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. I have tested the links and they link back to previous articles on the subject matter. Communication on web can yield big biz results

Web collaborative technologies drive efficiency and add value to productivity of businesses

Kiran Datar

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

BANGALORE, INDIA: Virtual collaboration and online meeting technologies are advancing the small and medium service based companies’ reach without huge investments, thus allowing them to not only save costs and land more sales but to better educate consumers and business partners and serve a greater number of people lost by former logistical barriers.

In turn, this knowledge transfer is allowing such companies to gain greater mindshare and reach new markets through numerous, innovative applications for traditional web-based knowledge transfer technology.

Such programs include web conferencing, video conferencing, media streaming and web casting — all designed to allow companies to work together in real-time or archive presentations for on-demand retrieval, be it a polished sales presentation, in-house training or thought leadership seminar.

Some companies are going so far as to use these tools for IT troubleshooting, particularly by allowing remote access to ailing PCs and laptops in the field.

Accelerating Business and Increasing Sales

The service based companies’ have definitely jumped hard and heavy into these tools. Though larger organizations may view online collaboration tools primarily to improve internal communications, this segment is leveraging its investments to pump up a normally small sales force and provide training so product pitches can be perfected.

Such operational streamlining helps a company run more efficiently and at web-based speed. Sales teams now can take clients through a hands-on demonstration without either leaving the office. Not only does knowledge transfer vastly cut travel costs, but it also accelerates business and provides more promise in reaching busy executives who can view demos from their office desk, rather than a meeting room or off-site location.

Service based companies usually measure themselves closely through productivity or efficiency units. So if they can conduct 10 sales demos in a day instead of one or two, they’ve made their money.

The current trend across various business segments seems to be of adopting web-based conferencing in order to expand the reach of their messaging. The financial industry, often an early adopter of emerging technologies, also is a big believer in the power of these communications services. For example, a small mutual fund firm that needs to get the word out to their clients, and they need to get people with as much impact as possible. These tools can help firms like this to a great extent.

Consider daily tasks that can be aided or enhanced using the online collaboration services. For example, companies have discovered that their IT staff can troubleshoot and remotely fix computer problems in the field by opening an online meeting session. Such remote access could prove the deal-sealer if done just prior to an important presentation.

Collaboration: The Next Phase in Business Productivity

There is no question that web collaborative technologies drive efficiency. While the value proposition is widely recognized, measuring the real impact of the technology on information worker productivity and ultimately the impact on profitability remains a key challenge.

The challenge lies not in the benefits, but in the way they have been measured. Using a structured methodology to evaluate “hard” as well as “soft” returns from the investment in web collaboration enables organizations to quantify the impact that the solution will have on productivity. This ensures that any cost-benefit technology analysis accurately reflects not just travel cost savings but also the impact on employee productivity.

Before playing/viewing a WebEx recording – be warned! There has been a public announcement made by Cisco that their player that plays back recordings made from a WebEx event has “vulnerabilties”.  Exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system of a targeted user.  To see full details from CISCO please click here: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20091216-webex.shtml.  For FortiGuard’s threat research and responses advisory click here: http://www.fortiguard.com/advisory/FGA-2009-48.html.

Cisco has released free software updates that address these vulnerabilities. Prior to deploying software, customers should consult their maintenance provider or check the software for feature set compatibility and known issues specific to their environment.

Many of our customers are moving away from doing a “live demonstration” portion of a webinar and instead play a video that was “pre-recorded”. There are definite pros and cons to each approach.

A live demonstration (application sharing) gives you FLEXIBILITY.

A recorded demonstration gives you PEACE OF MIND.

Feel free to post your comments and let us know your preference!

WMV Converter Console (left image), HFP Files (upper right image), Single WMV file with HFP content included (lower right image)

A Clear Skies’ customer recently asked why the WMV created by the “Recording Converter for Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007″ which you can download here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101215971033.aspx was so big.  This was my reply:

I can see why you might be confused with differences in WMV file sizes.  First, all recordings are available in HFP (High-Fidelity Presentation) format and WMV format, directly from the Live Meeting recording page.  If you are logged in as an organizer in Live Meeting and have download recordings enabled, both formats will be available to you.  However, to see the WMV format as an option, you must be logged in using Internet Explorer browser.

Secondly, this WMV version is smaller because it only captures a flat image of the slides (and does not include builds and animations).  Although it also captures application sharing, it does not capture presenter video, multimedia video, or survey links (if applicable).

And lastly, the “WMV converter” that you used takes the HFP file which includes all the builds and animations, plus presenter video, multimedia video and survey links and converts it into a WMV file with everything still intact.

In general, file sizes increase in size with duration, application sharing, video, and presenter video used.  If you are not using rich multimedia and you can break out your builds into separate sizes, I would advise using the WMV file available from your LM download page.  It will have the smallest file that you need to host.

The Virtual Edge Institute is devoted to helping you plan and produce successful virtual events and meetings that attendees rave about.  Clear Skies was featured in a Virtual Edge article (http://www.virtualedge.org/articles/index/view?id=1651552:Article:4745).  We have pasted the article below:

VirtualEdge talked with Aaron Cole founder and CEO of Clear Skies Virtual Event Producers recently about what has become a common occurrence in the virtual event industry…experienced webcasting and event producers leaving to form new companies to service the growing demand for virtual event and meeting solutions.  Many of the startups have a similar story to Clear Skies, 10 plus years of working in the virtual event and meeting space; in this case, most of the team is from Microsoft Live Meeting where they did extensive webcasting and webinar programs.

“Our existing clients are more of the traditional brick and mortar types of companies versus tech companies and they don’t have the staff and expertise to produce webcasts and more sophisticated events in-house,” said Cole. “We offer a full service model where we provide everything from planning to production and management but there are cases where we just support specific pieces of the event as well.”

Companies are increasingly looking for consultants that have experience across multiple platforms and technologies because there are so many options and a wide variety of meeting types and needs. “We plan to remain platform agnostic so that we can offer our clients the best solution for their event needs. But that is a lot of work –keeping up to date on all of the solutions available—something our clients couldn’t do internally,” noted Cole. “We need to be the ones out there spotting trends and bringing them back to the client because they are just too busy running their business.”

What Clear Skies is looking for now is more interactivity and moving away from the webinar model where people show up, consume the content and leave. “This format had been working pretty well for clients in terms of generating leads but it is time to take it to the next level.”

At Virtual Edge, we think we’ll see more and more of these new firms being born and the continued expansion of digital agencies and event management companies into the virtual event space as their clients marketing and colloboration practices change forever.  See more about Clear Skies at Clear Skies Virtual Event Producers

In our routine travels on the web, we came across one of the best webinar platform comparison tools that we’ve seen: http://www.webconferencing-test.com/en/webconference_home.html . As you have probably discovered, finding a tool that offers an unbiased comparison of webinar technologies can be hard to find. Most of the time, webinar comparison charts are little more than a display ad for a particular platform, and almost all comparisons are sponsored by a specific vendor. Even worse, we’ve seen some comparisons which purposely exclude platforms that deserve to be ranked and tested – therefore leaving us to question the validity and usefulness of the comparison even more.

This comparison website has been assembled by a company named Publicare, an online marketing agency based out of Frankfurt Germany. Publicare has taken 22 web conferencing platforms and ranked them on a scale of 1-10, on various categories: User friendliness, Number and scope of features, Pricing/cost transparency, etc. In addition to a numbered ranking, Publicare posts comments about their testing of the product and provides links to the vendor website, or free trial. Publicare’s efforts have yielded a comprehensive, informed and useful comparison of platforms that can be of great benefit. First time users of Webinar technology will admire the overall ranking system to quickly identify various costs and strengths of platforms, while seasoned webinar jockeys can dig deeper to uncover specific features that may help determine future purchasing decisions.

We should point out that this comparison is aimed at the collaboration use-case of webinars – smaller, less structured environments where collaboration is key (note WebEx MeetMeNow 2.3 is tested, not WebEx Event Center; no distinction is called out between Live Meeting Standard or Professional for example). Our use of webinar technology – the “One to Many” model – therefore is not discussed or ranked. Furthermore, we feel it’s this focus on collaborative environments that has lead Publicare to not include some of the streaming platform providers who are doing business in the “One to Many” world, like ON24, Stream57 or TalkPoint. Finally, the creation and maintenance of this website is funded by affiliate partnerships – if a visitor visits one of the ranked platforms and happens to purchase the software, Publicare receives a small finders fee. Publicare is quick to stress that this financial support does not affect their rankings, but is simply a means to recover some of the cost.

Overall, this is a great comparison tool, and we are grateful to Publicare for their time and efforts. While the comparisons are not an exact match to our business model, they none the less provide valuable information and insight into an otherwise cluttered, and noisy marketplace. Take a look, enjoy, and let us know what you think.

I found the following article very useful in making PC fixes that improve the attendee experience instead of hearing “it’s your internet connection” or it’s a “bandwidth issue”.

Tweaks to Speed Up Internet Streaming Video
By Gaelim Holland

The birth of “Guerilla Video” sites, such as Peekvid.com, Alluc.org and Youtube.com have given users instant access to a plethora of free media files. Although streaming video technology offers instant access to video files, zero loading time is not always possible. There are many factors that attribute to your computer’s ability to start videos immediately. Other factors such as choppy PC video playback and slow video streaming also hinder your viewing experience. There are easy fixes to these problems. Sometimes choosing another site for the source of the video streaming or a lower quality version of the video can award you with instant play. These alternatives are not always available. However, there are a number of tweaks that help speed up your streaming video startup times, eliminate choppy PC video play and stop slow streaming video.

Before we start with the tweaks to speed up slow streaming video, lets get a basic understanding of streaming video technology in order to stop choppy video. Streaming video is a prerecorded video files that can be distributed as part of a live broadcast “feed.” The video signal is converted into a compressed digital signal and transmitted from a Web server. This server is able to be multicast the same file to multiple users at the same time. When you click on the on the video it is partially loaded before you can access it. This is known as “buffering”. This helps you to load and play the video instantaneously. Now lets take a look on how to cut down on buffering time, stop slow streaming video and eliminate choppy PC video playback .

Read the rest of this entry »

We have been busy ramping up, testing web-conferencing software, adding service offerings and much more! I hope you noticed our Helpful Gadgets page. The first gadget is a Broadband Speed checker. It tests both your download and upload speeds.  Other factors that may effect presenter and attendee experiences are transfer rates, networks, and latency.  It is also very important to note that your bandwidth speed is affected by what web-conferencing platform you use.  Why?  The short answer: Different web-conferencing platforms have different server locations.  The more servers they have, the more likely one is located closer to you physically.  The better the performance.  More on that later.

First in this post let’s understand what we are talking about. The next post will talk about how to improve performance. And finally, a post to talk about the “why this matters” and how this affects which web-conferencing software platform to use for your online event.

Read the rest of this entry »

I attended a webinar hosted on Adobe Connect and presented by Ken Molay, President of Webinar Success and author of The Webinar Blog. He had some very useful information and broke down Webinar production into 9 key steps/segments.  He estimated that typically a new event set-up takes 22-38 person hours to manage and 6-7 weeks to fully prepare.

Here are my quick notes to share (hour estimates in parentheses are based on brand new events/presenters, etc):

1. Plan Your Event (2 hours)
   1. Based on what you are trying to accomplish – this may change your selection and evaluation process
      

      Ken Molay

   2. Roles – Determine Event Staff
      1. Coordinator/Administrator
      2. Moderator
         1. Answering questions
         2. Technical Support
         3. Presenter does not split their attention
      3. Presenters
      4. Marketer
   3. Pick your Dates/Times
      1. Look at time zones
      2. Unlimited events in a certain time period
   4. Create Timelines and Responsibilities
      1. Description/Target Date/Responsible Party/Status
   5. Other Decisions Read the rest of this entry »

It’s important to know that we are serious and dedicated in keeping up with technology. As such, we have registered with Microsoft as a Partner in using their web-conferencing platform, Live Meeting. This does not mean that this is the only platform we will use. However, it does mean that we hold high standards of practice. With that in mind, we are aiming to become a Certified Microsoft Partner.  If you are interested in conducting a customer case study, please let us know.