If you want to find out some great benchmarks and best practices for webcasts, check out ON24 2010 Webcasting Report.  The results are from evaluating 10,000 demand generation webcasts from 700 corporate clients.  To peek your intereset here are the key findings: 

  
•  52% of all registrations occur in the ten days before a scheduled webcast, with 15% registering on the day of the webcast.
• Given average registrant-to-attendee conversion ratios, 33% attended during the live webcast, while an additional 25% viewed the archived webcast.
• Webcasting is an effective and popular way to reach audiences year-round, including during holiday and summer months.
• The average viewership per webcast is 38 minutes

Webinars and Webcasting:  The Best Bang for your Virtual Event Buck.

Aaron Cole – Co-founder and Director of Business Development, Clear Skies Virtual Event Producers

 
                                            John Nainschigg - 
                                                              CEO, World2Worlds,Inc.

We jump right in with Aaron discussing the benefits of Webinars and the platforms available to produce them….

So – if you haven’t heard by now – Microsoft has announced it’s new UC solution.  Many people are suggesting this is just a renaming of it’s existing OCS offering.  One thing that is changing for the better is  ease of entry into online meetings.  Live Meeting is a web-conferencing platform with a client you need to download. 

Now, with Lync, an attendee can still download a light app or the web app but it will use silverlight (similar to flash, but has some distinct benefits.*

And don’t worry Clear Skies is still here to manage your bigger events on Lync.

The link to the original article below can be found at the end.

Preparing your System for a Lync Web App Meeting

This survey is great (see below of this).  After reading it, it just reinforces why we are in business folks…. and why we want to help you in successfully producing world-class virtual events and webinars.  The survey also mentions the benefit of what we call a “combo” event, where there is a live event that is also being virtually demonstrated via a web-conferencing platform.  This set-up is far more cost-effective than a live video-broadcast or webcast.   It is a great way of getting the most attendance to your event.

The article can be found here.   Thanks for UMB Studios for putting this together.

I’m sure you have heard by now (it was announced last week) about the new Adobe Connect 8.  I wanted to post an article URL  about using Adobe Connect regarding classroom training.  It sure is above the rest when it comes to ease of interactivity. 

Some of the new features include:

• Enhanced chat, including separate tabs for private and group discussions and customizable elements, such as color and text size;
• New formatting capabilities for notes, as well as support for exporting to RTF;
• Improved whiteboarding with new custom shapes and support for using the whiteboard as an overlay on documents;
• Integration with existing SIP-compliant videoconferencing systems, including those from Tandberg;
• Mobile support for Android- and iOS-based devices; and
• Improved security with enhanced access control (and additional controls over desktop and application sharing) and password-protected rooms, among other new security features.

Clear Skies is always looking to use the best platforms.  The following is article is about Netviewer – specifically Netviewer Meet (up to 100 connections).  Netviewer also has a console, Netviewer Present, that can be used for a couple thousand connections.  If you need help moderating your larger events, please reach out to us – that’s what we do.

Best Web Conference Solution: Gold Award for Netviewer
toptenreviews.com Carries out Extensive Test of Leading Providers

Following a wide-ranging test comparing products from different providers, Netviewer Meet 6.0 was presented with the Gold Award for the best web conference solution by toptenreviews.com. On its website, TopTenREVIEWS, headquartered in Ogden, Utah, features in-depth technology tests and product comparisons in more than 350 categories. Recently it undertook a comparison of twelve products marketed by the world’s foremost web conference providers. The only product which received the highest rating (“Excellent”) for all criteria and which therefore came out top in the comparison was Netviewer Meet. TopTenREVIEWS’s verdict: “We ranked this product #1 because it is the only service that we felt deserved a perfect score for ease of use”. Netviewer Meet emerged from this test ahead of web conferencing products offered by Adobe, Microsoft, Cisco WebEx and Citrix.

Netviewer is Europe’s leading producer and provider of web collaboration solutions, offering visual real-time communications by means of user-friendly web conferences – ad hoc and without any technical impediments. Netviewer Meet is already available to business clients in software-as-a-service form for a monthly fee of €29.90 (USD 39,90). Netviewer is free for private or non-commercial usage.

http://web-conferencing-services.toptenreviews.com

http://www.netviewer.com

By CXOtoday Staff, Jun 04, 2010 1012 hrs
http://www.conferencingnews.com/news/30786

WebEx has launched web conferencing service on smart phones, enabling users to join Cisco WebEx Meeting Center web and audio conferences on smartphones including the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve 8900, and BlackBerry Storm from RIM, the Nokia E71, Nokia E75, Nokia N97, and other Nokia Eseries and Nseries, and the Samsung Blackjack II.

Users will be able to launch Cisco WebEx Meeting Center through the browser on their smartphones to receive integrated audio and web conferencing over 3G or a combination of 2G and Wi-Fi. In addition, users will be able to attend a scheduled meeting and to view presentations, applications and desktops with live annotations. This offering is planned to be available on several smartphone operating systems including BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. There is no cost to attend these meetings, but to schedule and host a meeting from a computer requires a host account on Cisco WebEx Meeting Center.

One of the platforms our clients use, ON24, unveils it’s new platform offering:

ON24 Webcast Center next-generation social webcasting

ON24’s open, next-generation webcasting application delivers social webcasting capabilities and enhanced interactivity. It enables our customers to create completely custom experiences for their audiences and to integrate applications developed by third-party developers. Combining advanced virtual event technology with a highly reliable and scalable platform for webcasting, ON24 delivers immersive, measurable solutions to more effectively engage audiences.

(more…)

We knew it was coming and didn’t know who would be first to develop it – the webinar app is here!  Check it out.  Way to go Adobe.

Copied from Adobe’s blog: See orginal post

By Steve Adler on February 25, 2010 8:03 AM

(more…)

I just read this article in the Conferencing News today – it’s posted here.  I took the liberty to title the post a little differently than the title of the article (call me biased).  As we move into 2010, it’s good to remind ourselves why Clear Skies got into this business.  We, as a company, believe in partnering with you as a company, a group, an author, a product spokesperson, a trainer, a teacher, even a political activist, to facilitate the use of web-conferencing technology as a tool which is a more efficient and, maybe sometimes, even more effective voice in communicating your message than in-person or on paper.  It is certainly more cost-effective than an in-person conference.I also want to highlight that although “software-as-a-service” or “SAS” seems to be one of the buzz words around new technology platforms –> software will never replace service.  And, in our opinion, should never be an “add-on” to software.  We are the only company (that we know of) that offers Online Event Management as a core service.  We think it’s about communication, rather than what platform you use to do communicate. Therefore, it’s communication that can yield big business results.  The content is your focus, let us handle the “through webinars” part, that’s our focus.  A partnership for success in 2010.  Happy New Year.

(more…)