Posts Tagged ‘Video Conferencing’

An Audio Conferencing Company First

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

I have been in the teleconferencing industry since 1995 and since then there have been technologies come along that were going to eliminate audio conferencing several times.  But every time the new technology has helped augment audio conferencing but never really threatened to eliminate what is still the most cost effective and easiest way to meet with a group of people.  That is why when I started Zip Conferencing I decided to make sure I built the best audio conferencing company first.  After that whether it is web conferencing or video conferencing or whatever the latest technology is the company would have the foundation of being a really great audio conferencing company and could easily adopt and layer other technologies on top of that.  Over the years the two technologies that were going to replace audio conferencing but instead have only helped grow audio conferencing usage are web conferencing and video conferencing.  Here are some reasons why these are complimentary services and will never eliminate the need for audio conferencing.

  • Video Conferencing – Video conferencing has been around for  along time and in my 16 years in the industry I have heard lots of reasons why this technology has not been widely adopted.  I have also seen efforts over the years to “fix” these problems with video conferencing only to see the adoption rate remain sluggish at best.  At first it was very expensive so it was not widely available.  Only very large companies had access to the technology necessary to conduct an effective video conference.  Today you can conduct a video conference from your desktop for very little money.  The technology and network bandwidth is basically universally available.  But people simply do not use video conferencing all that much except maybe for personal use to speak to loved ones from great distances.  I think the biggest hurdle to wide adoption of this technology is the aversion of the participants to being in front of the camera.  Most people I know do not like being in front of a video camera and looking at their own image on a screen.  As an audio conferencing company this is music to my ears. 
  • Web Conferencing – Web conferencing has seen tremendous growth since its introduction in the late 1990s because it has become easy to use, inexpensive and it mimics the way we meet with others.  You can literally do anything on a web conference today that you can do in a conference room.  It even has video conferencing built in if you want it but most people simply want to share their desktop or do a remote presentation.  And the audio portion of the call is still done over a conference call system through an audio conferencing company.  This means that the audio quality is just as good as a normal conference call.  And as an audio conferencing company I am happy because we can provide both services and people tend to meet longer because they can have more effective meetings.

So, first and foremost, Zip Conferencing will always be an audio conferencing company first.

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Teleconferencing Services are Everywhere

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

I have been in the teleconferencing industry since 1995 and have seen the services availability grow from a boutique industry to where it is today.  Teleconferencing services are virtually everywhere.  Here is a quick take on the different services and where you can find them.

  • Audio Conferencing – Teleconferencing services leading type of service is audio conferencing.  Since audio conferencing became an automated service that was so easy to use it has grown exponentially.  It is hard to find anyone in business these days that has not been on a conference call using a dial in number and pass code.  Audio conferencing still has other types of calls but the automated conference call is the most prevalent.  Other types of audio teleconferencing services include the operator assisted conference call where an operator greets the participants, gather information and then facilitates the call by assisting the leader and performing a question and answer period.  Teleconferencing services like this are primarily used for large calls.  One of the most widely used applications for this type of call is the investor relations call used by public companies to speak quarterly to the investment community.
  • Video Conferencing – Some people think that teleconferencing is actually referring to video conferencing alone but again it really refers to a number of types of conferencing.  Video conferencing has been around for a long time and the industry keeps thinking the latest iteration is the one that is going to crack the code and make this form of teleconferencing services explode.  It just doesn’t seem to matter if it is the big room systems, desktop video, home phone video or video on a PDA now it just doesn’t seem to appeal to people as widely as audio conferencing.  I think it is more a social issue than a technical issue as most people are simply uncomfortable in front of a camera.  Maybe the kids today who are growing up with all of this technology and YouTube will finally find video conferencing comfortable.
  • Web Conferencing – Teleconferencing services newest addition is web conferencing.  The ability to share your desktop and do presentation remotely has given people the ability to add a visual element to a regular conference call without much effort and has been widely accepted.  As more and more people attend these kinds of webinars and be exposed as a participant the more they will become hosts of future web conferences.  Web conferencing will continue to grow and become a part of regular phone conference calls.

Teleconferencing services are now widely available and companies like Zip Conferencing offer all types of teleconferencing services at very reasonable rates.

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A Phone Conference Call is Still the Way to Go

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

The phone conference call has been around for quite some time. And over the past 15 years that I have been in the industry there have been a lot of changes in technology but the phone conference call continues to thrive. Why is that? Certainly there must be a new phone app or PC program that would make a phone conference call disappear. I mean today you can have a video conference on your cell phone with another person. You can hook your PC up and use the Internet to call thousands of miles for nothing more than the price of your Internet connection. So a plain old phone conference call? Really? Let’s look at some of the competing technologies that have come about in the past 15 and some of the reasons they have not had the same success as the plain old phone conference call.

  • Video Conferencing – The phone conference call has survived 15 years of advancements in video conferencing.  The equipment you need to do a video conference call used to be very expensive and require a huge amount of bandwidth.  So the telecommunications expense to have the ability to do a video conference was also huge.  The video conference now can be done at home using your Internet connection and equipment that can be purchased just about anywhere.  Businesses can purchase a small video conference system and have it installed on existing telecommunications infrastructure.  So video conferencing is now easy and cheap.  Why isn’t everyone talking to each other on a video phone like the Jetsons?  A number of reasons have slowed the growth of video conferencing while the phone conference call continues to grow.  You must go to where the system is and that means you need to be in the office.  The home systems are not really business capable and the mobile application is not there yet either and universally available as you need a certain type of phone.  A phone conference call can be done from anywhere and today business people are very mobile so having to be in a central location to do all your conference calls is not really practical.  And the biggest reason I think is that people are just not comfortable with themselves on TV.  Maybe the next generation, the YouTube generation will be more comfortable with it but most people I know do not like being in front of a video camera.
  • VOIP Conferencing – Everyone now has a good Internet connection so why aren’t we talking to our PCs yet?  One reason is you need to be in front of your PC in order to talk through it and again people are now mobile.  Quality is much better than it used to be but VOIP quality is still only as good as the connection and some people still have bandwidth issues.  And a lot of people don’t even have a microphone connected to their PC.  It is just not what we are used to doing.  A phone conference call only requires the same device everyone is familiar with, the phone.
  • In House Systems – Over the years every phone system manufacturer has developed a way to do a phone conference call through their system.  But the quality of the connection is limited and so are the number of people you can connect to the conference call.  And it also requires the moderator to dial out to people and connect them to the conference call.  The in-house conference call systems you can buy are hard to justify from an expense point of view and require someone to maintain.  A conference call service can do the job better and cheaper than an in-house system.

So, you can see that a phone conference call continues to grow because none of the other options are as universally known, easy to use and inexpensive.

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Conference Calls Are the Best Option

Friday, September 24th, 2010

I was speaking to someone yesterday and he asked me what I do and when I said that I run a conference call business he could not say enough about what a benefit conference calls have had on his business.  I love talking to people about conference calls because it is usually a very positive conversation.  I ended up talking to this gentleman for a while about how his company uses conference calls and I thought I would share some of his thoughts with you.

One of his first reactions was to tell me how much his company spends on conference calls which is not uncommon.  But he quickly turned that part of the conversation into how much money his company was saving by doing conference calls instead of travelling.  Like  all companies, he is trying to keep his costs down and reducing the travel budget by using conference calls instead is a great way to do that.  He did some quick calculations in his head and told me that his company was literally saving millions of dollars by doing conference calls.  And then the conversation turned to  how people in his company including himself are also using conference calls to increase productivity because it was so easy to pull a meeting together.  A quick meeting with a conference call usually averted issues and kept projects moving forward that otherwise would get bogged down.  And he said that many times they would hold a conference call as an adjunct to a physical meeting in a conference room and give people the choice of joining in person or on the conference call.  And even though the physical meeting may only be down the hall many time the participants would join via conference call so that they could stay at their desk and be productive.

And finally he asked if I did video conferencing and I said no but we offer a service that allows you to share a presentation on your PC and he immediately knew what I was referring to, web conferencing.  To this he said how web conferencing has really enhanced the way his company presents its services to new customers and ultimately has increased sales.  And he said they also use web conferencing internally to collaborate and do training.  At the end of the conversation I told him I could not have found a better pitch man for the benefits of conference calls.  And he said he did not realize how much conference calls were intertwined with his business until he started talking about it but certainly did not know what he would do without it.  Without a doubt, conference calls are the best option. 

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Calls are Still a Great Value

Monday, October 19th, 2009

There have been many predictions ofValue the conference calls’ demise over the years.  First, the video conference was going to be on everyone’s desktop and people wouldn’t bother with regular conference calls anymore.  Then services came along that purported to provide free conference calls.  Then everyone was going to be speaking into their PCs and wouldn’t use a phone anymore.  And on, and on.  The fact that conference calls done over the telephone are not only still here but doing so well is the basic fact that there is no better value if you want to have a high quality connection and be able to speak to a group of people at a distance.

Video conferencing has been around for a long time.  So why aren’t we all looking at each other during our calls already.  There are probably many reasons.  But first and foremost it is not as easy as a conference call and not necessarily available to everyone.  I mean these days it is hard to buy a PC without a webcam attached, but many people don’t use them or know how to use them.  And the quality of the connection still has a lot to be desired.  If anything, the call can be more distracting than anything.  And then you have the whole social aspect.  The fact that most people don’t feel comfortable having their image in front of themselves and broadcast to many people.  It will be quite a while before video conferencing is as easy to use as a telephone.

I’ve addressed the concept of the free conference call in other posts, but in short nothing is really free.  You simply can’t get a high quality conference call with toll free access for nothing.  And toll free access for your participants is simply the right thing to do.  And if you want to make sure the call is there when you need it to be and want a good sound would you trust it to a free  service?

And we are also still a long way away from having an integrated device on our desktop that does all of our phone tasks as well.  Can you do it today?  Of course, but the complexities of getting it done is worse than getting the video camera to work and if you still have to connect to people using a telephone you still have to connect to the telephone network to do a conference call so you really aren’t gaining anything unless you eliminate that aspect. 

One of the big drivers for new technology is saving money.  Today, the costs of conference calls have come down to the point where it is difficult to justify putting up with any inconvenience to try to save a little money.  Let’s face it, everyone has a telephone and that is really all you need to have and know how to use in order to join a conference call.  And you will get a clear, high quality connection without any issues. 

So, given all the choices that are out there, conference calls continue to grow because they still deliver the best value for the money.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Calls in the Courts

Monday, September 21st, 2009

In the past 14 plus years I have seen conference calls used in a variety of applications that I would not have thought of myself.  As people in different industries became familiar with conference calls and how they worked, they developed applications within their businesses themselves.  One of the applications that uses conference calls very effectively is in the court system. 

Many of you may have heard of or seen the application of video conferencing in the court system where a defendant is able to appear before a judge without the need to leave the jail and appear in person.  Well, it seems there is a place for conference calls as well.  Our company was approached by a court clerk about the possibility of using conference calls to allow attorneys, defendants and litigants to appear before a judge without the need to physically appear in the courtroom.  With the very crowded legal system it was thought that this would save valuable court time and offer advantages to the participants as well.  So, we designed a method of bringing people before the judge in an orderly fashion and it saved the judge the time and effort of getting in front of the participants.  Because, in many areas of the country a judge appears in several court rooms across a wide area because they do not have a dedicated judge for the court.  And many of the appearances are pre-trial non-evidentiary appearances that do not require an in person appearance.  Thus the court conference call was born.

This practice still exists today and is widely used in many parts of the country.  It has saved countless hours of time and energy for the courts, attorneys and their clients.  The way it works is a conference call is set up for the participants on the date and time of their appearance.  The attorneys and their clients dial into the conference call and the judge will go through the courts docket over the conference call just as if the participants were in the courtroom.  Everyone agrees to appear on the telephone a head of time and the conference call can be attended from anywhere.  The clients save money because the attorney does not take all day to go to the court to attend a minor proceeding that otherwise only takes a few minutes.

Sometimes the best conference call applications are the ones that the customers think up for themselves.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Web Conferencing Features Make Remote Meetings Easy

Friday, July 24th, 2009

When Web Conferencing was first introduced it included a number of features that still exist in the web conference service business today.  But over time, conference call service providers and web conferencing companies have enhanced web conferencing to allow anyone to quickly and easily conduct a web conference without the need for a lot of training or experience.

The features that have always existed with web conferencing include:

  • Whiteboarding
  • Share Powerpoint presentations
  • Share Applications

The ability to whiteboard on a web conference allows participants on the conference call to participate on a virtual whiteboard by using their mouse and tools to annotate and collaborate with other participants.  The ability to share a Powerpoint presentation gives you the ability to broadcast your Powerpoint to the entire audience and the ability to share applications allows you to share virutally anything that is on your desktop with the other participants.

Over time additional functionality has been added to web conferencing including:

  • A Chat feature
  • Video conferencing
  • A Recording function
  • Q&A
  • Polling
  • Participant Registration Info
  • Exit Surveys

A chat feature was added to allow participants to chat with each other or the Moderator on a web conference.  The ability to share a video of yourself as the Moderator on the web conference gives the participants a face with the name on the conference call.  A recording function has existed for a while, but only recently has the full integration of voice and visual presentation recorded without the need for extra equipment become available.   A Q&A and Polling element on a web conference has also been available for a while but the tools provided to build the questions and tally the results have become much easier to implement and use.  And one fo the favorite tools of the Sales and Marketing users is the ability to create a registration process to capture participant informaiton on the front end of the web conference and a exit survey process to give the participants the ability to provide feedback after the web conference has been completed.

Even though the features available on a web conference have grown and enhanced, the inuitiveness of the interface has also improved to where anyone can conduct a web conference and look like a pro in a very short time.  Zip Conferencing like some other conference call service providers gives a 30 day free trial of the service to allow users to become familiar with the web confernecing service at no cost before they do a live presentation.

www.zipconferencing.com

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