We are all aware of the volcanic eruption that occurred in the last two months and how these have affected people and businesses. With many flights in and out of Europe now regualry cancelled and not knowing when ”disaster” will strike again, we have to ask: How much has this affected you and your business and will do so in the future?
Having contingency plans and changing communication habits away from the dependents on physical travel is a must in the new economy.
With Meeting.ie, there are easy and cost effective ways to keep in touch with business partners anywhere, anytime! Meetings and decisions can be made without the aid of travel! Training and important communication can be delivered meaningfully and easily to anywhere in the world, even face-to-face without physically being there.
With Video Conferencing it is possible for businesses to attend meetings in different countries! Video Conferencing is not only easy to do; it also saves a lot of time and money spent on travelling. Video Conferencing not only lets you have meetings without leaving your office, it saves you a lot of effort and expense and is good for the environment. It gives more time back to executives and employees, allowing them to conduct vital business meetings without the cost and time implications of global travel. Video Conferencing is as good as sitting directly in front of a colleague, customer, or supplier and lets you have face-to-face interaction remotely with anybody.
Another way and the most accessible option of keeping in touch with your business partners abroad is having a Conference Call. All you need for a conference call is a phone, regardless of where you and your participants are in the world. Meetings and decisions can be made using call conferencing with anyone anywhere in the world. The latest natural disaster in Iceland has shown how travel can be affected and slowed down so easy. Unpredictable weather, natural disasters, regional crisis and travel delays around the world can also affect getting to your meetings and continuing with your business.
In tough times, businesses venture into new ways of doing business trying to create additional revenue streams. It becomes clear that on the internet, reaching out to audiences worldwide with video and meaningful live communication is a fast growing trend. Bankersonline.com is a clear example of how a business, working with a conservative industry sector, can deliver benefits, customer satisfaction and growing revenue by changing the rules of the game.
This is a case study interview with Dr. Michele Petry, president of the Glia Group and editor of www.BankersOnline.com.
Learn how current events have created the opportunity to charge more for a pay-per-view webcast attendee than an onsite attendee
Discover how BankersOnline transitioned from doing traditional training to live online training and all day webcast
Hear why the value proposition of remote presentations allows to charge more for remote registration than for in-house registration
Understand the thought processes that were behind this revenue model
Find out how bankersonline achieved amazing results delivering an 8-to-1 remote-to-inhouse registration ratio with simple video messaging.
In our “Stand Out From the Crowd” web event we will bring global experts in the space of Webcasting and Video Messaging right to your desktop. We are starting on the 10th of March 2010, 01:30pm – 02:00pm GMT with the webcasting legend Gary Anderson CEO of Netbriefings and Webcasting Guru.
The logistics of this and general live webcast deliveries
How to interact with the audience in a live web event
How to run live web events and record video messages with one solution
How to use this in sales, marketing, training and corporate communication
How does this fit into other forms of communication
What is live collaboration and what are live webinars
What is roll-in video and how to use it
What reporting functions should you expect
How does this fit together with a blog
How does this compare to WebEx, GoToMeeting, YouTube and others
Have a look at different camera options
If you are interested in attending this web event or have any questions or comments please leave a comment in the “Comments” option above or drop us an email to webcast’at’meeting.ie
This expert webcast in our “Stand Out From the Crowd” series with Gary Anderson, CEO Netbriefings and his superb management team will take place on the 24th of March, 2010 01:30pm – 02:00pm GMT.
Webinars and web events are becoming very popular with small and medium businesses across all industries. They are the most cost efficient and time efficient route to get your message, live, to your prospects, customers, staff, partners and suppliers. Time is precious and in today’s business communities, people are becoming “time poor”.
Whilst, in some cases, business people may enjoy travelling to meet customers or prospects, it is expensive, time consuming and inefficient. Instead of having to drive to a meeting, your attendees meet you from any location, across the corners of Ireland or indeed anywhere across the world via the Internet. Web events are also a green, environmentally friendly way to meet so it will you as a business to meet your commitments to be green and lower your carbon footprint which is a significant advantage.
Web Events can vary hugely in size of participants. They can be extremely effective with small groups for meetings, discussions, training or a business review. They can be equally effective for large worldwide groups with hundreds of attendees for product or service launches, promotions, broadcasts, Quarterly updates, announcements or new developments..
A webinar (web seminar) or webcast (web broadcast) is simple. The meeting is delivered live from your computer direct to the audience who are also joining form their own or a shared computer. The meeting or event is accessed directly through a link in the Internet. You set up an account, load your slides or whatever you want to use for your meeting and all you need in addition is a telephone, web camera, a microphone and a bit of practice! As with most things practice makes perfect and the more comfortable you feel with delivering the web event, the more natural and successful your delivery and your results will be.
You can also record your web event and re-use it on websites, in newsletters, in emails or blogs.
In the web event you can see who is attending; you can text chat with people, run surveys and share a large variety of content including live video, Power Point, Word and Excel files, your desktop or software sitting on your computer. People can also ask questions, either privately to the presenter or to the open forum.
Here are our top ten tips for choosing the right webinar, webcast or web event solution for you:
Simplicity is key! Talk to an independent vendor that will help you to choose webinar software that matches your needs. Many solutions are over loaded with features and functions that can make them complicated to use and you will never need them. An expert will ensure you get the right start and succeed with your first webinar.
Cross platform is important! The more platforms (Windows, Mac OS) and browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari) the software can deal with the higher the chance is that all your participants can connect across the country or the world.
Try it! Join a demo with the solution you are looking at and see how your experience is as a participant. Watch out in particular how easy it is for you to join that demo. If you like it and it looks and feels good, your participants are going to like it too.
Make sure you can be heard! Try the audio options available (conference call and VoIP or telephone conference only). Check the quality of the audio and how easy it is to use.
Recording makes your event go a long way! Make sure the solution provider has a hosted recording solution or provides a playback hosting for your recording. This means you simply get a link which takes you back to your recording. It is then simple to re-use your recording in Emails, websites or newsletters.
Video is good! Don’t be shy, look for good video capabilities for your webinar. Having a live video feed of the presenter makes your web event personal, people will remember it better, it feels closer to them and overall your web event will have more depth. Don’t shy away from video, your audience will thank you for it.
Think clearly and brainstorm with your team what you want to achieve in the webinar and how will you get there. Your webinar provider can help with good input and ideas. Make sure you talk to them about your objectives.
Don’t let the price of the solution dictate your choice. The cheapest solution is not necessarily the worst but likewise, the most expensive is not necessarily the best! Make your decision based on what fits your needs, where you feel you will get the support you need and what was good when you tried it.
Flat Fee solutions are they way to go as they are efficient as you flex your meetings. Pay-as-you-go models work with small once off events but as soon as you get a larger group in one event or run more than three events a month, a flat fee is a more appropriate solution for you. Pricing for the solution only, can start from as low as €40/month and go to €4000 and more. For a typical self run SME webinar, with a basic webcast solution, you should be covered within the €100 per month. Conference calls, hosted recording or other features may be charged separately based on usage.
Practice makes perfect. Run sessions with colleagues and people that you know before you go live with the real event. Look for honest feedback and take it on board. Webinars are a lot easier to deliver than live in-house events in front of a large group. With the right solution and a bit of practice you will be delivering your first live web event in no time.
Feel free to give us a call at anytime to have a chat about webinars, webcasting, web events, video conferencing or any other means of live, remote communication.
Find out more about easy to use webinar and web events solutions on our website
If you are preparing to have a meeting via video, then there are some things that you need to do before you meeting rolls around. Obviously, you want to make every viewer aware of the meeting, inform attending individuals of the start and ending time, and make sure that every viewer is comfortable with the audio and video.
Check Your Tech: Meeting online becomes second nature after a few meetings. If you’re adding new participants, you want to make sure they are comfortable with your conferencing software, the web cam and the audio before their first meeting. The most important part of your meeting besides the visual aspect of it is the audio!
Plan Your Agenda: When your meeting rolls around, you want to make sure the meeting goes smoothly. In order to do this, you will need to sit down and plan your meeting. What is the purpose of the meeting and what message are you trying to send or what problem are you trying to solve? An agenda can help keep everyone focused and on track.
Prepare Your Materials: Once you have an agenda for the video meeting, you should prepare the materials for the meeting. For instance, if you need statistics, visual aids, or demos then you need to gather these materials in advance. If your meeting will require each viewer to have a handout or form of any sort, you want to make sure that you get these documents made up and sent to each person attending the video meeting.
Ultimately, planning your meeting, having a schedule and checking your technology will help you to have a smooth, successful meeting and is well worth the planning time you’ll invest.
Imagine a business meeting that disrupts work to discover why work is being disrupted – it’s an insane concept. That’s not to say that business meetings don’t play a vital role in a company, but the impact of business travel needs to be considered.
Often business owners and employees fail to consider the environmental impact of business travel. Every so often a corporation will make a push for carpooling or some other minor measure for a business meeting, but this is more a cost control issue than an environmental one for the company. It seems as if the environment is usually the last thing on most corporate minds, and who can blame them? The environment doesn’t have a ready impact on the bottom line, which is where most businesses focus all of their attention. This is as it should be, since the business likely wasn’t created for the environment, but rather has to exist in it.
So how can a business use business meetings and conferences that can have an impact on the bottom line and the environment? First, the business must recognize the cost of sending attendees to an offsite meeting. Travel by plane, train or automobile has a definite impact on the environment and the bottom line. Five workers attending a meeting in five separate automobiles means five expense sheets with tolls, gas, and mileage that the company must reimburse, not to mention the pollution, the time wasted in commuting that the company isn’t being compensated for and eating out, creating additional waste, and much more. Traveling for business was necessary as the economy evolved and companies wanted to grow.
However there is a ready solution in today’s technology that not only can have a positive impact on the environment; it can have a direct effect on the company’s bottom line. You can host online business meetings using technology that keeps employees on site, minimizes travel time and reimbursement and essentially saves the world. Online meeting solutions involve teleconferencing and video conferencing which can be set up quickly and can add real savings to the corporation’s bottom line – not to mention the PR coup a company can trot out with their pledge to help improve the environment by switching over to online meetings.
Online meetings save time, save effort and helps save the environment while improving your bottom line. The new year is a great opportunity to pledge to reduce your company’s business travel in 2010!
Webcast: Cork Chamber Business Breakfast with Paul Campbell, GM of PepsiCo IrelandIn his address Paul provides a unique insight into the evolution of Pepsico in Cork over 35 years into a multi functional key employer and contributor to the local and national economy. He also outlines his perspective on the challenges and opportunities which currently exist for multinational development in Ireland. He also shares his experience of working for a global business and what it means for the people.
This webcast is done with our basic, easy to operate, very cost efficient webcast product. This allows low band webcast streaming with video, audio and PPT to any attendee and location on the web. The video in this webcast is geared to be functional, effective web video rather than being crisp and high definition. Every business can do this! CLICK HERE TO SEE THE WEBCAST RECORDING
The days of leaving boring emails and voicemails are over. Video is the most engaging way to get your message across. With Proclaim, you are able to easily send a personal video along with PowerPoint slides and rich media clips to create a truly dynamic presentation. Quick. Unique. Effective.
The ability to utilize standard web browsers, off-the-shelf web cameras and headsets, in addition to the existing network infrastructure, has accelerated the popularity and growth of web and video conferencing and has helped to drive it into most vertical markets, including finance, manufacturing, healthcare, engineering, construction, law, commercial training and business services, among many others.
Call us on 021 4928954 or join me online every Friday @ 12pm.
