The Webinar Blog

Adapting Webinar Practices To The Current Crisis

I'm writing this post on Friday, March 27. It's been a rough week with lots of webinars. And I've come to a painful conclusion, spurred by direct experience and observation… We need to temporarily throw away a number of best practices for virtual presentation in favor of practicality and pragmatism.

The world's economy, job markets, and supply chains were blindsided by the global impact of COVID-19 prevention measures. It turns out that web-based collaboration is facing similar unprecedented disruption factors:

1. Usage rates for all major web conferencing platforms have skyrocketed past any stress testing and load projections those companies ever considered. Zoom, Webex, and GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar are probably taking the biggest hits, as they are the names most familiar to consumers. But the sudden increase in usage has hit every vendor.
   
   
2. Presenters and attendees are working from home, straining home internet connections that struggle to carry the bandwidth needed for continuous 2-way streaming collaboration. Add the overhead from family members also streaming movies, education, and personal communications. There's going to be congestion and slowdowns.
   
   
3. We've thrown away wired connections as a society. Everything is wireless, creating additional chokepoints and opportunities for interference, dropouts, and bandwidth contention.
   
   
4. More presenters are incorporating the past decade's recommendations for entertaining and engaging audience members. They are making use of live streaming video, audio/video clips, advanced PowerPoint design with animations and slide transitions, and screen-sharing demonstrations of web sites and applications.

 

THE EFFECT ON WEBINARS

The result of all this was painfully apparent in webinars I moderated and attended this week. Loss of audio/video synchronization. Audio lags between presenters. Choppy, buffered audio and video. Temporary dropouts in seeing presented material.

I watched one poor sign language interpreter trying to provide sign language for deaf attendees on an international conference with 1000 participants. He was obviously working from home like everyone else. His image was so buffered and choppy that I couldn't imagine a person being able to follow along. It would be like trying to listen to a spoken language interpreter with a severe stutter.

When it happens on one of your webinars, you will NOT know where the problem lies. Are you the only person seeing it, caused by congestion on your local network? Is it a problem with the presenter's uplink? Is it a temporary overload in the web conferencing software servers that needs to be load balanced? Is it something to do with a content delivery network that distributes the data and that you don't even know exists?

 

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRESENTERS

I think the only way to deal with the situation is to acknowledge the temporary circumstances and modify our practices accordingly. Here are some suggestions to make sure you are able to get the basics of your message out to your public with the least chance of failure.

Please note that I recommend these primarily for formal outbound webinars reaching large numbers of people. You can continue to hold your peer-to-peer web meetings and video conferences without worrying too much about these considerations, as people are more forgiving of little glitches in private conversations.

1. If your webinar product allows upload of slides rather than screen sharing, use it. Adobe Connect, ON24, BigMarker, and Webex all have modes that allow you to upload a PowerPoint file to the web conference.They may throw away slide animations and transitions, so design accordingly. Using this mode of operation caches the images and makes sure that all attendees see the same thing at the same time. And if one presenter develops a connection issue, another presenter can take over advancing the slides. Some products do not offer this type of operation… Zoom and GoToWebinar rely on sharing your screen to show slides.
   
   
2. Get rid of movement animations and transitions on your slides. No fly-ins, slide-outs, morphs, crawls, or other things that need continuous point-to-point updates on a subsecond basis. They aren't showing up smoothly on attendee screens. Simple appear/disappear should be as fancy as you get for the time being.
   
   
3. Turn off your webcam. This greatly reduces the bandwidth requirements for your upload stream and every attendee's download stream. If your image is stuttering and losing audio synchronization, it isn't doing you any good anyway.
   
   
4. If you are a presenter (ESPECIALLY if you insist on appearing on webcam), tell your family members that they can't stream movies or do other internet-intensive activities for that one hour you are presenting. Lower the congestion on your family's network.
   
   
5. Use wires if you possibly can. Eliminate at least one invisible point of failure… Use a plugged in phone or plugged in headset. Try to set up your presentation computer near your home's wireless router. The router probably (devices vary!) has a port in the back that lets you connect an Ethernet cable (also known as an RJ45 connector). If you can get your computer hooked directly to the router, you'll have better, more reliable network performance.
   
   
6. Have a backup plan in place. If one presenter is sharing their screen to show the presentation slides, assign someone else with the responsibility of taking over in case the presenter has network problems. They should have the same presentation open in PowerPoint on their computer and be ready to show their screen to take over the visual presentation if needed.
   
   
7. Make sure presenters can switch to a backup audio mode. If your webinar platform offers presenters a choice of using computer or phone audio, have them select phone mode first and write down the dial-in numbers and personal ID code on a piece of paper. Then switch to computer audio. If they have network problems, they can switch to telephone dial-in as a backup, referencing their note paper.

 

Some of these tips are inconvenient. Most fly in the face of recent advice on how to spice up a web presentation to involve an audience. Your vocal style and storytelling technique is going to have to get better to compensate. But the first order of business is to get a clear channel of communications out to your audience. Everything else is secondary.

 

Technorati Tags: web conference,web conferencing,webinar,web seminar,web meeting,web event,online meeting,online event,webcasting,webcast,virtual presentation

Webex Email Customization Is A Complete Dumpster Fire

Webex, oh Webex…
How do I hate thee?
Let me count the ways.

Admittedly, I've been counting the ways for years and years and years. It's easy to do, because they haven't changed the gaping design flaws in a decade or more.

I'm speaking in this case of Webex Event Center, the version of the software used for scheduled webinars or webcasts. And I'm focusing on the event setup that administrators have to do behind the scenes. Heck, let's get more specific than that… We'll focus only on customizing emails that go out to event registrants.

Seems easy and innocuous enough, doesn't it? Oh foolish mortal, you know not the anguish that lies before you.

Here's the section of the event setup page that deals with emails:

Each of those 13 blue links is a separately configured email. Can you save time by combining "Thank You for Attending" and "Absentee Follow-Up" into a single follow-up email that goes to all registrants? No, you can not.

Let's pick any one of them for editing and customization. The process and behavior is the same for each. I'll choose 1st Reminder. I click the link and get a separate pop-up or overlay window:

Oh, there's a scroll bar. I'd like to see everything at once. No problem… It's a separate window, so I can just resize it to a nice big frame that fits everything:

Fooled you! The enclosing frame gets nice and large, but the content stays right where it was, floating around in a big sea of empty white space. Good solid 1998 coding behavior.

Credit where credit is due… If I click the Edit button, I actually do get a resizable edit window that I can enlarge inside the enclosing frame. So that's nice. Why couldn't they do that for the preview window? Nobody cared enough.

Now let's take a look at the content of that email. What are all those funny symbols and unreadable junk? Why, those are HTML tags and attributes, my dear! You say you don't know how to code HTML by hand? Sorry… There is no "What You See Is What You Get" visual editor. No helpful insert buttons. Just a text editor that lets you type code. Remember, we wouldn't want to update the product to reflect capabilities introduced in the last 20 years. Go learn HTML coding, Ms. Webinar Host. We'll wait right here.

What else is hidden in that mishmosh? I see things like
%Topic%
%EnrollmentID%
%TeleconferenceInfoNN%

Are those HTML codes as well? No, those are proprietary Webex placeholders that get filled in by the system when the email gets sent. These are actually very useful. Okay, where is the list that lets me pick and choose the variables I want to embed? Oh, there isn't one. You need to just know the special identifier names that Webex coined. Can't remember one? Maybe it's listed when you click on the big ? button for help. Nope. Nothing there. I'm sure they are in the online documentation system somewhere. Why don't you go search for a while and see if you can find them?

Let's assume we made our edits and we want to check our work. I'll bet if I click the Preview button it shows me a nice view of the finished email. No, of course it doesn't. It shows that same scrolled version that can't be expanded in the frame. And it doesn't fill in any of the variables, so I still see a bunch of percent signs and placeholder names.

Well, heck. I'm a gambling man. Let's save what we've done. I click the Save button. And get this:

No, you aren't missing anything. That picture is an accurate snapshot. This is a new bug that has given me hours of fun today. The save takes me to a blank frame and throws away all my edits. I try it numerous times and occasionally it does a proper save, but more frequently loses everything. I have to start over from scratch and hope that the next time I hit the save it might happen to work. Neat!

I'm a charitable guy… Let's assume they get that fixed sometime this year and we are able to save our work consistently. Now all I need to do is send a quick test to see how the email looks in various email clients or devices. And maybe send a test version to the business stakeholders so they can sign off on it as it will look to an attendee, with values all filled in for the variables.

You know what's coming, don't you? There is no way on God's Green Earth to send a test email. Heck, you can't even see the entire preview version at once without the scroll bar. Better cross your fingers and hope your HTML skills are top notch and that you didn't hit a wrong keystroke somewhere.

Now repeat the whole process anywhere from 4 to 13 times per webinar. That's how I've been spending my evening. How's yours going?

Technorati Tags: Webex,Cisco Webex,Event Center,Webex Event Center,webinar,web seminar

Watch Remote Interpreting In Action

I just got a notice from Barry S. Olsen informing me of an online conference coming up this week for the professional interpretation industry. Their number one concern at the moment is how to provide multilingual services for conferences that have moved from physical spaces to web collaboration.

Although the two-hour meeting is targeted at interpreters, Barry told me that others are welcomed to register (for free) and attend. You might want to stop by to see an example of a multilingual web conference run on a professional platform built for the purpose. KUDO is sponsoring the event and providing the technology. I have written about the KUDO multilingual webinar solution in the past.

Web conferencing vendors may be interested in hearing about the needs, priorities, and frustrations of the interpreter community firsthand. Companies that host webinars may be interested in seeing how the process works from an attendee perspective as a way to judge whether providing such access might be right for your own online meetings.

Here is the data if you want to check it out:

InterpretAmerica 2020
A Unified Response to Ensure Access to Interpreting Services During the Pandemic
Thursday, March 26
8am-10am California / 11am-1pm New York (click for local time conversion)
https://www.interpretamerica.com/interpretamerica-2020

Make sure to click the SUBMIT button on page 2 after registering. It asks for questions, but does not complete the process until you click the final Submit button.

Technorati Tags: interpreting,multilingual conferencing,KUDO,Barry S. Olsen,web seminar,webinar,web conference,web conferencing,webcasting,webcast,web collaboration,online collaboration,web meeting,online meeting

We Need More Practical Web Conference Control

By now we all know that web conferencing usage has skyrocketed in the face of Work From Home and migration of physical meetings to virtual. That doesn't just mean more use… It means more inexperienced users.

Web conferencing platform vendors have a responsibility to finally step up and fix longstanding design deficiencies in their products. They need to give meeting hosts the ability to unilaterally resolve participant mistakes.

• EXAMPLE 1: A participant types something into a public chat stream that they shouldn't have said. Maybe it's a nasty comment about the presenter. Maybe they didn't notice where their cursor focus was and typed a phrase into the webinar chat that they meant to type into a private instant messaging window: "Oh yeah baby… I can't wait to sex you up!" They're horrified. The webinar host is horrified. Can either of them delete that individual message from the chat? In too many products, the answer is no.
  
  
• EXAMPLE 2: A member of the presentation team accidentally sends a behind-the-scenes message out to all attendees instead of privately to fellow presenters: "Can you believe how stupid some of these people are?" Can you delete that message from the chat? In too many products, the answer is no.
  
  
• EXAMPLE 3: A participant joins the virtual conference with their webcam active and doesn't realize they are being seen by everyone else. Can the host shut down that ONE video stream without turning off video for everyone, including the presenters who are supposed to be on camera? In too many products, the answer is no.

Humans are fallible. Humans dealing with unfamiliar technology are doubly fallible. We aren't going to eliminate human error in virtual meetings… Let's at least find a way to manage it when it occurs.

Technorati Tags: web conference,web conferencing,web meeting,online meeting,web collaboration,online collaboration,webinar,web seminar,webcasting,webcast

How Microphones Affect Web Conference Sound Quality

Come, let’s get nerdy together. In today’s post, I’m going to give you a demonstration that shows how critical your input device can be on a web conference.

I started a web meeting in LogMeIn’s GoToMeeting web conferencing product. I could have used any such product for this demonstration and the choice was somewhat arbitrary. I happened to have the software handy. One convenient feature of GoToMeeting (also found in many of its competitors) is that attendees can choose to provide audio input by computer or telephone. I decided to run through a wide selection of input devices I had lying around my office so you can compare and contrast how they affect the sound your participants hear.

I used the built-in recording capability in GoToMeeting to save the audio to my computer. I then loaded the file into my GoldWave audio editing software. I cut out pauses when I switched devices and balanced volumes between different devices, but that is the only processing I performed.

You can listen to your choice of playback format. All files have identical content… I merely saved them in different formats (compressed and uncompressed) to see if I could hear any appreciable difference between them. I don’t think I can, which is not surprising. GoToMeeting records audio in MP4 format using a 16KHz, 64kbps mono rate. Audio specialists will recognize that this is not particularly high fidelity, but it saves file space and is acceptable for spoken voice. It certainly would not satisfy a professional recording engineer.

I saved the files in higher resolution formats to make sure I was not introducing additional degradation, but that doesn’t make them better than the source. You can’t improve audio resolution.

You will hear me identifying each of 15 different input devices on the recording. I’ll take you through details, impressions, and important considerations after the file listings:

• audio_sources_comparison.flac = 24 bit mono
• audio_sources_comparison.aiff = PCM signed 24 bit mono
• audio_sources_comparison.wav = PCM signed 24 bit mono
• audio_sources_comparison.mp3 = 44.1KHz, 320kbps mono

CAVEAT 1: I kept saying that USB devices were connected to my motherboard. This will annoy computer geeks, as it is not literally accurate. I just meant that I was using my PC’s built-in USB ports and not a third-party sound card. I also kept referencing the currently available version of my Behringer microphone preamp instead of the older model I actually own. The notes below show the model name used in these tests.

CAVEAT 2: Microphones have different responses to different frequencies. You are hearing how they work with my male voice. Higher voices may produce different results.

CAVEAT 3: GoToMeeting uses an audio bridge to convert analog phone inputs to digital for streaming and recording. Computer audio doesn’t have to go through that conversion step. So computer-connected sources almost always sound better ON THIS SOFTWARE than phone sources. You’ll hear that. It does not necessarily mean the phone devices are objectively worse in and of themselves. But this is a fairly common consideration in web conferencing products.

CAVEAT 4: This is NOT a product review that tells you “Product A is definitively better than Product B.” A million things influence the sound you will get using your connections on your computer equipment through your web conferencing software in your room. I’m concentrating on the fact that they are different, not on building a ranking of best to worst.

CAVEAT 5: As I started adding links to products, I found that many of them are currently sold out. The sudden growth in work from home conferencing and disruptions in electronics supply chains are having a significant effect. If you are shopping, you may have to search for alternate sources or wait for supply to catch up with demand.

DEMONSTRATION SOURCES

1) Apple iPhone SE held in the classic manner against the side of the head with the speaker pressed against my ear. Using telephone dial-in.

2) Apple iPhone SE lying flat on my work desk. Using telephone dial-in in speakerphone mode.

3) Apple iPhone SE held flat in my hand several inches in front of my mouth, with the microphone facing me. Using telephone dial-in in speakerphone mode.

4) Apple iPhone SE with the included Apple earbuds headset plugged into the audio jack. There is a thin microphone built into the cord. Using telephone dial-in.

THOUGHTS: No matter how you choose to use a smartphone for calling into a web conference, it’s always a bad idea. In addition to generally lower quality sound, it’s hard to maintain a constant distance between your mouth and the mike. And you will eventually run up against interference, dropouts, signal degradation, or battery drain. Just say no!

5) Aastra desk telephone hard-wired to a cable company phone service. Handset held against the side of the head with the speaker pressed against my ear. Using telephone dial-in.

6) Aastra desk telephone hard-wired to a cable company phone service. Sennheiser HME280i headset plugged into the phone’s headset jack using a hard-wired cable.

7) Sennheiser HME280i headset plugged into an ASUS Xonar Essence STX sound card installed in my desktop computer.

THOUGHTS: Note the difference between 6 and 7. Same microphone, same device. But one of them ran through the phone network and audio bridge. The other didn’t. Quite a change, eh?

8) Logitech H390 wired headset connected to my computer’s USB port.

THOUGHTS: Not the world’s greatest sound, but much better than you will get from a built-in laptop microphone. This is my default recommendation for something cheap and easy to get for guest speakers who need to get up to a level of minimum acceptable quality quickly.

9) Audio Technica ATR20 handheld microphone (dynamic cardioid design) plugged into a TechRise USB audio adapter.

THOUGHTS: This microphone has since been replaced by the similar ATR-1200. Ridiculously cheap for good vocal quality! You will see the TechRise adapter mentioned several times. It’s inexpensive and acts as a convenient USB interface for mikes that have a 3.5mm jack.

10) Audio Technica AT2020 desk microphone plugged into my computer’s USB port.

THOUGHTS: My workhorse for narrative work. The world is split into those who use this and those who use the Blue Yeti. You can’t go wrong with either one. The next step up in quality is much more expensive.

11) No-name, no-brand Chinese earhook “whip” microphone plugged into a TechRise USB audio adapter.

THOUGHTS: Unbelievable! I ordered this from China for $7 shipped. How do they do it?

12) Sound Professionals SP-LAV-1 lavaliere clip-on microphone plugged into a TechRise USB audio adapter.

THOUGHTS: I have never had good luck with inexpensive lavaliere mikes. Sound is variable at best and volume changes as the speaker moves their head. This sits unused in a drawer.

13) Logitech C920S webcam mounted on top of my computer monitor. Connected to my computer’s USB port.

THOUGHTS: My office space is just not set up to get good sound out of a webcam. You can hear it. I am envious of people who have the luxury of open space behind their webcam (especially if they put an acoustic anti-reflective baffle there). No matter what webcam I try, it sounds muddy with a slight tin can echo. So I don’t use my webcam for audio.

14) Audio Technica AT875R shotgun microphone pointed toward my mouth. Phantom power supplied through an XLR connection to a Behringer MiniMIC MIC800 preamp, feeding into an ASUS Xonar Essence STX sound card installed in my desktop computer.

THOUGHTS: As with lav mikes, I have bad experiences getting good, consistent sound out of shotgun mikes. I have stopped trying. The Behringer preamp I use has since been replaced by their Tube Ultragain MIC100, which is what I keep referencing in my narration.

15) JK MIC-J 071S earhook “whip” microphone. Bias power provided by step-down Rode VXLR+ transforming adapter that reduces phantom power voltage and changes XLR connection to 3.5mm stereo plug. Signal processed through a Behringer MiniMIC MIC800 preamp to an ASUS Xonar Essence STX sound card installed in my desktop computer.

THOUGHTS: This was quite the Frankenstein’s monster of an input chain to assemble, but I love those little lightweight whip mikes. They are designed to be used with wireless belt packs, but I don’t believe in wireless. Almost invisible on camera (if it happens to match your skin tone). Great for webcam presentations. But for the price differential and ease of use, it’s hard to recommend this over the slightly thicker and more obvious microphone in #11.

Technorati Tags: audio devices,microphones,web conference,web conferencing,web collaboration,online collaboration,video conferencing,webinar,web seminar,webcasting,webcast

Breaking News - Intrado Adds Multilingual Slide Display

I just saw a press release issued today by Intrado. I haven't had a chance to check out the new functionality, but from the description it looks like it's the very first implementation of a feature I have been requesting for years in our industry.

The press release says that event hosts can upload presentation slides in several different languages, allowing attendees to choose their desired presentation language. The corresponding slides are shown on that user's screen.

Several products have previously allowed simultaneous interpreters to provide audio translations to webcast attendees, but as far as I know, nobody has addressed the issue of translated visuals.

To do this right (and remember, I have not seen Intrado's version, so I'm just guessing at this point), I would assume something very close to the following workflow:

1) The presenter creates a complete slide deck in their preferred host language. I'd be willing to bet that this works for PowerPoint only.

2) The presenter sends the slide deck to a translation agency, which creates translated versions in each desired viewing language. The number of slides must be identical in all translated version files.

3) The presenter uploads each language's slide file to a content "slot" dedicated to the desired display language.

4) In the meeting, the presenter advances slides as in any other web conferencing product. Intrado Studio manages synchronized movement to the same slide number in each of the other display languages.

The press release also mentions that the new Intrado Studio release supports audio interpreters to provide real-time translation of the audio content in each attendee's desired language.

I have a number of questions about the details, and normally I would wait to speak with a company representative before posting this. But I know that Intrado is being hit with the same overwhelming load of customer inquiries as every other vendor in our industry, and it may take them a while to have time to speak with me. I'll follow up with a deep dive as soon as it's practical.

This is a great advance in supporting true multilingual access for global webcast attendees. I'm delighted to finally see it added to a commercial product!

 

Technorati Tags: Intrado,webcasting,webcast,webinar,web seminar,web event,online event,web collaboration,online collaboration

Helpful Tips For Web Conferencing

The Webinar Blog has been my forum for sharing news, tips, and opinions about web collaboration for the past 15 years. I hope to keep it going for many more years.

In this time of crisis, I thought it would be helpful to highlight posts with actionable advice for all the people suddenly facing the prospect of using web conferences, webinars, or webcasts. Web collaboration might be completely new to you or it might be gaining new prominence as a primary means for reaching your employees, customers, partners, and prospects.

My focus is squarely on webinars and webcasts… primarily presentation-oriented, but allowing participation and feedback from audience members. As such, some of the advice is overkill for peer-to-peer meetings and small group discussions. But you should find things that can help you even in these situations (particularly in the section dealing with Presentation Technique).

I have not updated old posts, so you may occasionally find a link to some external site that is no longer valid. I apologize for that, but web addresses change over the course of 15 years!

You can download the complete articles list, organized by general topic area, by clicking on this sentence.

If you prefer having the links online and handy, I have pasted them below. I wish you smooth sailing with your online events, seminars, and meetings. We'll get through this together (but apart!).

Technorati Tags: web collaboration,online collaboration,web meeting,online meeting,web seminar,webinar,webcasting,webcast,web conference,web conferencing

USEFUL ARTICLES FROM THE WEBINAR BLOG:

LOCATION/EQUIPMENT SETUP

· Webinar Audio: You Can’t Fix A Lousy Source

· Improving Webinar Audio Quality - VoIP

· Improving Webinar Audio Quality - Telephone

· Should Webinar Presenters Split Up?

WEB COLLABORATION PLATFORMS/VENDORS/TECHNOLOGY

· Webinar Vendors: Does Size Matter?

· How Flexible Is Your Webinar Technology?

· Top 10 Web Conferencing Support Questions

· Now Available: Checklist For Selecting A Web Event Vendor

SERVICES AND SUPPORT

· Auxiliary Services For Webinars

· Why Use A Web Conference Moderator?

· Finding Local Webcast Service Providers

PRESENTATION PREPARATION

· Webinars, Webcasts, And Scripts

· Can You Read What You Wrote?

WEBINAR PLANNING AND PREPARATION

· Free Webinar Production Checklist

· 7 Lessons From A Bad Webinar

· What Will Go Wrong With Your Webinar?

· Why You Need A Webinar Run Through

· Do You Really WANT Better Webinars?

· How Do You Monetize Webinars?

· Giving A Webinar? Where's Your Checklist?

· Making Life Easier For Webinar Presenters – An Organizer’s Checklist

· Expert Speakers... Aren't

· Why Should You Print Your Presentation Slides?

· Webinar Tip: Handling Overflow Questions

VIDEO CONSIDERATIONS

· Live Video In Webinars And Webcasts

· The Case Against Talking Head Video (1)

· Myth: Casual Video Is Preferred

· The Case Against Talking Head Video (2)

SLIDE DESIGN AND USAGE

· Top 5 Tips For Remote Presentation Design

· How Do Your Slides Look On The Web?

· Starting From Zero With Webinar Slides

· Showing Webinar Slides: Share or Upload?

WEBINAR PRESENTATION TECHNIQUE

· Webinar Presentations Are NOT The Same As In-Room

· Webinar Technology Shift Means Retraining Presenters

· Thinking Differently About Thinking Different

· The Theatrics Of Webinar Presentation

· Can Presenting Be More Conversational?

· Conquering The Fear Of Speaking

· Starting Strong On Your Webinar

· Just Start Already

· Penalty For Rushing - Pacing Your Presentation

· A Little Bit Faster Now, A Little Bit Slower Now

· Shut Up A Minute, Will You?

· Presentation Tip #276: Talk To Me

· Webinar Overload – Too Many Slides

· Webcasting To A Room

INTERACTION TIPS

· Active vs Passive Webinars

· How To Paralyze A Webinar Audience

· Open Chat In Webinars: Best Practices

· Stimulating Webinar Q&A

· How Do You Take Webinar Questions?

· Tips For Webinar Polls

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

· Tips For Panel Presentations

· Prepping A Panel Presentation

· Rehearsing And Delivering A Panel Presentation

· Managing Panelists As A Moderator

RECORDED CONTENT

· Planning For Recorded Presentations

· The Debate Over Recorded Live Webcasts

· A Simulive Webinar Suggestion

· Improving Information Delivery In Webinars

SCREEN SHARING TECHNIQUES

· Screen Sharing In A Webinar: Best Practices

· Step Away From The Mouse

What Kind Of Meeting Are You Moving To The Web?

Coronavirus concerns are everywhere. Companies and individuals are in a rush to move meetings and events to the web. If you are considering joining the migration, you might want to take a moment to classify what types of web collaboration you need. It will make it easier to find the most appropriate software and get the right kind of help for your situation.

1) Person-to-person meetings. Sales calls, one-to-one conversations, interviews, manager-employee talks, consulting sessions… You don't need a lot of fancy features. Just something that lets two people have a fully interactive meeting of equals. This is what Facetime was designed to do on smart phones. Skype has been around forever providing the capability. Web conferencing vendors often allow this functionality as a free loss leader to get people used to working with their products and to "sneak them in" to a corporate environment. Extremely common to have both parties on video, leading to this sometimes being referred to as a "video call."

2) Small group team meetings. Department status meetings, sales calls with a few people, brainstorming sessions… Everyone participates equally and has a fully open and engaged status in the conversation. You can still find free offerings with capacity limits up to 5-10 people in a session, but low cost licensing allows for group sizes ranging up to 100 (20 is a more practical limit to maintain group sanity). Additional features may become useful, such as the ability to share files for download, record the session, or get a transcript of what was said. Session participants need the ability to turn microphones and webcams on and off. Often referred to as a "web meeting," or "web conference" (although web conferencing is also used as an umbrella term for all forms of online collaboration).

3) Webinars and webcasts. The most flexible and wide-ranging category. A generic middle ground between small, fully interactive discussions and huge one-way broadcasts out to passive audiences. Sessions could have anywhere from 20-1000 people in attendance. More structure than (1) and (2), led by one or more presenters, with controlled avenues for feedback and response from the listening audience. Useful features may include those mentioned above, plus interactive attendee polls, multi-question surveys, question management, private presentation team chat, control over content layout, multilingual operation, custom registration and attendance reporting. There is now no practical difference between "webinar" and "webcast" as used in practical conversation, and people interchange the terms at will.

4) Instruction and education. A specialized subset of webinars. Presentation-focused, with the ability to show visual materials such as PowerPoint slides or software demonstrations. Needs vary greatly, with potential benefits from features such as fee-based registration, attendance/attention confirmation for education credit, scored quizzes/tests, ability to break attendees into smaller work groups and reassemble them into the main presentation, ability to ask/answer questions in a controlled format, ability to integrate with Learning Management Systems software. Most common class sizes are in the 5-50 range. There is no universally accepted terminology for this. "Online training" may refer to recorded or self-run on-demand courses, so make it clear that you mean a live interactive web session when talking about this use case.

5) Large-audience broadcasts. Almost exclusively one-way presentation of information to a large audience that is mostly passive. Corporate communications (internal or external), public service announcements and briefings, certain categories of entertainment may fall into this category. If attendees are allowed to submit questions at all, there is no expectation that the majority will be seen or acted upon during the session. This used to be the primary meaning when talking about "webcasts" before that term became synonymous with interactive webinars.

6) Hybrid events. A specialized subset of (3), (4), or (5). Presentations are made to a local audience in the same physical location as the presenter, while additional remote viewers can participate as well. Requires more careful setup and management of the local and remote technologies to ensure that they do not interfere with each other and to provide support for the presenters who cannot split their attention easily between the two audience groups.

7) Virtual events or conferences. An attempt to recreate online the experience of attending a large-scale conference, trade show, or convention with many different presentations, opportunities for networking, opportunities to explore and discuss product offerings. Extremely sophisticated and purpose-built software platforms may allow the event host to recreate or design the virtual conference hall, allow on-screen avatars that move around the virtual space, and log visitor activities. Impractical to set up on a customer's own, this is almost always licensed with dedicated account management and support by the technology vendor.

It is worth mentioning recorded presentations. Clients sometimes ask me about creating a webinar when it turns out they want recorded content for on-demand viewing on the web. This is not a form of online web collaboration and should be considered on its own merits, separate from the 7 categories mentioned here. If the recording is audio only, it's a podcast. If it includes visual content, it is an online video. Even if the material was recorded from a live webinar or webcast, once it is converted to an on-demand offering, it should be thought of and handled as a distinct type of offering.

You may ask why I don't list products or vendors associated with each of the listed categories. There are several reasons. Offerings, deals, and pricing change frequently - especially now as vendors rush to respond to an upsurge in interest. My business focus is solidly on category 3 - webinars and webcasts. I keep a page of vendors and products listed on my Webinar Success website with links to more than 45 offerings in this space. It would be unfair to only mention three or four of them here.

If you are looking at selecting a webinar/webcast product for critical business operations, you may want to review my Checklist For Selecting A Web Event Vendor. It is a long, detailed planning guide that helps you concentrate on the capabilities that are priorities for your needs and helps focus your conversation with potential vendors. Don't bother if you are looking at conferencing technology to handle smaller web meetings though. The guide is only practical for major business decisions that involve serious budgeting.

Technorati Tags: web conferencing,web conference,webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web collaboration,online collaboration,web meeting,online meeting,video conferencing

LogMeIn Keeps Its Users In The Loop

It's time to recognize and laud LogMeIn for continuing a critical service when it purchased the GoTo suite of collaboration products from Citrix.

Anybody can visit https://status.gotomeeting.com/ and sign up to receive status updates on service availability of the various GoTo platforms. You can select which products you want to see updates about - For instance, you may not care about instances that only affect GoToTraining if you are a GoToMeeting user.

I subscribe, and I am always impressed by the rapid response by the company. For instance, in the early hours of this morning I received the following emails in my inbox. Note the time stamps:

• 5:33am - We are investigating reports of login problems
• 5:34am - We have confirmed the issue and are working on a resolution
• 5:45am - We continue to work on resolving it
• 5:56am - We have corrected the issue and are confirming service functionality
• 5:59am - Full resolution confirmed and all systems are 100% operational

Those times are US Eastern, when they hit my inbox. The GoTo engineering team has their primary base of operations in California, where it would have been 2:30 in the morning for them. They may have additional engineering staffs in other locations… I'm not sure. But that's one reason to consider support and response times when considering a web conferencing vendor.

I know many smaller vendors in this space with wonderful engineering and support teams, but they work on their own local business hours. If you run into a problem at a time that isn't part of their work day, you may be out of luck until they can get to it on their schedule. Even if they have an emergency response protocol, it may involve getting someone out of bed to sleepily review an incident report that has been flagged as high priority.

You may enjoy hating on the big, evil corporate monsters (I'll join you sometimes!), but in an industry where customers rely on centralized online hosted services in support of global communications and collaboration, those companies are best equipped to run the inconvenient and expensive round-the-clock support that business users demand. No startup is going to be able to match that.

LogMeIn is the only provider I am aware of that lets you sign up for these "push notifications." A few others have status pages you can visit if you suspect something might be wrong, but even that is rare.

I understand the hesitancy… Highlighting service interruptions and problems can give a negative psychological impression. Vendors don't really want to "air their dirty laundry." And I can tell you that I get a fair number of those incident emails from LogMeIn. Most affect limited numbers of users on limited products, sometimes only running on a particular server in the hosted service network. They are usually extremely short-lived before successful resolution.

I can see where a person getting these emails might think, "Ugh. I don't want to use a product with that many problems!" But any SaaS (Software as a Service) provider is going to face operational glitches when supporting large numbers of hosted accounts. It's inevitable. I truly appreciate having the notifications sent to me, rather than letting me scramble around in a panic during my live webinar, frantically testing and trying to troubleshoot to see if a problem is local to me or is a vendor issue. Adobe Connect, Cisco Webex, ON24… All the big hosted conferencing providers have these things going on behind the scenes. They just don't provide the same level of transparency as LogMeIn. I wish they did.

Technorati Tags: LogMeIn,GoToMeeting,GoToWebinar,web conference,web conferencing,web collaboration,online collaboration,webinar,web seminar,webcasting,webcast,web meeting

GoToWebinar Introduces Integrated Payment Processing

Last Thursday, LogMeIn made an announcement on its blog that GoToWebinar had a new feature: Accept Payments.

I have now had a chance to test out the functionality and I can share some details for anyone considering using GoToWebinar to charge for attendance at online webinars.

Integrated payment processing is a tremendous value-add in the webinar space. Being able to charge attendees to receive training or other business benefits is something that has many obvious use cases. GoToWebinar's implementation seems particularly easy to set up and use for small businesses or solo entrepreneurs. But there is nothing that would stop a large enterprise from taking advantage of it as well.

GoToWebinar decided to use Stripe as its preferred (and only) integrated payment processing portal. Stripe manages the secure processing of credit or debit cards - Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Discover. It maintains linkages with your bank account and provides reporting on transactions and balances.

I did not have a Stripe account, and created one for my testing purposes. It took just a couple of minutes to create the account and link it to my business checking account using standard routing and account numbers. It was immediately available for use, with no wait time for test deposits to clear.

Once I had the Stripe account, linking it to my GoToWebinar account was a one-click operation. I was now ready to create a webinar and charge for attendance.

The first thing you need to know is that the Stripe/GoToWebinar integration is set up ONLY for payment amounts expressed in US Dollars. Registrants from other countries will be responsible on their own for figuring out the equivalent charge in their local currency. There could be situations where they would be responsible for foreign transaction fees imposed by their credit card… I can't speak to that on a generic basis.

Once you have activated the use of "Accept Payments" in your GoToWebinar account, adding a registration fee for an event is trivial. You open the payments section in Event Details and enter the price you want to charge. I did a test to see if it required whole dollar amounts, and the system was quite happy to create a fee of $1.26 - so there is no restriction there. You cannot charge less than $1 however.

Clicking on the EDIT button below Add Discount Code lets you create any number of arbitrary codes with associate pricing.

The display is not the most intuitive… In the picture above, I created code AA that changes the price to $1 and code BB that changes the price to $0. As you can see, you can add and delete codes as desired.

GoToWebinar automatically adds the discount code box and credit/debit card fields to your registration page. You cannot change the position or labels on these fields:

Note that it also changes the registration button text to clearly indicate the payment amount. If the user enters a discount code, the button changes accordingly:

This is a good place to mention one manual edit I would recommend. If you click on the picture to see the larger source image, you should be able to read the small print just above the registration button. It is default text that GoToWebinar places on the page, saying "By clicking this button, you submit your information to the webinar organizer, who will use it to communicate with you regarding this event and their other services."

Most webinar administrators leave this at the default, but when your registration form contains credit card numbers and CVV codes, you don't want people thinking that this is part of the information being submitted to the webinar organizer. You can override the default text in the webinar setup section dealing with Registration. Click the customization button for Registration Questions and scroll to the bottom of the page. You will find a toggle slider that lets you change the disclaimer text. You might want to use something like this:

Once the person registers, they receive two emails. One is the standard registration confirmation email from GoToWebinar with their login information. The other is a payment receipt generated by Stripe. You should note that the Stripe email automatically lists a billing contact that is part of your general Stripe account setup. You cannot change it on a webinar-by-webinar basis. It includes both an email address and phone number:

LogMeIn does not charge any overhead or add-on fee to use the Accept Payment service. But Stripe takes a cut of every transaction processed through it. The amount is identical to PayPal's processing fee: 2.9% of the charged amount plus an additional $0.30. I made a small table to give you representative calculations on a range of prices to see what this works out to:

The net amount is accumulated for all transactions each day and transferred to your linked bank account at the end of the day. It typically takes several days to be recognized as a deposit in your bank account however.

Stripe has a dashboard where you can log in and see the number of transactions, balances, and other information:

The only place where things get "tricky" is dealing with cancelations and refunds. GoToWebinar includes links on confirmation pages and confirmation emails letting each registrant cancel their attendance. But this is NOT linked to the Stripe system. Registrants do not receive an automatic refund. You need to log in to your Stripe account, find the user in your transaction list, and click a Refund button there. This initiates a refund to the credit card they used, which typically shows up on their account within a few days. Note that while they get back the full amount they were charged, you are stuck paying for the processing fee from their original purchase, since you never received that portion of the funds.

This is the one significant problem area in the existing implementation. There is no way in GoToWebinar to see the names and emails of people who have canceled registration. They simply disappear from the registration list online. So as an organizer, you have no idea that you need to initiate a refund until the erstwhile registrant contacts you (probably complaining about the fact that you "stole their money!").

That is my only complaint about the integration. Overall, LogMeIn seems to have created a nice, simple way to charge for your webinars. I am very happy to see this enhancement to the GoToWebinar feature set.

Technorati Tags: LogMeIn,GoToWebinar,payment processing,Stripe,webinar,web seminar,web event,online seminar,online event,webcasting,webcast,web conference,web conferencing