News Of The Week

As usual when I try to skip out for a few days of vacation, interesting news stories pile up. Here are a few things that caught my eye this week. Full stories are available from my portal page at www.webinarnews.info

1) If you have $5000 lying around, you might want to purchase the latest update to the Web Conferencing Global Strategic Business Report. I wish I could afford to take a look and tell you whether the analysis feels authoritative and trustworthy, but I have no such insight. I attempted to contact the distributor via their US Toll Free and East Coast phone numbers. Neither one was answered. The strategic market estimates they tease are fascinating. I'm going to try sending an email to see if I can get a successful contact.

2) ReadyTalk announced a new product offering focusing on small team video collaboration. Called FoxDen, the software is currently being offered as a public beta. It relies on WebRTC, which limits usage to modern browsers that support the new protocol (Chrome is an example). The big advantage is that it should work equally well on mobile devices. I'm a bit surprised to see ReadyTalk moving "downstream" from their support of larger, more structured web events to the world of ad hoc web meetings. There is enormous need for the latter, but so many low-cost/no-cost options that it creates a very different kind of marketing and support requirement for the vendor. I'm wondering if FoxDen might act as a technology proving ground before applying the WebRTC design to their webinar/webcast products in the future?

3) AnyMeeting announced a cooperative arrangement with an integration platform called Zapier. Somehow their press release completely missed any play on "going from A to Z" - which I have to count as a missed opportunity! Zapier seems to act as something of a meta-API, allowing integrations between the webinar data and functions in AnyMeeting and those in third-party products like CRM, SFM, Event Planning, and Emailing services. This is an interesting approach I have not seen before… Most of the webinar vendors build their own tight integrations to select external products. Using Zapier could open up use of AnyMeeting with a much wider range of vendors and services. I'll need to spend some time looking into this one. If you have experience with Zapier, I would love to hear from you.

4) Onstream Media released results from a survey they ran asking about usage, priorities, and preferences for webcasting software and services. Fascinating tidbit: Attendees still like logging into live webcasts from laptops and desktops more than mobile devices. The mobile revolution has not completely taken over yet! Unsurprising tidbit: Price matters a lot when choosing a vendor. Survey results are available for free download without registration. Nice.

5) INXPO announced a new competitive pricing and incentive program to drive greater enterprise adoption of their web event solutions. Included in the program is a guarantee to beat the current price you are paying or give you a free webcast. Maybe they read the results of the aforementioned webcasting survey!

I will try to follow up on these stories in more detail soon. Have yourself a fine Friday and a wonderful weekend.

 

Technorati Tags: webinar,webcast,webcasting,web event,web meetings,web conference,web conferencing,online meeting,online event,web seminar,INXPO,Onstream Media,AnyMeeting,ReadyTalk,Zapier,FoxDen,WebRTC

7 Quick Audio Presentation Tips

While vendors continue to push for greater use of live video in web conferences, the lion's share of conferencing is still audio-only or audio plus visual materials such as slides or documents.

What can you do to be more effective when your audience can't see your face or body language? Here are some quick tips that are easy to implement and have a significant impact on how you are perceived.

 

GENERAL PRESENTATION TIPS:

1) Use the cleanest line you can. Hardwired connection rather than wireless. No speakerphone. Headset is best. Test it on a call with someone you trust before the interview.

2) Put the microphone at the side of your mouth where the upper and lower lips meet. That gives maximum volume without blowing air into the mike.

3) Speak with greater enthusiasm, energy, and volume than you would normally. Disembodied voices are inherently boring, so you need to overcompensate with a bigger, brighter voice than you would use for natural conversation. You should feel uncomfortable and wonder whether you are sounding like a used car salesman… That’s the right level!

4) Make your statements about the listener, not about the subject. So instead of “The system works like this” say “You can use the system in this way.” The words “you” and “your” should be in constant rotation.

 

WHEN WORKING WITH A CO-PRESENTER OR INTERVIEWER:

5) Let the other person completely finish a question before starting to answer.

6) Don’t make little “mm-hm” types of confirmation noises while the other person is talking. When you aren’t talking, stay completely silent.

 

WHEN ANSWERING QUESTIONS:

7) Try to give short answers. You want to deliver each pithy piece of wisdom concisely. If you ramble on for a long time, people lose interest and get frustrated that you are not entertaining more questions.

 

Thus endeth the short lesson for the day. Go forth and let thy voice be heard!

 

Technorati Tags: speaking tips,presentation tips,web conferencing,web conference,webcasting,webcast,webinar,web seminar,web meetings,online meeting,audio conferencing

WebEx Publishes Upgrade - Changes Interface

I had to update my post from yesterday when WebEx pushed out a new version that fixes their problem with Windows 10 access. I am happy to say that you can once again join Event Center and Meeting Center sessions from Windows 10 browsers without needing third-party utilities or changing developer-level settings.

The new version upgrade also changed a few things in the user interface. I happened to be holding a WebEx rehearsal today in Meeting Center and we suddenly realized that controls were missing. At the bottom of the Participants panel, there are usually controls to let meeting attendees raise their hand and configure their audio settings:

Now those buttons were gone.

I got on the phone with a WebEx technical support agent, who tried to replicate the "bug" on his computer. He could not. But we couldn't get the buttons to appear on my computer! After spending close to an hour in multiple tests and periods on hold while he checked with Engineering, he finally announced that I was on a newer release than his version, and the new release seemed to have eliminated those controls.

Raise hand is now implemented as a small toggle icon to the right of the participant's name. Audio controls have to be accessed from the top command bar. So we didn't lose functionality, but I have to change all my screen shots and instruction slides for attendees.

It would have been nice to get some notification or other indication that we were on a new release and that functionality and interface controls had moved. WebEx could set up some kind of message for the meeting host at a minimum. It would also be nice if they informed their own technical support personnel about changes that directly impact users.

Once I knew what was going on, I was able to track down release notes for the new Version 30 software and verify the following:

Some in-meeting experience controls have been consolidated:

• When sharing the screen, the Shared button is replaced with a green outline to indicate that the screen is being shared in the meeting.

• The Raise hand icon moves next to the participant name.

• The Audio button and Invite and remind others to join icon have been removed because they were redundant. Use the options on the Quick Start page or menu commands for these functions.

• The Expel command is available from the right-click menu when the host selects a participant's name.

I was also very happy to see another much-needed piece of functionality slipped in:

• A chat notification appears for the user if the chat panel is closed or collapsed.

Hooray! New users who join a session and don't know how to open the Chat panel can now see messages sent to them. Great for moderators trying to get everyone on the same page.

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. These changes apply to version 30 as the high-level integer portion.

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