The Webinar Blog

ON24 Registers To Go Public

On Friday, ON24 quietly put out a press release announcing its SEC registration to make an Initial Public Offering. At this point, no date or offer price is set, although the total amount to be raised is specified in the registration document as one hundred million dollars.

ON24 may not be as well known to the rank and file end user, as the company doesn’t compete in the peer-to-peer “low cost, high volume” online meeting space against products like Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Microsoft Teams. ON24 is all about large audience structured web events (they go back and forth from year to year on whether they offer a webcasting or webinar platform).

I have been watching their marketing and positioning over the last year with some amusement. It feels like they vacillate between wanting to play up the webinar side of things and wanting to downplay it in favor of a larger and more nebulous positioning as an enabler of “digital experiences that convert customer engagement into revenue.” That’s a higher value pitch, but can be harder for prospects to get their heads around.

Way, way back in April of 2010 I wrote a blog post expressing excitement about the new user interface ON24 was introducing at that time. I said it represented a “quantum leap in user configurability and control.” I remain enthusiastic about the ON24 attendee experience in web events and I’m surprised that more vendors haven’t tried to emulate the flexibility of a completely window-oriented GUI where each attendee can open, close, move, and resize content panels just as they do in day to day operations on their computer.

ON24 has held out against the tide of transparent pricing over the years. If you are interested in licensing their product or products, you need to go old school… You contact a sales representative who talks to you about your needs and provides a customized pricing quote. They really aren’t interested in dealing with one-off events or Mom-and-Pop businesses. Their high-touch sales and support model is designed for large enterprises that can commit to producing numerous events on an annual basis.

If I recall the company’s history correctly, early emphasis was on investor relations calls and corporate communications requirements. They made a push into the publishing vertical for a while as well. Naturally, they can handle any type of application that needs a good webcast/webinar platform (I used it on a series of professional training lectures for accountants). But the current positioning is very strongly marketing related, which lets them push their bundle of associated products and services designed to support customer acquisition, content management, and revenue generation.

This is not the first time ON24 has looked at the public option. I found an article from 2012 indicating that the company seemed to be positioning itself for an IPO that never materialized. Obviously, the current environment feels right for potentially riding the wave of investor euphoria for virtual communications. Investors who missed the opportunity to ride Zoom stock from an offering price around $60 to a high of $560 might well try to cash in on another IPO in the space (even though the two companies, products, and use cases are dissimilar). But that enthusiasm has to be tempered by the fear that virtual growth might slow down with a successful COVID vaccine and a return to more travel and in-person experiences. Zoom itself has been on a steady decline since that high price was reached last October.

Still, with BrightTALK getting purchased by TechTarget just before Christmas, there aren’t many of the old independent webinar vendors left to invest in. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a good opening gain for ON24. I should think they will try to get the IPO out to the market as soon as they can. Momentum is everything right now. I wish them well!

(Disclaimer/Disclosure: I have no financial interest or investment in ON24 or its competitors. This article represents my personal opinions and is not based on any interviews or communications with executives, employees, or representatives of ON24.)

Technorati Tags: ON24,webinar,web seminar,webcasting,webcast,web event,online event,web collaboration,online collaboration,IPO

Webex Quietly Tightens Host Security

A big thank you to loyal reader Karen Bowden who alerted me to a recent change in Webex security for session hosts.

BACKGROUND: When you schedule a Webex Meeting or Webex Event, the system creates a 6-digit “host key.” Having that key allows a participant to take control of the session -- starting it early, changing configuration options, and assigning role authority levels to participants.

In the past, the host key (and meeting password, if used) has always been included in the confirmation email that gets sent to the host who schedules the session in Webex. Then if the named host or session administrator wants to turn over the reins to somebody else (like a third-party moderator or a backup co-worker), they just forward the email and that person has all the info they need to take over and run things.

Cisco must have felt that this was a little too open and convenient. If that email gets forwarded (by design or confusion), any other recipient also has everything they need to grab control of the session.

NEW BEHAVIOR: The confirmation email no longer contains the 6-digit host key (or meeting password) in the body of the message. Now there is a line saying “If you are a host, click here to view host information: https://xxx.webex.com/xxx/…”

The link indeed takes you to the main meeting information page, which includes the host key. But you need to have a host login on that Webex account to get to it. So it keeps the information safe from random people who get the message in error.

This could create a problem for legitimate cases where a host or admin wants another party to take over the role of host. So you may need to update your process flow to look up the host key when scheduling a new web conference and then communicate it to your preferred moderator or session host. Texting it to them might be a slightly more secure methodology than emailing.

It’s worth noting the change, as third-party hosts could easily find themselves ignoring the email until event day, secure in the knowledge that they have the host key in the message, only to panic at the last minute when they realize it’s no longer included and they can’t log in to the meeting information page.

Technorati Tags: Webex,Cisco Webex,Webex Meetings,Webex Events,webinar,web seminar,online seminar,web meeting,online meeting,web collaboration,online collaboration,web conference,web conferencing

BREAKING NEWS - Zoom Disables Telephone Service For Webinars

Zoom has turned off telephone access for webinar attendees as of Tuesday, September 9.

There is no explanation or background information from the company. They posted a notice on their help site yesterday under “New updates for the Zoom client.” This morning I received a notification email. I’m not sure if that went out to all Zoom account holders or those who have the Webinar option enabled or if it went out through their Service Status system (if you are a Zoom host, you really should register yourself to receive status updates on https://status.zoom.us/ to stay up on issues as they happen).

The notice says that telephone options are disabled for Zoom Webinar attendees, but that hosts and panelists may continue to dial in to speak. The service disruption does not affect “regular” Zoom Meetings, which make up the bulk of their business. The ominous part is a sentence saying that Zoom plans to re-enable telephone access for webinar attendees “in the next few weeks.” Gulp! This isn’t some quick glitch… It must be indicative of a major security flaw built into the design.

This is going to throw a lot of webinar hosts for a loop. I saw one news story from last night where a local town council in Florida was forced to cancel their scheduled meeting because citizens could suddenly not get phone access to listen to the governmental session. Today’s going to be a mess and it doesn’t help that getting through to Zoom technical support can be a very long waiting game. If you know someone who uses Zoom Webinars, you might want to make sure they have seen the news.

 

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 9

I just received a new status update from Zoom. It says that they are now letting webinar attendees call in via toll (local) phone numbers. The telephone services that are disabled for attendees are "Call Me" (where the system calls out to a phone number you give it) and toll-free dial-in. So that's certainly better!

 

Technorati Tags: Zoom,webinar,web seminar,web event,online event,web conference,web conferencing,web collaboration,online collaboration

Your Webinar Promotions Are Breaking The Law

Nobody ever enforces this, but you could be liable for penalties of up to $43,280 PER INDIVIDUAL EMAIL IN VIOLATION! Do I have your attention? I think I do.

Before we dig into the details, I have to give you the usual caveats:

I am not a lawyer. I probably have no idea what I'm talking about. You shouldn't take ANY legal advice from me. What I write is my own non-professional interpretation of United States laws. As such, the discussion relates ONLY to firms and transactions that can be prosecuted under United States federal statutes.

Okay, let's go. Your assignment is to read the following web page:

• https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Most of the items and requirements for sending commercial email are fairly common sense and I think we are all aware of them by now… Don't be misleading, be truthful and clear about who is sending the message, include the ability for recipients to opt-out or unsubscribe. Fine.

But let's focus on item #4:

Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.

Whoa. I only became aware of this clause because the BigMarker webinar platform made me include that information in their email templates. I couldn't schedule an email without filling in physical address data. What a pain. Then I looked up the statute. They're right!

But on further reading, it turns out there is a twist. You need to go through the Q&A sections further down the page.

Invitations and promotional emails are almost certainly covered by this clause. They are considered commercial communications designed to "advertise or promote a commercial product or service, including content on a website operated for a commercial purpose." It doesn't matter that you are sending such invitations to existing clients or people who have opted in for emails from you. Each promotional email letting people know about a new webinar must still comply. This is where you could potentially be held liable for not including your physical address. Are you shocked? I was!

But how about confirmation, reminder, and follow up emails sent to registrants of a webinar? BigMarker still requires me to add physical address information on those, but I think they are wrong. These emails fall into a category known as "transactional or relationship." They "facilitate or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to."

In transactional or relationship emails, physical address information is not required. They just need to be truthful and not misleading.

Why does BigMarker care what you do in your emails? It's your problem, your exposure. Wait a minute…

"More than one person may be held responsible for violations. For example, both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that originated the message may be legally responsible."

Are you a webinar software vendor? Do you send the emails that your customers schedule in your system? Do you allow webinar invitations to be sent through your automated mailing processes? Hmmm… Maybe your product management and engineering teams should have a chat with your legal department about this.

 

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,CAN SPAM,CAN-SPAM,email,marketing,web conference,web conferencing,webcasting,webcast

Izotope RX 7 Is On Sale For Professional Audio Editing

Here's another blog post targeted at a very select subset of my readers.

Do you make a lot of audio edits… particularly of vocal narration as in podcasts and webinar recordings? Would it be worth several hundred dollars to you to clean up audio quality on problematic recordings more quickly and easily? Then read on.

I often deal with horrendous source recordings coming from remote presenters. They'll be in noisy environments or in conference rooms that act as echo chambers or using speaker phones and laptop microphones that create a "tin can" effect. I can go crazy trying to clean up the vocals to make them more prominent, clear, and intelligible.

A while ago I saw a product announcement from Izotope. They have a digital audio editor called RX 7. It comes in three levels of capability. The highest, most expensive level is called RX 7 Advanced. This software is really designed for professional audio engineers who handle music and vocal tracks. But they recently added a set of special AI-driven effects designed for cleaning up vocals.

Those effects are nothing short of magical. I can do things now with a click or two that used to take me endless fiddling and experimentation. And the results are better than anything I can come up with on my own.

Click here to listen to a short YouTube I made showing a bad source recording and my one-click edits in RX 7. The recording was made in a reverb-heavy room and has some kind of noise floor under the vocals (maybe from air conditioning or line noise). The second speaker has an especially awful reverb.

I ran the clip through three RX 7 effects in sequence. In each case, I left settings at default and let the software figure out what to do. I think the outcome is astonishing. The reverb is gone, voices are clear, and their individual vocal characteristics are retained.

The fly in the ointment is the price of the software. It's not targeted at the consumer market. Take a big breath… It costs $1200 for a single license. Ouch. But this month you can bring your cost down to $430, which is still too much for the hobby market, but a more reasonable business expense for people who do this a lot.

Step 1: Go to B&H Photo Video or Plugin Boutique and buy the cheapest version of RX 7, called RX Elements. They are running specials for it as a loss-leader. It will set you back $29.

Step 2: Install it on your computer and then check for upgrades in your Izotope account. During the month of April, they are running a special deal to upgrade from any version of RX 7 to Advanced for $400. Voila… You end up with the big bad version for $770 off the retail price! The deal is only valid this month. Considering the advertised April deal for buying RX 7 Advanced as a new product is $700, I just saved you an extra $270. You're welcome.

Technorati Tags: Izotope,RX 7,audio editing,DAW,Digital Audio Workshop,podcast,podcasting,audio engineering

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

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

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

ReadyTalk Users Get An Extension

Last month I wrote about how PGi is migrating all ReadyTalk customers to GlobalMeet. There must have been some pushback from the user community, because I just received a new email stating that "based upon key feedback from our valued customers," ReadyTalk accounts will be able to continue using the platform through the end of 2020.

Interestingly, after a question I posed in that last post, they seem to have provided some additional clarity regarding access to existing ReadyTalk recordings.

"ReadyTalk recordings and reports created on the ReadyTalk platform will remain active and available in your ReadyTalk Conference Center until end of year."

They also included instructions on how to download recordings, so customers should get this process started. You don't want to be spending New Year's Eve in a panic as you attempt to save and store dozens or hundreds of old recordings before they disappear at the stroke of midnight!

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

ReadyTalk Fades Into The Sunset

Three years ago this month, I reported the breaking news that PGi had just acquired ReadyTalk as a business entity. ReadyTalk stayed alive as a supported product for existing customers and maintained its own independent website as a PGi company.

In August of 2018, ReadyTalk announced that the ReadyTalk product would get "a fresh look and feel" to officially join the PGi GlobalMeet family of collaboration solutions.

Still, existing ReadyTalk customers were able to keep using the product they were familiar with, while new customers were sold solutions from the GlobalMeet family.

The legacy support period is now over. I just received a notice that all ReadyTalk customers will be migrated to GlobalMeet Collaboration account in the next few weeks. Named administrators need to configure and customize their GlobalMeet account. If you have a ReadyTalk account that is assigned to an email address you don't check often, make sure to review it and assign someone to take care of the transition setup for your organization!

The big question is what happens to webinar recordings that were hosted online under a ReadyTalk account? Will they still be accessible through their old link addresses? I have a request in to the PGi support team and I will update this post when I get an answer.

UPDATE - JAN 31 3PM US EASTERN:  PGi support jumped right on my request and gave a good answer. I'll just paste it here in full...

At this time, and for the foreseeable future ReadyTalk recordings will continue to be hosted on the ReadyTalk platform, and all existing links to access them will continue to work as is. Once migrated to GlobalMeet, you will no longer be able to schedule and run live ReadyTalk webinars or meetings - but you will still be able to access your existing ReadyTalk recordings and reports via the ReadyTalk Conference Center.

If or when that changes, and if existing recordings will be moved to a GlobalMeet location, additional communication will be sent out ahead of that move.

We would also recommend checking this page for more details regarding the transition to GlobalMeet Webinar: https://webcasts.com/readytalk-end-of-life/

 

Technorati Tags: PGi,GlobalMeet,ReadyTalk,webinar,web seminar,web conference,web conferencing,web collaboration,online collaboration,web meeting,online meeting