IncTechnology.com > Collaborative Computing

How to Live Stream a Meeting

Michelle V. Rafter — 2009-10-28T10:34:15-05:00

Scott Kurtz was looking for a way to promote his 10-year-old Web cartoon business when he decided to broadcast himself drawing the strip, an ode to video games and the geeks who love them called PvPOnline.com.

After some initial experimentation, the 38-year-old Dallas resident hit on a winning formula: he draws the strip directly onto a touch-sensitive computer screen and live streams the video and audio over a website called Ustream.tv so fans can watch him work.

At first Kurtz was self conscious about sharing his creative process with the world. But once dozens and then hundreds of fans started logging on at any given time -- and sticking around to chat with each other and buy the strip’s merchandise -- Kurtz got a lot more comfortable with the concept. “They really are getting to know me, they’re getting invested, and that’s the X factor between a causal viewer and someone who might want to buy something,” he says.

Like Kurtz, small business owners are starting to use live streaming in all aspects of their operations, including sales, marketing, and customer service.

Broadcasting in real time

Live streaming is like podcasting with a few major exceptions. Both consist of an audio or video segment broadcast over the Internet. But while a podcast is recorded for future download and playback, live streaming happens in the here and now. Unlike the solitary experience of listening to a podcast, broadcasters also link live streams to chat rooms and other social networking features so viewers can exchange comments with each other while they’re watching.

Live streaming is taking off in and out of business circles because the equipment that’s required has become plentiful and cheap. It’s also been helped by a proliferation of Internet-based broadcasters such as Ustream, Livestream.com, and Justin.tv that small business owners can use to stream their feeds for little or nothing.

In many parts of the country, companies that would rather not take on the logistics of live streaming a meeting themselves can now hire a live streaming producer or consultant to do the work for them for hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the length and complexity what’s being produced.

For do-it-yourself types, a basic live stream set up doesn’t cost much. Must-haves include:

A reliable high-speed Internet connection and some kind of video input -- a high resolution or high-definition video camera is recommended but even a PC’s built-in webcam will do
Audio from a video camera or stand alone microphone
A computer with enough processing power and memory to handle upload speeds of 500 kilobytes per second for normal broadcasting or 1 megabytes per second for HD pictures

Kurtz, the Web cartoonist, uses a free software program called CamTwist to stream what appears on his Mac’s monitor to Ustream, and Audio Hijack Pro, another free program that lets him stream audio from his video camera, Skype, iTunes, or another audio source.

Though she can’t quantify exactly how many of Livestream.com’s 450,000 active channels are run by small businesses, the number is growing, says Deborah Kornfilt, the New York City company’s head of content and partnerships. Among them: Network Solutions, which streamed its recent GrowSmartBizConference on the network; Women’s Enterprise Network, an Ohio-based organization that runs a channel devoted to promoting women in business; and a retailer that streamed a fashion show to market its wedding dresses. “They had a contest to win a wedding gown and used live stream as an incentive to bring traffic to their site,” Kornfilt says.

Like several other live stream broadcasters, Livestream.com offers a free service that’s supported by advertising, as well as premium plans with lots of extra, including a white-label player companies can put on their own website. At Livestream.com, premium plans cost $350 and $1,250 a month for additional channels and storage as well as HD-quality video.

Hiring a live stream producer

Businesses that would rather not do their own live streaming can hire Internet broadcasters and live event producers to do the work for them. SLL Productions in Portland, Ore., handles everything related to designing, setting up, and broadcasting an event. The firm, run by husband and wife team Mike and Cami Gebhardt, also provide extras such as conducting interviews at a company’s event and broadcasting them along with the event’s main stream. “It provides a deeper online experience for people who can’t attend” in person, Mike Gebhardt says.

Joe Christiansen, owner of Blaze Streaming Media, also of Portland, thinks of himself as a virtual event coordinator, staging a client’s live stream, testing Internet access at a meeting space and capturing e-mail addresses from people who watch the live stream for the client to use for lead generation afterward. He also acts as the liaison between his client and the live stream broadcaster and provides extras that a Livestream.com or Ustream might not offer.

Such customization doesn’t come cheap. Christiansen’s fee for live streaming an event runs $1,000 to $10,000. His bill to live stream an Oregon soil company’s three-hour fall meeting, including running multiple cameras and live chat was $3,500. Christiansen’s fee also included statistics on exactly how many minutes each one of the company’s customers tuned in, information sales reps will use in follow-up calls. “Times are tough and their attendance was down” but the live stream gave the company a way to connect to customers anyway, he says.

Meeting on the Web: Which Tools to Use?

Jean Thilmany — 2009-03-22T16:15:59-05:00

Still sorting out the difference between webinar, webcast, and Web meetings? Each means of interacting with clients, customers, or staff members via the Web is used to a different end. The one you choose depends on the business situation you’re addressing.

You’d hold a Web meeting, for instance, to interact with outside clients or with team members. A webcast would be useful for managers with a message for a dispersed team of employees. And webinars can help build your client base.

Obviously, the way you choose to interact with clients and customers will likely change according to your subject. Here are some tips for choosing the best option to suit the message you’re delivering.

Decide how much interaction you’ll need between participants

Unlike Web meetings, where everyone can participate, talk, and share presentations, both webinars and webcasts have a single presenter, or at least one presenter at a time, says June Bower, vice president of the collaboration software division at WebEx of San Jose, Calif., which offers all three services.

The primary difference between a webinar and a webcast is the amount of interactivity between the presenter and the audience. A webcast is a one-way presentation that commonly uses streaming video. “The analogy is to the television experience,” Bower says.

Little interaction. Do you have financial numbers to present to team members? A webcast is the way to go, says Bernardo de Albergaria is vice president of global marketing at Citrix Online of Santa Barbara, Calif. His company makes GotoMeeting tools for all three methods of Web interactions.
Moderate interaction. Webinars are generally held to communicate about a new service or initiative. They typically feature moderated interaction, with a moderator helping the presenter by organizing questions from the audience. You can present PowerPoint slides, photographs, and software demonstrations during these meetings, Bower says. You’d hold a webinar much as you’d host a sales or marketing presentation in a hotel conference center, de Albergaria says.
A lot of interaction. Will you need to discuss an issue? Then a Web meeting, which allows for back-and-forth interaction, is applicable here. Think of it as a conference call with updated visual and collaborative Web functions. “We’ve found our customers use the words Web conference and meeting interchangeably,” Bower says. “They’re for when you have something specific to talk about with your customers or clients that's not a marketing message. You’re collaborating to get work done.”

The medium isn’t the message

Whichever Web-based contact method you choose, you’ll still need to follow best meeting practices. You’ll want to make sure attendees will have an agenda to follow, for example.

Keep in mind, webinars take much more planning than Web meetings, which can be set up on the fly, de Albergaria says.

These Web tools make repeated interactions pretty easy, de Albergaria says. You can archive webinars and webcasts at your website for replay, which makes them powerful marketing or refresher tools.

Consider more than one meeting method

A first contact may be more applicable to one method, a follow-up meeting another method.

“So if you want to update internal people on a new service you’re rolling out you could do it as a Web conference, then follow that up with a webcast,” Bower says. “Of you could hold a Web meeting and point attendees to a pertinent webinar you have archived.”

SIDEBAR: Questions to Ask When Choosing a Web Meeting Option

Who is your audience?
Is your message marketing or informational in nature?
How much interaction between participants will you need?
Will you need a presenter? Someone to take questions? Or will all participants speak freely back and forth?
Should you use a second method for a follow-up meeting?

Collaborate via Your BlackBerry

Marc Saltzman — 2008-12-19T09:34:10-05:00

Sure, you've outfitted your staff with BlackBerry devices because of its handy ability to provide push e-mail, instant messaging conversations, and Web access. But did you know that BlackBerry is also becoming a platform for mobile collaboration applications?

Leading technology companies such as IBM, Intuition, and WICKSoft have developed applications for mobile employees to work together on projects in real-time, using their handset, regardless of where they might be on the planet.

Here's how your business can use mobile devices for collaboration.

“BlackBerry is so popular with sales people, traders, and others that need to stay in touch while out of the office that one IT manager told us that he would have to pry the device ‘out of their cold dead fingers,'” says Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based independent research company covering business and technology.

“That kind of passion raises a different question: What else can we use BlackBerry devices for?” ask Schadler. “The short answer is to use BlackBerry devices as mobile collaboration tool,” says Schadler, who has authored recent reports such as BlackBerry: An Emerging Platform For Mobile Collaboration and Distributed Teams Need Real-Time Collaboration Tools.

Schadler suggests that business users can bring content from Microsoft SharePoint to the BlackBerry with WICKSoft, add required training to it from a company like Intuition, and push instant messaging out to it with Lotus Sametime.

Discovering new applications

“What we do, in short, is give people access to all of the information they would normally use if they were sitting at their desk,” says Will Hickie, founder and CEO of WICKSoft, a two-year-old Ottawa, Ontario-based firm with customers in North America, Europe, and Australia.

“Research in Motion has done a fantastic job at giving people access to their e-mail, no matter where they are -- it’s a secure, reliable, way to keep connected to customers and coworkers. Yet for all of this success, there are still a few things that you can’t do from a ‘vanilla’ BlackBerry, and that’s where WICKSoft comes in,” explains Hickie.

WICKSoft has created a solution to help people stay connected to all of the important things “that live outside of the inbox,” says Hickie, including file servers, Microsoft SharePoint, shared contacts and calendars, and document management systems.

For the uninitiated, Microsoft SharePoint is a popular collaboration tool with more than 100 million users worldwide, offering customers access to documents, contacts, CRM info, wikis, blogs, and other data. Thanks to hosted providers, such as Integrated SharePoint Development, many smaller businesses are finding it easy to work with.

But smartphone integration was not accessible to BlackBerry users until WICKSoft’s technology was introduced, offering true mobile integration with Microsoft SharePoint.

“This means you can access a contact in a SharePoint portal, and then call that person directly from your BlackBerry,” explains Hickie. “Documents stored in SharePoint, like product brochures or presentations, can also be viewed on the phone, or e-mailed out as attachments to prospects and customers,” he adds. “All of the calendars, custom lists, agendas, tasks, everything, is accessible, and in a very mobile friendly way.”

After all, a copy of a report isn’t much good if everyone else is reading the latest version while you’re stuck with something a few days old. “With WICKSoft, everything is done in real-time, so that if someone in the office were to modify a contact or update a PDF, those changes are reflected on the BlackBerry immediately,” adds Hickie. “No matter where you are, you always have access to the most up to date information.”

Best Web Conferencing Tools for Your Buck

Jean Thilmany — 2008-10-29T10:14:56-05:00

Web conferencing has become essential in the age of higher travel costs, lower budgets, and online collaboration. But it’s easy to simply rely on conferencing tools as a kind-of stepped up instant messaging system.

To wrest the most use of these systems, experts offer tips on how to best use them to communicate and collaborate.

Barbara Thompson is training manager at USA Funds of Indianapolis, which trains financial aid administrators on new policies and procedures.

Before bringing in Cisco's WebEx conferencing tool she and her colleagues would use for long-distance training, she asked WebEx consultants for advice. Their main tip: keep it interesting. After all, they advised, the audience will be staring at a screen rather than interacting with a live person, so trainers need to ramp up the visuals and offer many opportunities for interaction.

Getting through to employees

“We knew that to be effective we had to be entertaining and provide good information and engage the audience,” Thompson says. “We changed the look of our PowerPoint slides to make them more visually appealing.” Changing the look included adding more graphics and brighter colors. Also, two USA Funds trainers now head each conferencing session. Thompson finds that having two people speaking makes the presentation more interesting to listeners.

Ruth Folit owns Chronicles Software Co., which makes the journaling software LifeJournal. She began using the GoToMeeting Web conferencing software to help walk her customer’s through LifeJournal’s ins and outs. During Web conferences Folit can actually demonstrate how the software functions.

“In the past I’ve had to tell people how to do something by saying ‘look in the top right corner,'” she says. “Now I can point out and highlight and circle things with a bright yellow marker on screen.”

And she can reach more users in one session rather than working individually over the phone, as she did in the past. Still, keep meeting sizes small, Folit says. She opens up hers to about 16 users, which allows everyone to ask questions and feel part of the group.

Small business owners should consider the added value Web conferencing tools can bring to a business, she adds.

“We charge revenue for the meetings and it’s a money maker,” she says. “It’s added value to our journal software because it gives people a let up in learning the best way to use it.”

Right conferencing tool for your needs

Begin by asking yourself why you’re looking to Web conferencing. Will it be primarily to save time, to save money, to meet with users, to train distant employees? These tools’ capabilities are often tailored to different uses, says Joyce Tang managing consultant at IT consulting company AgilisIT. She consults with customers on selecting the proper Web conferencing package for their needs and suggests asking yourself the following questions:

How many people will you meet with online? Different tools allow for different numbers of participants, up to about 1,000.
Will you need to access your participants’ desktops via the tool? Again, this capability varies by Web conferencing application.
Does the tool need to run over a browser like Internet Explorer—and do all your participants run this browser--or can it be access via the Web itself?
Will you need video and camera capabilities? For her larger medical clients, Tang recommends e/pop from WiredRed, which allows users to high-end Web conferencing equipment that lets you zoom in and out and read one another’s body language.

SIDEBAR: Costs for Conferencing Capability

Folit is billed monthly for her Web conferencing tool, though she could choose to pay annually. She recommends taking advantage of the complimentary one-month product demo.

“That gives you a chance to actually get your hands on the controls and you can get a sense of how hard or difficult or easy it is to use,” she says.

The costs of these conferencing tools vary widely, though small business owners can easily find tools to fit their budgets and needs. Here are some options:

Fuze, a conferencing solution from CallWave Inc. is $29 per month. The conferencing solution works on mobile devices, an aid to those attending without benefit of a computer, and can allow up to 1,000 people in a meeting, says Jeff Cavins, chief executive officer.
Zoho Meeting is $12 month and integrated with Skype, says Tang. She often recommends this budget-saving pairing to small businesses.
GoToMeeting charges between $39-$49 per month for unlimited meetings with up to 15 participants in each meeting.

Business Uses for Twitter

Jodi Mardesich — 2008-09-03T13:37:34-05:00

“Wow. It's not even 9 a.m. and I got all my required things done for the day. Maybe I'll go back to bed.“ Rich Brooks, president of Flyte New Media, a Web design and Internet marketing firm in Portland, Maine, “tweeted” that note in mid August. One of his 300 or so “followers” on Twitter, a social networking service, messaged him back, asking what made him so productive. “My secret is Pleasant Morning Buzz coffee from Whole Foods. Damn, now I have to kill you,” Brooks wrote.

Later that day, Slaton Carter, a social media coordinator for Whole Foods Market, the natural foods retailer based in Austin, messaged Brooks. His unsolicited missive, chosen as “Tweet of the Day,” had earned him a $25 gift card.

“Who says Twittering doesn’t pay?” Brooks jokes.

Welcome to microblogging, a new form of Internet communication that has interesting business possibilities. Twitter started as a personal service, where members answered the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. While many tweets, as the messages are called, broadcast mundane inanities about snacking or napping, increasingly proponents are using Twitter to broadcast news, to promote their companies, and to establish closer relationships with clients and customers.

How Twitter works

Twitter, as well as other microblogging tools such as Jaiku and Plurk, use the simple message service (SMS) protocol to send updates of up to 140 characters to the public and private groups. Twitter has raised $20 million from venture capitalists and while it doesn’t make money, it has become somewhat of a Web 2.0 phenomenon that many are trying to figure out how to monetize. In July, there were more than 2.2 million registered accounts, about four times the number a year earlier.

Though Twitter was not developed as a business tool, its founders started seeing business cases emerging, says Biz Stone, founder. “We’re trying to take note of how businesses are using it, and see if there are more ways we can deliver more value.”

Companies like Whole Foods, Jet Blue, H&R Block, and Zappos are experimenting with Twitter. WholeFoods started tweeting in July, an outgrowth of Carter and two other online marketers’ own personal experience with the service. “We started seeing other brands popping up and thought, why don’t we try it for Whole Foods?” he says. Now, more than 3,000 people follow Whole Foods, which tweets about promotions, new items, and even product recalls. It also awards a Tweet of the Day four times a week, and weekly does an in-store gift card giveaway to the first five people to say the correct password at that week’s chosen store.

Business uses for Twitter

Twitter use is growing rapidly, and online marketers should experiment with it to see how they can better communicate using this new medium. New uses are still being discovered, but for now, experts advise using it to:

Distill your message. Microblogging helps marketers to think by forcing them to distill their messages into haiku-like brevity. “Microblogging forces you to be interesting in 140 characters or less,” says Brooks, who is experimenting with Twitter for his business and to advise clients.
Share information. Companies can post links to press releases, can advertise promotions, or even send out product recall information. Whole Foods used Twitter to broadcast information about a recent beef recall. While its tweets did not reach all Whole Foods customers by any stretch of the imagination -- it only has about 3,000 followers -- the practice showed that Whole Foods is connected and quick, at least to those who follow it.
Listen to customers. Just as you could go to Summize or Search Twitter to find out the latest news about New Orleans levee breaches during hurricane Gustav, you can enter your company name in those search engines to see what the twitterverse is saying about your company. Whole Foods’ Carter searches daily to see what is being said and even interact with people. If someone is calling Whole Foods “whole paycheck,” for example (a common slam), Carter can engage in conversation with them and see what their concerns are. It’s also wise to see what people are saying about your competitors and industry.
Talk back. Twitter is a two-way street. “The savvy Twitter user realizes that the effective communications aren’t just ‘pushing’ content to readers, but they will also dialogue and converse with others by replying to them,” says Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester analyst.
Improve customer relations. You can receive and respond to customer queries, says Robin Bloor, of HaveMacWillBlog, a technology analyst with Hurwitz & Associates in Austin. “Doing so provides a complete audit trail of questions and answers.”
Track trends. Establish an affinity group and listen in, Bloor recommends. As you can follow anyone (except those who deliberately opt for select privacy), "it’s reasonably easy to set up any kind of group and follow it,” he says. While Bloor originally used Twitter to see what other analysts were saying, it could just as easily be used to follow a product or trend.
Drive traffic. Twitter allows you to enter links, which are abbreviated into tinyurl entries if the link is longer than 30 characters. These links can direct traffic to your company blog or web site.
Claim your identity. If your business has a brand, it should create an account on Twitter, plus Pownce and Jaiku, says Peter Lim, Forrester analyst. Some squatters have already created accounts like twitter.com/ipod, but many brand handles are still available.

What not to do with Twitter

There are also rules of the road to help you avoid alienating your real and potential customers. Here's what you need to watch out for:

Don’t spam. Users who are following thousands but don’t have many followers are likely spammers, using Twitter like a direct mailing list. “That’s definitely the fastest way to turn me off,” Brooks says. They sign up to follow thousands, and rely on twitter etiquette of following those who follow you in order to quickly gain their own followers.
Don’t be mundane. Owyang recommends adding value. “I rarely talk about waking up, eating lunch, or starting my car,” he says. Add something to the conversation.
Don’t upset your followers. Sending out too many updates and filling up their stream can annoy followers. And even though Twitter is more personal, it’s possible to be too casual with followers, especially when you’re representing your brand. In late August, a Whole Foods Tweet of the day contained the word phrase, “oh my f’ing gawd” and caused a small backlash among some followers. “To your followers, you are the brand,” wrote one tweeter. Brooks disagreed. “It shows that there are people behind that, rather than lawyers looking at every tweet,” he said.

The best online marketing establishes real connections with customers. “People are looking for transparency first and foremost,” Carter says, “and a way to directly connect with real people behind a brand. That’s certainly what we’re doing -- engaging with people.”

Are 500 Contacts Too Many?

Renee Oricchio — 2008-09-03T13:32:49-05:00

British anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, is famous for his hypothesis that the human brain’s ability to manage friends and acquaintances taps out at about 150 people. It’s called Dunbar’s Law.

Robin Dunbar never met Mugs Buckley.

Buckley is a new media consultant and the founder of MugsTV with more than 500 contacts on LinkedIn, 400-plus friends on Facebook, and another 500-plus on Plaxo. That's not to mention the 1,000 e-mail addresses saved in Outlook. She is a self-confessed networking junkie. “It’s made me more glued to my computer. Keeping up is not for the faint of heart,” says Buckley.

It does beg the question, however: what does she do with all those contacts?

“What’s nice is when I pick up the phone to call someone, I can look up their profiles to see who we might know in common. It helps me fill in the blanks. I see it as a requirement before I call,” says Buckley.

Senior executive recruiting consultant, Tony Briley, who has more than 3,400 contacts among his various social networking accounts, would agree. “I would definitely say that in the past five years professional networking has become even more important to my career development and success. I have personally utilized networking connections to find all of my new consulting assignments with clients like Google, Microsoft,

RealNetworks, Blockbuster Online, Dell, Match.com, and Cisco Systems."

Juggling contacts

Briley, who specializes in targeted executive recruiting using data mining and competitive analysis, offers the following tips to manage all those contacts:

You can never have too many contacts. But, you can have too many networking tools. “I have over 3,400-plus contacts in LinkedIn and I can admit that I don’t know 90 percent of them personally or professionally," Briley says. "But, I have utilized them to find new jobs and also find new candidates for my clients. I do think that there are too many new tools out there and have begun turning down invitations to join new tools or groups.”
Forget business cards. It may not be time to completely do away with business cards, but Briley advises clients to include only their name and e-mail address for contact information -- deliberately excluding phone numbers. “I do not save business cards any longer and I find that most people that I meet or work with only use soft copies or online communication tools. We are very much moving towards an online society that does not require personal face-to-face contact or even conversation via phone to be an effective use of networking,” says Briley.
Organize contacts by the tool. Both Buckley and Briley independently praise social networks, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Plaxo, for making it easy to seamlessly overlap common contacts. However, Briley uses LinkedIn for business contacts and Facebook more for his personal contacts. As for what’s programmed in the cell phone, he says, "I only have about 50 numbers in my cell phone. That’s the inner sanctum. I never put my cell phone number on a business card, either.” It is also not uncommon to see executives simply carry two cell phones -- one for work and one for home.

Building and leveraging contacts

Hundreds, even thousands of professional contacts likely sound daunting to the executive just starting out with a dozen friends from their last job on LinkedIn and even fewer college classmates and weekend buddies on Facebook. Don’t be disheartened. It just means being a little bolder about issuing out those network invitations and making it as automatic as asking for a business card in the old days.

“It’s just part of how I do business now. I make contact with someone by e-mail for the first time and follow up by inviting them to join my network. On any given day I now get at least one invitation from all the major channels. It adds up. It’s very viral,” says Buckley

As for leveraging those new contacts, social networking offers a myriad of ways to do business that were never possible even five years ago, including these:.

See who is interested in you. “One thing I like about LinkedIn is that I can see who’s looked at my profile,” says Buckley. This is a great way to make new contacts, generate a sales lead, or network for a job. The door has already been opened to connect without even having to take that first step.
Self-promotion. This is a tricky area. Professional networkers don’t want to be too obvious promoting a service, soliciting a job, or driving traffic to the company website. Then again, that’s ultimately what networking is all about: self-promotion. “It is a little bit of banner waving,” admits Buckley, who cautions using good taste. There are a number of tools on all the major sites to help. For example, start a group tailored to your industry, or answer a posted question on LinkedIn that shows off your expertise.
Monitor other companies. “You can always tell the health of a company when you see a pattern of employees suddenly sending out invitations. If you don’t hear from them, they’re happy with their job. If you hear from them, they’re not happy. When you get enough of those, you know there’s trouble,” says Buckley.
Learn from lost clients. No one ever bats a thousand drumming up new business and when one potential lead goes to a competitor, it’s never a waste of time to find out why. “I have used LinkedIn to find out who was hired instead of me for big projects that I have targeted or had been considered for in the past,” says Briley, who then makes it his business to find out who is on LinkedIn from that company that checked out his profile and look at the profile of the competitor who did get the job. What is learned may keep it from happening the next time.

Who needs a head hunter

For those who still haven’t seen the light about using social networking for professional networking, Briley likes to tell the following story:

A few years ago, Briley was contacted by a former colleague from RealNetworks. The colleague was looking for a director of human resources position in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through Briley’s network of friends and colleagues, he connected and landed a job with a then unheard of start-up called YouTube that had a posting on LinkedIn trying to recruit its first human resources director. Six months later, YouTube was bought by Google. As for Briley’s colleague, his pre-IPO stock options are now worth about eight million dollars.

Not all Cinderella stories are fairy tales.

Tech Talk: Project Management Software Coordinates Builders' Timelines

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-03-17T10:48:20-05:00

R.W. Smith & Co., based in San Diego, Calif., designs and builds full-service commercial kitchens for restaurants, hotels, hospitals, etc. The process is complex and involves coordinating with many different contractors and suppliers. After installing project management software, productivity increased and projects were better kept to schedule, General Manager Eric Gildenhuys tells Inc. Technology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman in this Q&A.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What were the problems involving communication and coordination that you needed to address?

Eric Gildenhuys: Kitchens are usually the last thing that gets installed in a building like a hotel or a hospital. You have to deal with the plumbing, the gas, the electricity first. The last thing to come in is the equipment. We usually have a 'go live' date. But what happens is during the installation process, we have to make sure the contractors are on time and putting in the plumbing correctly and the gas lines in the right place. We're a fairly well established business. We've been in business 75 years. If you came here four years ago, they weren't even using Excel. The field manager was on site using pen and paper. He would go to another site the next day. As business started betting bigger, he had to start dealing with crisis management -- you know, who is screaming the most. We decided that we needed to start formalizing job roles, setting expectations, and using more information technology.

Wasserman: Why did you opt for project management software?

Gildenhuys: We opted for a project management tool called Project Insight from Metafuse. It's not only for our own staff, but for our clients, and the general contractors we work with. This ensures that the general contractor was held accountable for getting his stuff done when we would show up. It took from January of last year until April or May to get all of our project management people and field managers trained to use it. We're using this as a Web-based tool, as software-as-a-service.

Wasserman: Why did you opt for software-as-a-service?

Gildenhuys: Our organization was not technology-oriented. This is not an IT savvy organization. We did not have an IT manager. Secondly, it's far easier for me from a capital budget standpoint to get this approved. You don't have to pay for it all at once. It's the classic question of whether to rent or own. If you do the renting, you can quickly adapt your number of users if you're growing or reducing staff. You're also getting all the software updates.

Wasserman: What kind of results have you seen?

Gildenhuys: We've managed to triple the amount of jobs we're doing with only a 50 percent increase in staff. We've seen huge productivity gains. We've gotten different kinds of reactions from general contractors. There are basically two types. The ones that are IT savvy and the ones that are not. This helps us visualize all the tasks and subtasks and who is responsible, the start date and end date and the status. Now they know what they had to do and they know what we have to do.

Making the Most of Your Intranet

Minda Zetlin — 2008-01-30T16:05:41-05:00

Seven years ago, INK, Inc., a pay-for-placement media relations firm, needed a way for its staff to quickly share information about potential opportunities for clients. E-mail was too awkward and restrictive, especially where images or video materials were concerned. The answer was for INK to create its own intranet.

“This is a really great solution and doesn’t require an IT professional,” says Cindy West, vice president and director of operations. “In fact, I set it up myself.”

Using Citrix, and later Microsoft SharePoint, West created what amounts to a portal that all 50 or so INK employees can access, even from overseas. “With the old intranets, you could log in and share stuff, but they were pretty limited,” West says. “With this, we can create a virtual office people can tap into and see what’s going on. They can contribute ideas to accounts, even ones that aren’t theirs. And if they’re pitching one of our clients, they can get all the material they need, including images and video.”

There’s no question that intranets are growing in popularity among small and midsize businesses. But what exactly is an “intranet?”

An internal data network

Strictly speaking, the term refers to an internal network, parallel to the Internet, which exists within an organization and allows employees to share resources.

But most users don’t know or care where data is hosted, they simply see an interface that offers password-protected access to company information, documents, and contacts. So the term is commonly used for any secure website where employees can access materials they need, even if it’s a single site on a single server, and even if it’s actually hosted via the Web, and not within the company at all. Using this definition, many types of collaboration software (such as SharePoint at INK, Inc.) can be used to create an intranet.

Though passing around video and images is an exciting use for an intranet, “It’s the more workaday things that drive people to our product,” says David Christian, chief technology officer at Mindbridge Software, which publishes the intranet application IntraSmart. Specifically, getting the correct versions of important documents into users’ hands.

“Suppose you’re a bank, and you’ve got a whole set of policies and procedures you must provide to every employee,” Christian says. “You could e-mail them around, but that would fill up mailboxes pretty quickly.”

Instead, many companies store essential documents in a shared directory within the network, but that creates its own problems, Christian says. For one thing, users copy the documents to their hard drives, but don’t always replace them with new ones as the documents are updated. Pretty soon, they’re working from outdated policies and procedures. Intranets help bypass this hassle by providing the information in webpage form, rather than as a document, making users more likely to simply open the relevant page, whenever they need that information. If the information on the page stays current, users do, too.

Starting an intranet of your own

If you’re thinking of creating an intranet for your own company, here are some questions that can help you make the right choices:

1. Exactly how will the intranet be used? “Plan it out,” advises West. “You need to have a good idea of how you want to set up the architecture, and what exactly you want it to do.” She herself learned this lesson the hard way. “I’ve had to change our structure twice now,” she says.

2. Will there be an extranet as well? An extranet is a section of the intranet accessible to customers and/or business partners. Providing an extranet was one of the two changes West had to make to INK’s intranet, and it was worth the effort, she says. “When they get mentioned in the media, they can easily find it, and the clips are all there. They can also see what media we’re working on, so they get a good idea of what we’re doing for them,” she says.

3. Will different users need different resources? Most employees may need a link to your company’s health insurance company, Christian notes. Your human resources people may also need administrative access, so they can manage employees’ accounts. Likewise, your sales staff may need links to CRM software that HR people don’t. Consider customizing the intranet interface for different types of users.

4. How compatible is it with existing technology? “The first concern we get from IT people is, how will it integrate with the environment they already have?” Christian notes. For instance, can it use existing credentials? Most users resist having to sign in twice, once to get on to the company network and a second time to get into the intranet.

5. How easy is it to change or add content? “You want to make it as easy to add material as possible,” Christian says. This only makes sense. If updating is too much of a hassle, the documents on the intranet could wind up being just as out of date as what users have stored on their hard drives.

SIDEBAR: Internet Resources for Small Business

Intranets can help users share information, serve customers better, and stay up to date on important policies. There are literally hundreds of software products that can help you create one of your own. Here are a few that are popular with small companies:

HotOffice Thruport Technologies, of Alexandria, Va., provides HotOffice, a Web-based intranet service for small businesses to communicate and collaborate round-the-clock. Pricing for the intranet suite of services starts at $14.95 per month.

Microsoft SharePoint A server and service, Microsoft’s SharePoint technologies can help small and midsize businesses set up a portal to facilitation collaboration and supply access to essential information across the business. Server software and services are available through Microsoft’s volume licensing agreements.

IntraSmart A product of Mindbridge Software, of Norristown, Pa., IntraSmart is designed for midsize or larger organizations. A hosted solution, IntraSmart starts at $99 per month.

Web Office This collaboration software product uses the Internet to make it easier and more cost-effective for small and midsize business employees to work together no matter where they work. Prices start at $59.95 per month and up.

Tech Talk: Using Wikis

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-01-28T14:16:40-05:00

Write2Market is a business-writing firm servicing such clients as ADP and UPS. The Atlanta area business, founded in 2003, has 23 employees and full-time independent contractors. The company writes everything from advertorials to white papers and delivered large project files to clients via e-mail, CTO Miles Thomason tells Inc. Technology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman, until he deployed a wiki.

Elizabeth Wasserman: How have you used wikis?

Miles Thomason: We set up the wiki a few months ago specifically to solve the problem we had with the delivery of large documents to clients. So we have a wiki set up where each client can have a log on and we can put the finalized documents right there in the wiki where clients can download them and make comments.

We don't actually use it as a collaboration tool. We use it as a delivery mechanism for our large documents. Write2Market produces written materials for business-to-business communication -- such as case studies, white papers, and that kind of thing. Sometimes we'll produce a manual for a software system and it will wind up being a 15 megabyte PDF file. You can't just go e-mailing that everywhere.

Wasserman: How do you deal with security with the wiki?

Thomason: The wiki has got an excellent username and password set up. We just have to go in and set the client up with a username and password. Then we notify them that we have a user created for them and give them the link and that's that.

Virtual Conferences: The Next Best Thing to Being There?

Minda Zetlin — 2007-12-21T16:38:54-05:00

A few weeks ago, 8,000 people attended a scrapbook-making convention. They exchanged tips, attended educational sessions and made new friends. They visited exhibit booths, met and chatted with exhibitors, and watched product demonstrations. It was a highly successful event, even though no one was actually there.

Webcasts, webinars, and online meetings have become commonplace in the last few years. More recently, a new breed of events, designed to resemble real-world conferences and trade shows are bringing together chat, virtual reality, 3D graphics, and live video intended to give attendees sitting at their computers the feeling of really being there. Both show presenters and the public at large have been enthusiastically receptive.

“In 2006, our first year offering virtual trade shows and conferences, we did about 30 of these events,” notes Malcolm Lotzof, CEO of InXpo, a virtual event provider. “In 2007, we did about 120. We’ll probably do about three times that in 2008.” A typical InXpo event includes a virtual trade show, where attendees can wander around a 3D area, visit exhibit booths, watch demos, and chat with vendors; an auditorium, where traditional webcasts are offered, and audience members can also chat among themselves; and a lounge, where attendees can meet for informal conversation, much like a traditional chat room. Though chat in the lounge is text-only for the moment, depending on users’ bandwidth limitations, exhibit booths can have voice chat and even video chat, he says.

Why the huge interest in virtual conferences? Two real-world developments have combined to make them appealing, Lotzof says. On one hand, with broadening broadband and speedier Internet connections, video and 3D graphics are easier to use than ever before. On the other hand, actual travel has become more complex, costly and uncomfortable. “Those two things together are making virtual meetings take off,” he says.

Is virtual better than the real thing

No one is suggesting that virtual conferences can or should take the place of actual ones. But they do present some unmistakable advantages over in-person events. For one thing, they’re much cheaper. “You don’t have to pay for drayage, hotels, food or brochures,” notes Debbie McGrath, chief instigator and CEO at HR.com, a social network for human resource professionals.

Because events are so much more affordable, it’s easy to have many of them, geared toward specific segments of a target market. HR.com first tried out the virtual meeting concept in late 2007 with its event The View, using InXpo, which drew 2,800 HR professionals. In 2008, McGrath says, the group plans to have lots more events -- 42 of them -- focusing on such sub-topics as benefits, hiring, and training.

Affordability also means more people can come to virtual events, Lotzof notes. “A company will usually only send one or two people to a conference,” he says. “But if there are 50 people in the company who could benefit, all 50 can attend a virtual event.”

No avatars need apply

There are some companies using Second Life and other virtual reality environments for meetings and other events, but Lotzof believes the use of avatars for virtual meetings is counterproductive. “Second Life, as demonstrated by its name, is a place where people can assume another identity and travel around doing whatever they want. The whole purpose of a conference or trade show is to have real people meet each other,” he says.

For this reason, InXpo meetings usually give attendees the choice of being represented by a simple, featureless avatar, or a photograph, which is what 90 percent of them select. (Though not always of themselves: McGrath reports that a woman named Betty attended The View using a photo of Ugly Betty from the ABC series.) Live video is another option that will become more common as more people start using webcams, Lotzof adds.

Getting the most out of not being there

How do you get the most out of a virtual event? Here are some tips if you’re thinking about creating a conference:

1. Let attendees help create content. “In a traditional event, the show’s producers would be very stringent about who presents the content,” McGrath says. “You wouldn’t have vendors bashing other vendors in a group chat, or sessions that were just giant discussions moderated by an expert presenter. But online, that’s acceptable.”

2. Use the opportunity to learn about your audience. During The View, HR.com was able to gather detailed information about attendees, not only their demographics and company affiliation, but also which sessions they attended, which booths they visited and for how long. “You couldn’t get this kind of information in a physical show,” McGrath notes.

3. Find a green screen. One way to add a sense of immediacy is to video one of your top executives saying words of welcome in front of a green screen, and then overlay the video on the graphics of the event. Lotzof says. “It makes the experience that much more real if you show the person walking around the event,” he says. "It makes it feel a little more like you’re there.”

Using this kind of gee-whiz technology contributes an element of dazzle that helps create a successful virtual event, McGrath says. “You have to make the event fun for people. It can’t only be educational.”