web conference – webinars

Tom Cruz asked:




Interactive web conferencing uses the speed and the outreach of the Internet to connect all people who have a high-speed Internet connect anywhere around the world. These days, traveling is increasingly cost-prohibitive and the efficient use of time is more important than ever. And rising up to the challenge of needing to meet business demands for solutions to this quandry, online interactive web conferencing programs are interactive because they allow you to see each other’s desktops (and sometimes faces), hear each other in real-time, draw or move objects around together, chat, or upload documents with meeting attendees.

What features and what level of interactivity you desire in your conferencing program is completely for you to decide based upon your business’ needs. Generally speaking, the more a program costs, the more features you can draw upon and the more user-friendly it is. You get what you pay for. Some web conferencing services are even free to use; for instance, theSkype VoIP program or a chat client. It’s after you begin adding features like increasing the number of users or the ability to have desktops viewed and interacted with that you begin having costs and increasing costs involved.

For instance if you work with Gotomeeting you’ll need to pay about $500 per year, and you get to host an unlimited number of web conferences. But with the far more elaborate Microsoft Office Live Meeting, you might have to pay that much money just for one web conference. The more interactive your web conferencing solution is, the more it costs you. But, today, even most small businesses would find it saves them money over travel and time costs for meeting in person.

What you can find in interactive web conferencing providers includes:

* File transfer.
* No need for the meeting’s participants to download any software.
* Sharing of documents.
* Common white board: all participants can draw upon a virtual white board that is seen by all others in real-time.
* Desktop or screen sharing.
* Video chat.
* Instant messaging.

Now, you may say, why can’t we simply e-mail documents and use free instant messenger services in order to meet these needs? The answer is, we are intuitive beings who need interaction and interconnection. The more important and complex a particular matter is, the more important it is to meet about it. Live meetings provide a clarity and intuitively-grasped communication that builds much more trust than the (by comparison) primitive e-mailing and IMing. And, online web conferencing is much more impressive to your clients!

When you are selecting your web conferencing provider and program, you’ll also want to think about technical matters like how many people the program supports at one time, how secure it is, and whether or not the program is supported by all participants’ platforms (such as Linux AND Mac AND Windows, for instance).

Again, don’t underestimate the vital importance of interactive web conferencing. In today’s business climate, this wondrous technology is just going to keep getting less expensive and better, for it is going to become more and more the norm for conducting business with those who live or work at a distance.

David