The Webinar Blog

Patent Suit Could Affect Web Conferencing Industry

2013-05-08T11:24:51-04:00

If you follow the web conferencing industry, products, or players it is worth your time to read the following long article from Roland Rick Perry on Seeking Alpha (a website for stock investors):

Microsoft's Skype Named In Copytele Web Conferencing Patent Suit

Warning - The full article requires a free registration on Seeking Alpha and is rife with grammatical errors and typos… At times it seems as though it was machine-converted from another language. If you prefer to simply read the short press release about the lawsuit (no background analysis), you can click here.

Seeking Alpha is targeted more at the business aspects of CopyTele and their business model, which has changed from technology development and innovation to purely "patent monetization and patent assertion" – often described in the popular vernacular as "patent trolling." For a less complimentary view of the lawsuit, you can also read Ingrid Lunden's article on TechCrunch, which contains the full lawsuit filing.

In a nutshell, Microsoft bought Skype. Skype allows audio/video/data conferencing over the internet, as do many web conferencing products. CopyTele says that they hold key patents on the encryption/decryption of data transmitted between computers, which Skype takes advantage of.

If you want to get down in the weeds, the full patents referenced in the lawsuit are online at www.google.com/patents/US6856687 and www.google.com/patents/US6856686. I find them hard to interpret, but at a quick overview glance, the suit seems like a long shot.

To my layman's eyes, 6856687 seems to indicate the need for a dedicated hardware device handling the data security aspect. That should be hard to argue for when computer-based conferencing uses generalized computer hardware without "portable security devices." Patent 6856686 might be an easier argument, as it talks about "exchanging data between a plurality of suitable microprocessor based devices over a computer network." But I wonder if they will be hurt by the focus in the title and text of the patent on encrypting e-mail attachments.

Technology patent cases are long, drawn-out affairs. Getting the court to understand the inner workings of software and hardware is difficult and one can never predict a final ruling. "Common sense" is not your best guide. Often the plaintiff just hopes for a quick settlement by the deep-pockets defendant as a way to avoid the nuisance and expense of the trial.

The chilling part of the lawsuit is encapsulated in a quote from CopyTele CEO Robert Berman in the TechCrunch article. He says "This is the initiation of what will be a broader patent enforcement campaign" that could target 90 to 100 web conferencing companies.

Ouch.

Technorati Tags: CopyTele,Microsoft,web conferencing,web conference,webinar,webcast,webcasting,web meeting,online conferencing,online meeting,patent trolling

Should You Use Polls In Webinars?

2013-05-05T20:38:04-04:00

Let's get your point of view as a webinar attendee and see how it matches other people's opinions about webinar polls. I would like you to answer this poll from your experience attending webinars, not hosting or presenting them.

(I have no idea what will happen to this widget inside of an email or feed reader. If you can't see the poll above this line, please visit the online blog at www.TheWebinarBlog.com or click directly to the poll itself at http://poll.pollcode.com/wjzw7)

My intent with those answer choices was literal. If you are negative about polls, I'm asking if you think they waste your time as an attendee. Time that could be better spent getting more information from the presenter, or giving other types of feedback, or simply reducing the webinar duration. If you are positive about polls, it's because you think there is some sense of worth... which to you could be a better sense of community, a feeling of participation, a way to get information, etc. The specifics are up to you.

The background behind this poll is an online exchange I have had with Craig Hadden at Remote Possibilities. Craig is really down on the entire concept of interactive polls introduced during a live webinar. He says the audience could always be better served by asking the questions during the registration process or in separate surveys before the webinar. I disagree and think that WHEN PLANNED AND EXECUTED CORRECTLY, they can be not only useful for the presenter, but engaging and worthwhile for the attendees.

If you want to read the arguments for and against, you can start with my own Tips For Webinar Polls, which Craig commented on. Or you can read the longer discussion chain in the comments on Craig's post Do You Make This #1 Mistake When You Present Online? (which concentrates on not wasting your audience's time... A concept with which I am in complete and total agreement!).

Craig and I have weighed in with our opinions... Now it's time to get the opinions of the people who really matter -- webinar attendees. Please take a moment to let us know how you feel about polls.

Thank you for your help!

WebEx Reporting Insanity

2013-05-01T17:41:24-04:00

I just finished one month of repeated emails, phone calls, and online test sessions with Cisco WebEx tech support. We found the answer to the problem I originally reported to them and in an attempt to save others the same frustration I thought I would write it up in this post.

The symptom I observed was that the In-Event Activity Report for one of my WebEx Event Center webinars contained columns showing results for some of the polls we had run, but others were missing.

It turns out that this was because WEBEX ONLY CAPTURES IN-EVENT ACTIVITY INFORMATION WHILE THE RECORDER IS RUNNING.

My first two polls were just audience demographics, asked while giving the live audience their instructions about using the conferencing software. I don't record that, because viewers of the archive have no reason to care and they can't participate. I start the recording after giving instructions and before introducing the content. Turns out this is a very bad idea if you want a report.

If you look hard enough, you can find a WebEx Knowledge Base Article (WBX45170) that tells you "In-Event Activity Reports are only available for events recorded on the server (Network-Based Recording)." But it never mentions the fact that information is only captured while the recorder is on.

I can't think of any way to describe this other than product design insanity. Reports are vital records of what happened during a web session. They should be… must be… divorced from any decisions I make about whether I want to make an archive recording, what portions of the event I elect to record, and whether I store the recording on disk or the network server.

The In-Event Activity Report is very important in WebEx, because it offers the only combined, integrated record of attendee interactions. The only other way to see their chat messages, Q&A questions, or poll responses is to manually save multiple distinct files before you close your meeting session. And all three of those interaction reports are in significantly different formats. Hell, they don't even go to the same default directory on your hard drive.

I expect more from the market share leader in the world of web events. WebEx has a massive customer base, a long product history, and plenty of real world usage experience. We should not have to put up with substandard reporting of our critical event data.

Technorati Tags: Cisco WebEx,WebEx,Event Center,In-Event Activity Report,webinar,web seminar,web meeting,web conference,web conferencing

New Presentation Aid For PowerPoint

2013-04-30T11:31:47-04:00

I just tried out a cute little add-in utility for PowerPoint called MagPointer. It gives presenters some convenient ways to interactively highlight information on PowerPoint slides during a slideshow presentation. If your web conferencing software relies on screen sharing to display slides to attendees, it might be worth a look.

In a nutshell, MagPointer adds point-and-click icons on the right margin of your presentation when you put PowerPoint into slideshow mode. You can click the icons while a slide is displayed to highlight various pieces of content by framing them with a border line, dimming the rest of the slide around them, or magnifying them.

The best way to visualize how it works is by watching the short video demo that MagPointer has on its website at http://www.magpointer.com/features.html

Nobody is going to claim that this is groundbreaking functionality. Drawing boxes on the screen is a common feature in web conferencing software and magnifier utilities have been around for a long time. I will say that I really liked the ability to dim the slide except for the designated area. That is new to me and it is more effective than drawing a highlighter color over your content.

It's also nice that MagPointer attempts to interpret the individual content pieces on your slide. If you have lines of text or bullet points, you can highlight them in a single click-select action, rather than having to draw your own freehand region around them. You can click a graphic item and automatically magnify it. And if you work with tables, you will like the easy ability to highlight a row, column, or cell with a single click.

On my wide-screen monitor, I found that running a slideshow in 4:3 aspect ratio left nice black borders on the sides of my slides, and the MagPointer controls fit nicely in the right black border. But with my slides set to widescreen aspect ratio so they filled the screen, the MagPointer controls are necessarily overlaid on the slide itself. This will be annoying if you fill your slide with content all the way to the right margin.

There are a few quirks (or at least a learning curve) to smooth operation of MagPointer. Although a user guide is provided, we all know that nobody ever reads those. So here are a few tips:

There are hidden configuration parameters that can be accessed through the taskbar control icon or with a right-click on a slide. These let you adjust the amount of slide dimming, shape of borders, etc.
Frame and highlight icons have a toggle setting that lets you choose between allowing multiple highlights on a slide or having each highlight replace the previous one. I don't like their user interface design… The picture on the icon does not show you which mode you are in, but shows you what mode you would change it to if you clicked on it.
The default operation for graphic elements on a slide is to magnify them. If you want to highlight them instead, you have to be careful to freehand draw an area larger than the borders of your graphic. Otherwise you'll find yourself accidentally magnifying your image.
No surprise, but if you place low resolution images on your slide, they get very fuzzy when magnified! So if you plan to use this feature, make sure to start with high resolution graphics and scale them down to fit.
MagPointer includes icons for Next Slide and Previous Slide, which seem redundant to the right-click and keyboard commands already available in PowerPoint. I would rather eliminate these from the control panel to simplify the display and make choice selection easier.
Since you are screen sharing, the audience sees the controls and they see you moving your mouse on and off the slide. This could be distracting if you overuse it throughout your entire presentation. As with any highlighting aid, use the functionality sparingly as an accent, not as a crutch for presenting every word and picture. [UPDATE: Yossi Pinkas at MagPointer points out that you can activate many of the functions with direct mouse clicks on the slide objects, which avoids the back and forth to the right margin. But you can't get rid of the icons display.]

If you want to play with MagPointer yourself, the website gives you a fully-functional 30-day trial. A full perpetual use license is USD $19.95 for a single person, single computer.

Technorati Tags: MagPointer,PowerPoint,screen sharing,desktop sharing,web conference,web conferencing,webinar,webcast,webcasting

Tips For Webinar Polls

2013-04-28T23:55:08-04:00

Interactive audience polls are a marvelous feature of web conferencing software. They can engage an audience and give them an opportunity to feel like an active part of the discussion, even when there are too many audience members to hear from and respond to each individual.

Unfortunately, polls are often used poorly in webinars. Let's go over a few considerations and best practices in webinar polling.

1) Don't start your webinar with a poll. Your audience came to get something from you. If the first thing they see is a request for them to give YOU information, the psychology is turned around and violates expectations. Give before you take.

2) Keep things short. A good poll has a short question that is easy to read and is unambiguous. Answer choices should also be short and unambiguous. The longer it takes people to read and interpret the poll, the more time you waste and the more it is seen as frustrating rather than engaging.

3) Make your polls inclusive. If you ask a question about attendees' demographics, knowledge, behavior, etc. you must give EVERYONE in the audience an applicable answer choice. Remember to include "Other" or "Not Applicable" as choices in case they don't fit one of the categories in your list.

4) Announce multiple answer polls quickly. If your poll allows more than one answer choice ("Choose all that apply"), let your audience know that fact immediately, before talking through the poll. Otherwise the fast readers may pick only one choice and lock in their vote, only to be frustrated when they find out they could have picked multiple answers. When I use webinar software that locks audience votes on submission, I try to announce a multiple-answer poll BEFORE I display it.

5) Results are for the audience. Interactive polls during your presentation are a part of your presentation content. That means you need to show the cumulative results and have something to say about them. Don't just say "Thanks for voting" and move on to your next slide. Questions without display and discussion of results should be reserved for post-webinar surveys.

6) You can't please everyone. I moderate and present on LOTS of webinars. I deal with audiences in the dozens, hundreds, and thousands. And I regularly experiment with different strategies while the audience is voting. I have tried all of the following:

Staying silent during the voting
Reading the answer choices to the audience
Explaining the different choices and what they mean
Talking them through how the voting is going and how much time they have left to make a decision
Talking to the presenter about a topic point
Answering a relevant audience question
Making announcements
Combinations of the above

After trying the different techniques, I can confidently state that no matter what you do, somebody in the audience will complain. My recommendation? Mix it up – Do it a little differently on each poll. If the audience is big enough and we have lots of polls, I sometimes even tell them what I'm doing and why. It actually helps get them on your side if they know you are at least TRYING to accommodate a variety of preferences.

7) Polls are expendable. If you are running short on time, please jettison that poll towards the end. I can't believe how attached some presenters are to their polls. Your audience would much rather you take that extra 2-3 minutes giving them more value and completing your presentation in a calm, confident manner. If the skipped poll is really important to you, add it to your post-webinar survey.

I hope you found these useful. I would love to see comments with additional tips and tricks you have found effective in your webinars!

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,web meeting,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,online meeting,online seminar,polling

Adobe Integrates Webinar Info With Web Page Design

2013-04-24T19:27:00-04:00

Last month Adobe bundled some of its web management products under a new name. The new Adobe Experience Manager includes Adobe CQ for web content management and Adobe Scene7 for organization, storage, and delivery of rich media and other digital assets. That's nice, but not the focus of this blog – so I didn't cover it and didn't pay much attention to it.

But today Adobe announced new webinar-specific capabilities in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). That makes it my business.

It can be very difficult to interpret what's new in Adobe's announcements due to the company's propensity for renaming and rebundling products every other week. I got help from Chris Nguyen and Peter Ryce of Adobe in a briefing and demo.

The one big new capability that did not previously exist is that enterprise web page designers and content managers now have dynamic access to information about company webinars that have been scheduled in Adobe Connect. So you can build a web page announcing upcoming webinars and instead of having to manually type in the details about date, time, title, description, etc… You can drag and drop that content straight from your Connect account. That's a nice feature and much appreciated. It should help speed up provisioning of web pages about events and reduce the potential for transcription errors by HTML coders who know nothing about the event in question.

As far as I can tell, everything else in the announcement echoes functionality that was already existent, but integrates it and makes it accessible under the overall AEM umbrella.

When I reported on the new Events Module in Adobe Connect 9 last year, I praised it as a major step forward in end-to-end webinar management, allowing drag and drop creation of rich media landing pages, registration, lead tracking, reporting, and analytics. The problem was that getting access to some of those capabilities meant separately licensing, learning, and operating a number of additional Adobe products. Adobe Experience Manager should now bring together the functionality into a single consistent platform.

Just to highlight some of the niftier integration points, I like the ability to create dynamic web pages that classify visitors and show them information on relevant webinars. Or the ability to easily embed the delivery of a webinar directly onto a web page so that a separate login and browser window is not needed. Or the ability to add social media links to things like Twitter and Facebook next to the webinar information to help spread awareness and build community.

In order to use the new integration, AEM users will have to license an add-on to their product. Adobe is targeting availability for June of this year.

Technorati Tags: Adobe Experience Manager,Adobe Connect,webinar,web seminar,web event,web conferencing,web conference,webcast,webcasting

Web Conferencing FrustrationUploading Pictures

2013-04-22T12:53:01-04:00

I got a note from a reader detailing her frustration at trying to upload a head shot picture of a presenter in her web conferencing product. She kept trying and the upload kept failing.

After some back-and-forth with a tech support representative, it turned out she was uploading a picture with dimensions larger than the product accepted for that particular placeholder. The really annoying part was that she had checked the online documentation for just such a restriction. But the documentation was wrong.

I have run into similar situations with many different products. I wish web conferencing vendors would always add these items to their upload pages:

On the upload page, clearly state the maximum size graphic (pixels and/or bytes) that can be uploaded. Do NOT make us access a separate help system and search for the applicable page of documentation.
Show us what is currently uploaded for use in that spot.
Give us a way to delete/clear the graphic rather than replacing it.

Additional information is also appreciated, although it does not need to be on the upload page itself. You can put these items in a separate help item (I prefer context-specific help that can be clicked for the upload item in question):

Tell us if a particular aspect ratio is preferred (square/portrait/landscape). Or tell us the WxH dimensions the graphic is displayed as if appropriate.
If you crop/shrink/expand uploaded graphics to fit a placeholder size, tell us how you do it. Are large images cropped, or are they shrunk? Do you expand small images to fill the space, or do you add white filler around them, or do you keep them at the uploaded size without adding additional filler color around them?

These may seem like trivial details, but your users have neither the time nor inclination to do trial and error experimentation to see what happens with various graphic sizes. Let us know what the product needs so that we can create the most appropriate graphic for that space and do it right the first time.

Technorati Tags: web conference,web conferencing,webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web meeting,online seminar,online meeting

Webinar Presenters Want Speaker Notes

2013-04-16T23:36:48-04:00

I keep hearing this request from guest speakers on webinars. "Where can I see my PowerPoint notes while presenting?" For most webinar technologies, the answer is "on the hardcopy you print out and keep on your desk."

That is a pity. Forcing presenters to shift their attention between paper and the screen has several drawbacks. They aren't watching chat messages from the moderator or other presentation team members. They aren't watching questions and comments coming in from the audience. They insert noticeable pauses between slides as they advance the slide online and turn pages on their desk. And the audience hears the sound of paper shuffling, destroying the illusion that the speaker is delivering the information ad hoc.

For technologies that present PowerPoint slides via screen sharing, there is probably nothing to be done. But many webinar vendors upload and cache the PowerPoint slides before the meeting starts. These companies need to work on ways to give presenters the option to see the notes section of each slide as it gets displayed to attendees.

It is late and I am relying purely on memory, but the only product I can think of offhand with this capability is Adobe Connect. I'm probably forgetting one or two others. If you represent a webinar product that lets presenters see their presentation notes, please add a comment.

If your product doesn't do this, get your development team cracking. Why not distinguish yourself from the competition with functionality that users want?

UPDATE 4/17/13 - ON24 wrote to remind me that their new Presentation Manager XD shows slide notes to presenters. Thanks and kudos!

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,online seminar,online presentation,Adobe Connect

Netbriefings Targets ON24 With Familiar Language

2013-04-12T00:55:51-04:00

Wow, this is weird.

Netbriefings today (April 11) issued a press release announcing a campaign targeted at current users of ON24 webcasting technology and managed services. ON24 customers can get a free fully managed webcast from Netbriefings to compare the services.

Fair enough. But regular readers of my blog might think this post sounds strangely familiar. I think so too. On April 2 I wrote about a press release from AnyMeeting going after customers of WebEx and GoToMeeting.

That's not the strange part… The idea of directly targeting your competition isn't exactly new. What I found surprising was that Netbriefings basically copied the press release that AnyMeeting published 9 days earlier, updated the names and a few keywords, and put it out as their own. It's unusual to see so obvious a copy and paste job done by another company in the same general industry in such a short time span. It's not exactly subtle, and the interested readership base is likely to to see both.

You can read both press releases using the links in the above paragraphs. You'll see comparisons like this:

AnyMeeting Launches Aggressive Promotion to Secure Leadership of Small Business Web Conferencing Market
Netbriefings Launches Aggressive Promotion to Gain Marketshare of the Managed Service Webcasting Market
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web Conferencing Provider Goes After Small Business Customers of WebEx and GoToMeeting
Webcasting provider goes after business customers of ON24
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AnyMeeting […] announced the launch of an aggressive campaign taking on WebEx and GoToMeeting in the small business market.
Netbriefings […] announced the launch of an aggressive campaign taking on ON24 in the managed service webcasting market.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AnyMeeting is offering a promotion specifically for small businesses that are currently using WebEx and GoToMeeting. Any small business […] interested in participating can simply provide a copy of their most recent WebEx or GoToMeeting invoice, and they will receive…
Netbriefings is offering a promotion specifically to businesses that are using ON24. Any business interested in participating can simply provide a copy of their most recent ON24 invoice, and they will receive…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And in a quote from the president/CEO of each company:

"Being a small company […] we're out to prove that we're a better solution for them."
"Being a small company […] they will see we're a better solution for them."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but there is something about this that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it is because I used to write press releases in my former life as a product marketing specialist. Trying to come up with new and interesting things to say and ways to say it is often tedious and frustrating. Copying someone else's work verbatim strikes me as the wrong shortcut to use.

Oh well. It doesn't change the fact that the offer is a good one if you are currently with ON24 and are looking for alternative options.

Technorati Tags: Netbriefings,ON24,AnyMeeting,webinar,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing,marketing,public relations

Video, Video, Video

2013-04-11T01:09:15-04:00

Wonder what the current Big Thing in web collaboration is? Let me call your attention to these recent press releases:

There is no question that web conferencing vendors are hot to promote their video capabilities. I continue to urge caution however when deciding whether to add video to your webinars. Video tends to have the greatest positive impact on the upper and lower ends of the scale when you look at types of web conferences.

On the lower end you have peer-to-peer collaborative meetings. A fantastic opportunity to add the interpersonal touch provided by facial expressions and that extra sense of presence. Go for it!

On the high end you have professional quality webcasts shot in controlled environments with proper setup of sound, lighting, background, and cameras. Trained videographers make sure the presenters look their best. Incredibly powerful and satisfying for attendees. I couldn't be more enthusiastic about the benefits of video here.

But between those two extremes you get the vast majority of business webinars… These are usually given by overworked businesspersons without much presentation training. They don't rehearse their presentation enough because of time pressures. They are not used to the isolated experience of presenting via web, where you can't see audience reaction and response. They present from their cubicle, a conference room, or a hotel room. Video comes from a poorly adjusted webcam or a built-in laptop webcam shooting up into their nostrils. Overhead fluorescent lighting is harsh and casts shadows. They look nervous or distracted on camera. Instead of adding value to your webinar, video under these conditions will reduce your effectiveness and your perceived professionalism and will result in attendee dissatisfaction.

Video is not just tough on the presenters… It is tough from a technology standpoint when trying to create a universally satisfying attendee experience. Business webinars might reach audiences of anywhere from 50 to 5000 people. Hosts have no control over attendee technology. Some people have slow, outdated computers. Some are on overloaded network hubs or slow wi-fi connections. The problem of bringing a reliable, smooth video presentation to this diverse audience is a serious one.

To take one illustrative example, let's focus on Citrix's announcement about making HDFaces available for GoToWebinar and GoToTraining. I spoke to Cailin Pitcher, the Product Line Director for both products. The first thing I said to her was "19 months?!? Really??" I was referring to the fact that Citrix has had their HDFaces high definition video conferencing capability in GoToMeeting since August of 2011. It has taken 19 months to add the same functionality with the same underlying technology to their larger audience platforms.

And even at this point, video is only being offered to customers on plans that max out at a 100-person room capacity. Customers with larger 500 and 1,000 attendee plans can only use HDFaces under a beta agreement that limits the functionality to the first 100 attendees. Subsequent attendees will not see the video feed.

Cailin pointed out the obvious… It was simply harder than expected to bullet proof the video quality for larger, more diverse audiences than you get in a typical 25-person web meeting. I asked for details on how Citrix handles lower-speed/lower-quality connections from attendees. Citrix's Chief Technology Officer, Bernd Christiansen, followed up with some answers for me.

Bernd wrote that the HDFaces technology constantly monitors each user's connection parameters to apply an individually optimized video stream for that person, independent of what others see. People with connection problems will see a lower quality image. If that isn't sufficient, the resolution of the image will drop. As a last resort, the frame rate will be lowered, which can lead to juttery motion. Bernd said they wanted to avoid buffering, since this ruins the real-time, synchronous nature of a webinar.

I asked if the adjustments always seek downwards to the lowest acceptable level and stay there. I was pleased to hear that the system continues monitoring and if it detects an improvement in the connection, it steps up the video quality again. This is not always the case for competing products.

As you can see from the preceding paragraphs, comparing video performance between vendors can be a daunting task. It requires asking about and understanding concepts of computer video transmission that are technical in nature. The average technical support person or sales rep will have no idea how the video algorithms are implemented. And a simple test on your nice high speed connection with two or three people in the meeting room may be no indication of what happens when you have a large audience all trying to consume the video stream on sub-optimal equipment.

Video is here to stay. Vendors need to offer the functionality. It is good and right that we have the option to use it. But remember that it is still an option. Video is not right for every webinar, and you should take extra care before offering it in your presentations. Used correctly, it can be a tremendous communication asset.

Technorati Tags: video conferencing,videoconference,webinar,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,GoToMeeting,GoToWebinar,GoToTraining,web collaboration,HDFaces

As a webinar ATTENDEE, how do you feel about interactive polls during a presentation?
	Always a waste of time
	Usually a waste of time
	Sometimes good, sometimes bad
	Usually worthwhile
	Always worthwhile

pollcode.com free polls