Conferencing News Blog

The Webinar Wire - Read from or Write to...

CN Editorial Team — 2009-11-04

Contributors Wanted! Anyone can write a blog post on the Webinar Wire. This is a multi-author blog for the web event services market and we encourage marketers, tech service providers, and web event producers and promoters to contribute their news, opinions and insights. If you're learning about how to produce effective webinars, the insights from contributors like Ken Molay will give you invaluable information and insight into best practices. Read from or write to the Webinar Wire now.

Wainhouse Research CSP Summit: October 26th, Boston

CN Editorial Team — 2009-10-08

The Wainhouse Research CSP Summit brings together collaboration & conferencing service providers, their technology partners, and WR analysts to connect, explore, and understand the rapidly changing market. The topics explored with this year's theme, "The Changing Landscape, How to Capitalize on New Markets for Collaboration Services", will help providers prepare for the future of the collaboration and conferencing industry as they learn what to expect from new technologies and new providers entering the space. The discussions and presentations are highly interactive between speakers and the audience while focusing on practical strategies to drive adoption and growth. The format of the CSP Summit allows an unprecedented opportunity for networking during the session, breaks, lunch, and at a cocktail reception. LEARN MORE and REGISTER

DimDim Wants You (Guys) to Get Wood and Webinars

CN Editorial Team — 2009-09-03

Sex, Marketing, and Conferencing. First we had Cisco's "How to Get a Girl" video demonstrating its telepresence system and then we had the lollipop-sucking women in Glowpoint's tradebooth some time ago, and now we have DimDim pimping webinar services by using sex objects that belong to the French with a video entitled "Sexy How To Make Money Online with Webinars. The new DimDim "French Maid TV" promotional videos that show busty women in their underwear straddling on big balls punctuated with how-to instruction of DimDim's new webinar service will undoubtedly be rationalized along the lines that other advertisers like GoDaddy do risque Super Bowl commercials and all is OK and "safe for work" to watch. One scene in the DimDim promo even pays homage to "The Man Show' with its "Girls on Trampolines" segment wherein the French Maids are bouncing on exercise balls while their barely covered, ample breasts bounce in slow motion. We're not sure webinars - which are frequently purchased, marketed, attended, and hosted by women - are the right product to be promoted by busty B-grade models in their underwear acting like flirty french maids and having pillow fights. We're all supposed to be in on the joke of the sexual stereotype that's being exploited, but what's also at work here is a justification for men at the office to watch busty women having pillow fights and maybe get some wood. Quite frankly, in an age when porn is mainstream and a click away, we find the video a bit trite and at over 5 minutes, a bit tedious. It does have some marketing merit if your objective is to get men to watch something insanely boring - webinar instructions. But if you're going to get sexy in this day and age and push the envelope, why not sponsor a hardcore porn video? To align with the collaborative DimDim brand, it ought to be a group sex scene. Between sex position changes, the porn stars could explain the features of DimDim. French maids are so, like, yesterday. Is DimDim's promotion exploitive of women? Does it sexually objectify them? ...To each her own opinion. At a minimum, we find it corny. And it's condescending to anyone who actually wants to learn about making money in online events. Others find this type of boob marketing, "effin' brilliant." We'd suggest that much more entertaining in the age of "reality" programming would be for DimDim CEO DD Ganguly (double D, too rich) and CMO Steve Chazin and the rest of the all-male management team at DimDim to join the french maids in the action. That's right, the DimDim management team should disrobe and join in the pillow fight in their underwear and straddle exercise balls with the women and educate us on the features of the DimDim webinar service. We can all be in on the joke of exploited stereotypes (french maids, reality stars) and DimDim management can certainly be said to be an equal opportunity marketer. C'mon guys, join the ladies, take your clothes off, get bouncing on your balls, and educate us about DimDim!!! ...Hmmm, on second thought, this would be Not Safe For Anyone to view.

The Launch of the BT Customer Experience Center in NYC

CN Editorial Team — 2009-08-20

BT is without peer as a telecom brand. Cosmopolitan and international, they do things with flair and style - and success. They're anything but stodgy. Last night's ribbon-cutting event for their new Customer Experience Center in the airy, transparent design of Renzo Piano's New York Times Building is a case in point. Hanif Lanai, CEO of BT Global Services cut the ribbon to formally open their new "Customer Experience Center" (CEC) for US customers. We were too ~~buzzed~~ distracted ~~in sucking down Heinekens~~ and failed to get that on video, but we did manage to do quickie interviews with BT Conferencing CEO Aaron McCormack and Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty, see above and below. Here at this new center, the telepresence technologies of Polycom, Cisco and Tandberg, along with the latest unified communications and collaboration (UCC) offerings from Microsoft, Polycom, Cisco, HP, can be seen. Quick impressions of this BT event: Best-in-Showcase: Polycom In BT's new CEC, Polycom has the most impressive room for its ~~videoconferencing~~ telepresence system. The room is beautifully designed for its purpose - a showcase - and in terms of "experience" it beats out the Cisco's and Tandberg's experiences in their respective telepresence showcase rooms. In terms of the actual mediated experience in videoconferencing with people at remote locations, we'd also give the winning edge to Polycom. While the sound could improve a bit, the Polycom telepresence visuals are spectacular. Cisco's backgrounds to the people your meeting with were a muddy brown-ish color, which is sort of a downer, particularly if you're already taking anti-depressants from spending countless hours stuck in the office because your boss says you can't travel anymore. Tandberg's backgrounds to the person we spoke with were sky blue. This was presented as a nice feature, but we kept expecting a jet, a cloud, a kite, or a parachuting Elliot Gold to appear behind the woman we chatted with at the other end. If you want to get natural and "immersive" you can't have people you're meeting with floating in the sky. However, all of these systems are impressive, and we'd encourage you to make an appointment to see them in action. Best-in-Chat: Aaron McCormack We always enjoy catching up with BT Conferencing CEO, Aaron McCormack. Affable, smart and successful at BT Conferencing, he was also one of the first people to personally sign up for CN's Key People Directory and now he's even on Twitter. Being accessible on and experimenting with social media as a CEO of a large company suggests to us that Aaron "gets it" and that bodes well for BT. Best-in-Color: Purple Who knew? Our Conferencing News name-tag badges had a purple stripe, as distinct from other attendees, such as customers and vendor partners. Come to find out, this purple stripe marked us as "Influencers" to the attentive and accommodating BT people working the room. ...Aha! This explains everything that happened up until 4:30am. What a night!

Bob Hagerty, CEO of Polycom at the BT Customer Experience Center Opening

CN Editorial Team — 2009-08-20

Google Voice - with Conference Calling

CN Editorial Team — 2009-06-21

What Conferencing News said in 2003

CN Editorial Team — 2009-02-09

With all the media coverage of how the airlines will suffer mightily because of increased adoption of conferencing, we thought it appropriate to revisit the views of Conferencing News to see what we had to say back in 2003. "The smartest thing the cost-cutting, non-union, exceptional-service-providing, premier US-based airline JetBlue should do with its wonderfully valued stock price is acquire Genesys, Webex, Raindance, and Act and transition the aggregated company over the next ten years as the brand to set up meetings with - via conferencing or flying to get there face-to-face. ...The airlines that cater to businesses will never - ever - enjoy the huge revenues it once commanded. The current hustle and bustle at airports today for business travel are the last twitches in the corpse of the airline industry. ...But ever-better and cheaper conferencing services over the next 10 years will take away 75% of the typical business travel by planes that we spend lots of time and money on today. Those shuttle flights full of business people - wasting money and time - you hear scraping the sunny morning skies look to me like flying dinosaurs. Extinction is coming their way. JetBlue should buy in. The cult of conferencing will kill the airline industry." Read the 2003 interview Recent articles about conferencing and the airlines: Travel Goes the Way of the Dodo at Cisco Southwest Airlines' Next Competitor? Cisco Systems Gartner Predicts Video Telepresence Will Replace 2.1 Million Airline Seats Per Year by 2012, Losing the Travel Industry $3.5 billion annually

The Inside Scoop: InterCall

CN Editorial Team — 2009-01-21

A little birdy just landed on the window sill of our loft office here in SoHo and chirped that InterCall will announce tomorrow something called "Click-to-Start Conferencing" with InterCall Unified Meeting. It also sang that "Using InterCall Unified Meeting, sales professionals can host product demonstrations without requiring their customers and prospects to download software; marketers will find InterCall Unified Meeting a cost-effective way to announce new products; and project managers can bring people around the world together to give status updates and make quick decisions." Evidently, InterCall Unified Meeting is the foundation of InterCall's unified communications strategy. Why our little tweety bird isn't integrated into their communication solutions is beyond us. Look for the InterCall release (now available here).

Meeting Jets

CN Editorial Team — 2008-10-15

"In preparation for landing, please check to make sure your seat belt is securely fastened, and your seat back and tray table are in the full upright and locked position, and shut your pie hole and turn off the videoconferencing system." Have you ever called someone on your cell phone while you secretly walked up to him or her? Surprise! What a fun trick! Oh the laughs! ...Well, it seems a cloud-computing analyst from Gartner wants to do that with jets. That's right: instead of making a cell phone call and walking up to the called person to surprise, an analyst from Gartner, we'd conject, wants to hop on a jet, have a videoconference meeting with someone, then go surprise them with his face-to-face presence. Oh the fun! The Gartner analyst demanded of John Chambers of Cisco at a recent conference, saying, "I want to be on a plane and have TelePresence in front of me," to which Chambers replied, "Well, the answer is, you are probably going to." We don't make this stuff up. Here's the title and link, folks: Cisco CEO sees videoconferencing on planes within 18 months Maybe this cloud-computing stuff is getting a little too literal for some. We can see the report for $2995: Cloud-Meetings - An Emerging Market. Or the webinars: Hosting Effective Web Events in the Sky. Let's see here... Burn more jet fuel and increase carbon emissions? CHECK. Increase ticket prices for expensive TelePresence systems? CHECK. Create annoyance for other passengers? CHECK. Provide awkward self-consciousness and privacy issues for the person videoconferencing from the ground? CHECK. What a great idea! Maybe our idea we "gifted" to Cisco about Telattepresence isn't so bad after all. The "third place" of Starbucks just might be followed by the "fourth place" of gathering on planes to have videoconferences. To get the ball rolling, we'd suggest putting Telepresence monitors on the back of every seat in this plane. Can't we just get cell phone and web access first?

The Buzz on Compunetix

CN Editorial Team — 2008-08-28

Compunetix is on a roll. They've got a new corporate and brand identity manifested in a nicely designed website that includes a blog that promotes effectively their products and people. Jerry Pompa just got elected to the IMCCA's board of directors. And recently Compunetix acquired the assets of Sonexis, an in-house audio conferencing bridge maker. What did Telespan's Elliot Gold think of the Compunetix acquisition of Sonexis assets? Was it a good decision? To quote Elliot from his August 20th newsletter, "You bet your bippy it is." ...We're forget what a bippy is, but all of this Compunetix buzz sounds pretty good.