3-D Communications

By E.J. Siwek, CMP

PlaceWare.com makes it easy to engage your audience by communicating via Web conference, the next step to master in the ever-evolving realm of technology.

Some days I wake up and wonder how business ever survived without high-speed transmission and the Internet. There is no doubt that each of us is moving faster and accomplishing more with potential gains in productivity possible almost weekly.

Most of us have now conquered e-mail to the degree that we are comfortable using it as much or more than a fax machine. In fact, many of us are finally realizing that you don’t need a fax machine to send faxes to those still functioning solely with the fax. And a growing number of us are beginning to become comfortable with Web conferencing as a new way to get around.

I think we all agree that gaining and capturing the attention of our audience requires more than a simple phone call or letter. Nowadays, communication needs to be three-dimensional and engaging in order to get people to notice. Enter Web conferencing …

Web conferencing is a relatively new medium that offers a simple and effective way to communicate time-critical or valuable information to our extended networks. A network in this case is a group of people you wish to communicate with, whether you’re a group of two or as many as 2,500 people throughout the world. All you need are a phone line and Internet access. The higher the transmission speed the better. In essence, Web conferencing allows you to share and interact with visual content such as PowerPoint slide presentations, whiteboards, Web tours, streaming audio or video, and other communication formats.

One company that provides Web conferencing services, I learned about recently is PlaceWare (www.placeware.com). I was introduced to the service in a review of a software product orientation. In my case, the software trainer was located in California and I was in Connecticut. I was invited to participate in this training opportunity in an e-mail that included a pasted link to the Web access area I had to enter in order to participate.

My session involved a presentation of PowerPoint slides. The difference was that I was led by the trainer as opposed to reviewing a set of slides on my own. The advantage was that the trainer was there via an audio connection to immediately answer any questions and provide value-added content. (In the old days, I would have been sent a demo disk or asked to download a demo and from there, I was on my own. If I was lucky, a half-day session would have been within a half-day’s drive so I could become to understand how to use the product.) With Web conferencing, there is no real need to travel. You are engaged from the minute you receive an e-mail invitation.

PlaceWare provides several options for using its Web conferencing service. These include a free option, those priced at a monthly use fee of $100, and those priced at an annual use fee of $400 per simultaneous seat. PlaceWare’s products include:

Conference Center 2000 is an annual plan is priced at $400 a concurrent seat. So if you purchase 10 seats, your annual cost is $4,000. This allows you to schedule sessions for up to 10 people at any time. With this product and appropriate pricing you can hold as many as 2,500 users at one time with auditoriums so large that gatherings can be subdivided by topic or interest.

Meeting Center 2000 is an option is geared for organizations with a need to schedule different sessions at the same time. For instance, you could buy 3 offices that will hold up to 10 people each. The advantage of an office approach is that your documents can remain with the room for easy retrieval by any member of the group. If you were working on a budget and wanted others to review it either in real time or at their leisure, this option is best suited for that type of use. Think of it as a virtual office accessible by your team 24/7 with built-in virtual filing cabinets. The pricing for three offices is $5,000 for the year.

MyPlaceWare Pro is an option for buying time on a monthly basis. Here the pricing is five seats for $100 per month and 10 seats at $200 a month.

With My.PlaceWare, an entry-level service offered at no charge, you can coordinate up to four other people. There is no limit on how many meetings or sessions you hold. You are also given 30 minutes before a scheduled session to preload material and prepare for conducting the session. For this service, invitations are simply e-mailed to your group and off you go.

System requirements are fairly consistent for any multimedia presentation requirement. PlaceWare.com recommends either Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher or Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher. Your computer’s operating system should be Windows 95,98, or NT or Sun Microsystems Solaris 2.x. A Pentium based PC or a Sun Sparcstation with a connection speed of 28.8Kb or faster is also recommended.

 E.J. Siwek is director of marketing of Excel Partnership, an international training organization, and president and founder of Flashpoint Technologies, LLC. Forward your questions about technology to him at techeditor@pcma.org.

CONVENE - February 2001 - Meeting Technology

©2001 Professional Convention Management Association