Posts Tagged ‘Visual Element’

Web Conference vs. Conference Call

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

A Web Conference versus a Conference Call, is it a fair fight?  It is hard in some respects to compare a web conference with a conference call.  A conference call is held on a telephone and has no visual element to it unless everyone looks at the same document at the same time you sent to them previously.  But then, you really don’t know if they are looking at that document do you?  A web conference on the other hand allows you to show documents, web sites, applications, etc to all of the participants on your web conference at the same time.  It even allows you to edit the document real time and can even allow the participants to edit the document on your computer.  And a web conference generally has a conference call component to it unless you are meeting with a single participant.  Then you can just call them on the phone.  So, is it really a contest.

Well, no.  It really isn’t, but most people are choosing to hold a conference call instead of a web conference so why is that.  A conference call has certainly become easy to use and most people have been exposed to the practice of dialing an access number and putting in a pass codeto enter a conference all these days that we rarely have to explain the technology anymore.  And no one is intimidated by using a telephone to access a system and provide commands to the system using a touch tone command like you do to control a conference call.  People are just used to it.  And a conference call provides the basic means needed to communicate with other people over long distance, a voice connection.  Let’s face it, the telephone has been used to communicate over great distances and has been accepted by everyone as an essential means to communicate for business and personal reasons.  On a conference call you can discuss anything and refer to documents if everyone has access to them or was distributed them prior to the meeting.

A web conference on the other hand is relatively new.  It has really only been in existence less than 15 years and only in the last five or so become widely accepted by businesses.  But web conferencing can do what a regular conference call just can’t do.  A web conference can allow the host to share visuals with the participants on a conference call.  And as the saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words”.  So adding a visual element to any meeting helps with the retention of the material and the engagement of the audience.  I think the only reason that every conference call is a web conference is that people are just not that used to communicating using their computers as they are with their telephones.  As people continue to integrate they way they use their computers with their telephones there will be a shift in the way we communicate and using visuals to help communicate will be the norm.

So, is it fair to compare a conference call and a web conference.  Not really, a web conference wins hands down.  But for now, the telephone has a 100 year head start in establishing itself as the de facto communication device and is winning the race.  For more on Web conferencing visit www.zipconferencing.com

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An Introduction to Web Conferencing

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

It may be hard to imagine, but there are still a good amount of potential customers that don’t understand the basics of holding a conference call.  We frequently get questions about how it works, how many people can you have on a call at once and what they need to do to host a conference call.  So, it is no wonder that many people out here have not have not been on a web conference and in fact don’t even know what it means to hold a web conference.  Today, I would like to talk about the general principles of web conferencing and what it means to hold a web conference.

When the industry first invented the web conference it struggled with what to call it.  Is it an online meeting, a web conference, a webinar or just a conference call?  Well, you will still hear it called a variety of things but a web conference has kind of stuck as a term to refer to any conference call that has a visual element you view over the internet.  Web conferencing has also become somewhat standardized in the functions that you can perform on a web conference no matter what brand you choose to use.  Basically, a web conference allows you to share what is on your computer with the participants on the conference call in addition to being able to speak to them.  And, just like any in person presentation, the ability to share images during your web conference has a positive impact in engaging your audience and improving their retention of the materials.

The web conferencing services have gotten pretty sophisticated in their feature set, but most people are still just using about 10% – 20% of the software’s ability.  This is not unlike any piece of “software” and you can still hold successful web conferences jus tusing the basics.  In fact, I know many users that have always simply used the application sharing abilities of the web conference alone no matter what they are doing.  This feature simply shows everyone what is on your computer screen as you see it.  Since the concept is simple and the web conferencing service does this with a single button it is understandable why people have gravitated to using this function.

A couple of the other standard features available are the ability to share a whiteboard on your computer with your participants while on a web conference, and the other feature used by most people is the ability to share a Powerpoint presentation.  Again, this functionality is familiar to anyone who does a presentation and once you start the web conference, showing your Powerpoint slides is as easy as doing it in person.  It is no wonder that web conferencing is expected to grow dramatically over the next five years.   www.zipconferencing.com

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Web Conferencing changes Everything

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Web Conferencing started out as something you did on your company’s network and only if you and the person you wanted to web conference with had the same software installed on their machine.  The internet was still coming of age so many of the things we now take for granted did not exist.  In fact, I remember in 1995 taking some of the available software, buying a card for a computer that allowed multiple network connections and building a web conference bridge you could dial into so that up to 5 people could get on the same web conference.  As long as the 5 people had a good connection to the internet.

When I think about that now I laugh.  In the past 10 years the technology has come a long way.  Today you can easily hold a web conference with up to 100 people and you don’t even have to download any software.  High speed internet connections are taken for granted and conference calls are completed integrated into the experience to add voice and visual communications on a conference call. 

With the advent of web conferencing, you can easily add a visual element to your conference calls.  This makes your confernece call more compelling, encourages audience participation and helps with retention.  The applications are wide spread and more and more people are utilizing web conferencing services to help sell, train and inform to internal and external clients throughout the world. 

I don’ t know if anyone has attempted to calculate the savings in hours of productivity, travel costs and fossil fuels, but it must be enormous. The amount spent on web conferencing in 2007 was over $700,000,000 in the US alone and even as the service continues to be more affordable, it is expected that the amount spent in five years will be almost double what it is today.  That is because web conferencing services make sense to such a wide range of industries and applications.  Just like conference call volume has seen a tremendous amount of growth in the past 15 years, web conferencing is now enjoying that same growth.  That is because it is truly easy to use and affordable to everyone.

So the next time you register for that online “webinar” think about how what you would have to do to get that same seminar without web conferencing.  because web confernecing changes everything.

www.zipconferencing.com

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