You may need not to fly across the country for future business meetings. Today it is possible to save time and travel costs by using on-line collaboration, web conferencing, and web broadcasting.

These emerging communication media can improve business communications, reduce "time to market," build customer relations, and extend the life of your meeting or tradeshow. Although the computer screen will not replace face-to-face meetings in the foreseeable future, there are some instances where they fit bill or expand the impact of existing meetings or tradeshows.

This range of technology applications breaks roughly into three categories, each with benefits and limitations:

• Web collaboration: small groups (usually 2 to 5) with high interactivity
• Web meetings: groups of up to 50 with high interactivity and up to 100 or more with reduced audience involvement
• Web casting: up to thousands of people with little or no audience participation other than watching.

Web collaboration

Web collaboration is the virtual meeting in its simplest and least expensive form. Designed for one-to-one meetings or small groups (usually less than 5 people) allowing the exchange of messages and data via the Internet to others in remote locations. The good news is that these forms are usually free. For example, AOL's instant messenger (IM) can be downloaded for no charge at www.aol.com and used by anyone with access to the web. With this installed and running, you will be able to see when co-workers or buddies are online. It is possible to text chat using a pop-up text window. This can be a very efficient form of communication for geographically dispersed offices or simply by anyone that wishes to keep in touch – a "meeting" in its simplest form.

A step up in web collaboration is another free tool called NetMeeting www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting. This will allow you to communicate with one to four others as if all are gathered around watching the same computer screen. It allows participants to share text, voice (lower quality than normal phone lines), pictures, collectively view web sites, white board, and even applications such a Word can be worked on simultaneously. Drawbacks include the low number of people (a maximum of 5) as well as this product is not very firewall friendly making it difficult to use in many corporate environments.

Other tools allow even greater collaboration. Centra (www.centra.com) is a service requiring a Pentium computer with Windows 95+, 32 Mb Ram, a fast 56K phone connection, and newer browsers. Presenters can show PowerPoint slides, annotate slides online, perform live software demonstrations (Word, Excel, etc), and pass control to another, while using Internet audio or teleconference phone lines. Attendees can speak (when given the "mic" by the presenter), raise their hand to speak, vote, and send text questions to others. A free 1-month demo is available for their Centra eMeeting . For larger groups, Centra also offers a client/server application with an annual site license for $25,000 plus $200 per seat (simultaneous users). A maximum of 250 simultaneous users can be handled but for full interactivity, 25 users is the maximum. This product has been designed with low bandwidth usage and is and can be used even with relatively slow 28.8 bps modem.

One of my favorites is WebEx (www.webex.com), one of the biggest players in this field. It affords options similar to Centra (PowerPoint presentations, application sharing/demonstration, collaborative web browsing) with the ability to comment (via text) and annotate the slides in real time. There is a polling function as well. You can even give someone control of you desktop across the web (for example, a technician trying to troubleshoot a computer problem) as if s/he were sitting at your desk. Verbal communication is either handled with text chat or over standard phone lines. Also available for free is the WebEx Office with an email address, calendaring, and other tools. WebEx offers a "Premium Service" that will add streaming video and is said to handle hundreds of users, bumping it into the virtual auditorium arena.

This product, on average starts at about 45¢ per minute per person with text only messaging to using phone teleconferencing with call-out capability. Up to 300 can be handled, but WebEx is clearly going after the small group, high-interactive market. According to a WebEx sales representative, their "sweet spot" is 7 attendees.

Web meetings - the virtual auditorium

Web meeting products usually are geared for groups of less than 50 with high interactivity and up to thousands with reduced audience involvement. These attempt to replicate the interactivity and other features of conferences presentations. They allow questions to be posed, surveys to be taken, and include slides and even live video of the presenter.

Raindance (www.raindance.com) specializes in presentations using PowerPoint and voice for up to 2,500 attendees – although whiteboards, annotations, program sharing, and the other features are offered. Video is an option but not encouraged. Their selling proposition is that their product requires the least amount of bandwidth (the thinnest client) when compared to most of its competitors. It also will work with older IE3.0 and Netscape 3.0 browsers. The faster the product is and the wider range of acceptable browsers mean that larger audiences would be able to use it – this is especially good when you are broadcasting to the public rather than, for example, a corporate intranet.

Pricing is based on an annual software license of $2,799 for 10 simultaneous users for the basic meetings to $44,999 for 100 simultaneous users with extensive managements tools for an unlimited number of events a year.

NetPodium from InterVU Inc (www.netpodium.com) handles meeting sizes from 20 to 2,000 persons. The big difference from the tools mentioned previously is that NetPodium delivers the message live via streaming video with multimedia content (power point slides, etc.). Real-time messaging and advanced polling capabilities also afford an opportunity to facilitate meaningful interactions with your audience, beyond what's possible with a traditional conference call or video conferencing services. Streaming video (a talking head) with slides and photos can be much more compelling than straight audio with slides alone. However, this requires a good connection speed and a newer computer and is often best suited for a corporate Internet environment with high bandwidth.

The price is based on number of simultaneous users and duration of the meeting. For example, 100 user utilizing with both picture (steaming video) and audio costs $6,000. Yearly licensing agreements are to be announced this coming month. Also, alliances are being made with the telecom players such as ATT and MCI, which will make this option nearly as easy to book a web conference as it is now to book a conference call. These details are also to be announced in the coming months.

PlaceWare (www.placeware.com) is a high-end option allowing full audience polling, lots of interactivity, and a nice interface. The process is essentially a web-enabled conference call requiring a telephone lines for the voice. At a designated time, participants call into a central location, logon to a password-protected area in the PlaceWare site, and wait for the moderator to begin. Questions may be posed via text boxes, and audience polling is easy to run. Up to 2,500 simultaneous users can be handled. Audio is provided through phone lines with a higher quality than web-based voice methods. There can be a large number of users, and the interface is very good. The downside is that it is expensive ($400 annual hosting per seat). However, this as with many of the net meeting options is just a fraction of what the cost of travel and time to fly everyone to a central location.

PlaceWare is one of the largest players in this field with more than 500 corporate customers and over a million users. It spun out of the think tank and Xerox Park and is said to be highly reliable and easy to use. They have also entered into partnerships with MCI, Sprint and ATT so look to see this become a "conference call" alternative.

Web casting

When your potential audience is huge, and you are not as concerned about interactivity, then web casting may be the option for you to extend the life of your event to those on the web. Formerly, what could be done only with very expensive satellite videoconferencing gear is now being replaced with web-based steaming technology. This allows voice, slides, and video to be broadcast live at a fraction of the cost of satellite time and can be archived and made available on demand after the event as well.

LoudEye (www.loudeye.com) offers a fully integrated Web steaming option. No separate voice phone lines are needed as the streaming incorporates high resolution slides, audio, and video if desired. There is an interactive component as well where viewer can send email to the presenter during the event or afterwards if the presentation is archived. The product is very user friendly (an automated systems check adjusts the streaming content based on your connection speed) and quite robust. easy to use, with capabilities to handle more than 16,000 simultaneous users.

Pricing ranges from US$699 per event plus US$.50 per user for steaming audio with slides, up to $2499 per event plus US$2.00/per person for streaming slides, audio, video with question interactivity.

Three very helpful sites with lots of additional information on these subjects can be found at: Conferzone (www.conferzone.com) Successful Online Events www.successfulonlineevents.com, and Communicast (www.communicast.com).

©2000 Corbin Ball Associates - Updated December 2002

Corbin Ball, CMP, CSP is a professional speaker and consultant focusing on meetings technology. With 20 years of experience running international citywide technology meetings, he now helps clients worldwide use technology to save time and improve productivity He can be contacted at his extensive web site: www.corbinball.com