Webinars

Creating a training webcast event can be as effective as a face-to-face session session if you actively engage your audinece in your onlin presentation.

Online meeting tools like WebEx, Adobe Acrobat Connect or GoToMeeting can be easily setup to reach you target audinece.

You must properly prepare in order to make your online event a success though and a a two-hour event may take up to 20 hours of solid prepeation time to develop your presentation materials and activiteis.

• Refine your topic based on your audience’s needs and establish you trining objective.  Be able to state this objective useing action verbs and specific criteria for success.
• If you aren’t the subject matter expert then identify who is an expert and how you will develop materials for the topic and provide the instruction during the live training webcast.
• Distribute prerequisite materials to your participants, so that they can be prepared for the session.  You can pretest students in advance to guage their understanding of the material and use that information to tailor your presentation.  This will also help the students stay engaged, since they will have some previous knowledge of the materials you wil present online.
• Develop your presentation and keep your visuals simple.  Include quizzes to keep your audience engaged with your presentation.  Design games and interactive contests to encourage students participation and reduce boredom.
• Your opening pages should include directives to participants:  VOIP, Muting phones, Session rules (How to ask questions, respond to online surveys and download course handouts.  Encourage questions from participants but don’t dwell on any response too long.
• Stick to your agenda so that your learning objectives can be met in the time allowed.
• Rehearse: Software use, deomstrations, webcam use during your webcast.
• Send your participants details about the conference, including the link needed to join the conference and any supplementary information such as a conference telephone numbers for each location or log-in credentials.  Give participants the ability to connect before the event to prevent disruptions during the online training session.
• Before your session, upload your presentation and test your equipment to ensure your event runs smoothly.
• Ask for feedback about your live training webcasts to incorporate into your subsequent events.

By: Chris Randall, Technical Director

The Company

WebEx creates on-demand meeting applications and software solutions which help organizations all over the world control their costs and expand their global reach in marketing, training, and sales.  WebEx was founded in 1996, and was acquired by Cisco in 2007.  They boast a client base of over 35,000 customers and their services help more than 4 million people monthly communicate more efficiently with online collaboration.  Cisco’s policy of continuous discovery of innovative solutions, outstanding customer service support have made WebEx a leader in the online meeting market with over 60% of the market share.

Today, organizations use WebEx meeting applications across a variety of industries.  Some of these include financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, communications, manufacturing and government.  These industries use WebEx products in all segments of their operations including customer support, marketing, sales and training.  WebEx’s highly customizable and cost effective products allow greater economies of scale than traditional on-premises applications.

Installation

WebEx is not a large desktop software package that you install on your computer.  It is a collection of Web-based conferencing tools that are delivered as a service through your browser.  To use WebEx you will install a small browser plug-in during the initial setup which takes only a few moments.  After that you will host your meeting via their secure online servers.

Interface

WebEx Meeting Centre boasts a professional appearance which allows users to share presentations, applications, documents and their desktops in a highly customizable environment.   It’s nicely laid out, but can be difficult to learn and may take a few hours to master due to the sheer number of settings.  You should plan on doing a practice presentation or two before using the program for presentations to clients.

WebEx gives us many ways to display our presentations, shared documents and desktops.  As the host of a meeting you can maintain full control or even give your participants the ability to annotate comments or edit a file.  The interface is divided into three portions. The largest chunk portion is a blank window used for displaying documents, presentations and the whiteboard.

Meeting settings can be accessed via drop down menus, which can be used to change settings such as video quality or change user privileges.  Finally, another area displays a section for video, participant lists, chat and note taking.  The whiteboard can be used like a traditional office white board or can be overlaid onto any presentation allowing you to draw attention to certain points or jot down notes.   You also have the ability to revise, write on, and highlight certain parts of the document being discussed and save any changes to the original form of the document you were discussing.

Meeting Center provides an easy way to schedule and initiate conferences.  Upon registration you will be given a WebEx company website.  From there you will log on and complete a multi-step scheduling process: setting a meeting’s start and stop times and selecting whether the meeting is a one-time or a recurring event.  You can then send emails to your clients with a link to the meeting and the information they will need to login.

Voice

Verbal communication is essential to any good online collaboration tools and WebEx gives us some of the best tools in the industry.  With WebEx you and your participants aren’t limited to just teleconferencing or VOIP.  They have added a feature missing from many other providers that allows users to call in to VOIP.  This allows users to use either their telephone or their computer headset.  Also, as the host, you have complete control over what options your participants have.

WebEx has made teleconferencing ultra easy by supplying a call in phone number (US California Number), which will appear on the screen with instructions at the start of a conference.  You as the host can decide if you want to also supply a toll free number, for your participants.  WebEx provides competitive low cost rates for this feature.

Video

WebEx provides multi-point full motion video for viewing up to six camera images at once.  Its meeting center video tools are designed to be plug-and-play, so WebEx will automatically activate a web camera plugged into a USB port.  The camera section can be configured to view between one and six participants and the size and quality can be adjusted within the meeting if you should for instance decide to just show the host or no one.

Service & support

WebEx includes free phone support and many hours of video and text driven online tutorials.  Hold times are normally less than one minute even in peak times and the technicians are extremely polite, helpful and patient.  Email support is available as well.

As with all on-line programs, the speed and reliability of the meeting center is dependent on the participants.  If some users are on slower connections, this may slow down the meeting for everyone.  This is where the host may choose to quickly cut out the video feed to spare some bandwidth.

Pricing

WebEx lowest tier is modestly priced at $59 per month for unlimited meetings with up to 20 seats.  Be careful to monitor your attendance though, as if you go over 20 seats it could cost as much as $25 per user for seats over 20.  For businesses looking for over 20 seats the price increase dramatically to over $375 per month, but we found their sales team to be highly accommodating offering us a 50% discount without any lengthy negotiation.  For most companies even the more expensive versions makes sense when trying to cut travel expenses and extend their reach to new clients.

Summary

Out of the many online meeting providers available, we found WebEx to be a great all around service.  Its professional interface and great customer service team offset the steep learning curve and with a little practice their meeting center is great alternative to costly face to face meetings.

By: Chris Randall, Technical Director

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