How do I Start a Web Conference? Let me count the ways! August 12, 2008 @ 05:47 AM | By Guest Blogger

All leading web conferencing service providers strive for ‘ease of use’.  This often begins with, what else, actually starting the web conference!  InterCall Web Meeting, InterCall’s proprietary unified meetings tool, is no exception. Opportunities to start a web conference present themselves at every corner (of your computer desktop that is).

Since this is my first blog entry, I felt it would be appropriate to focus on the theme of beginnings. But more specifically, the options available for “beginning” a web conference – Oh…ok, starting a web conference.  But first, I’ll take a step back to mention the short list of requirements needed to begin and lead a web conference: a computer, internet connection (dial-up will do, but high-speed is better) and a telephone (landline or cellular).  You may also want to throw in a web camera.  Displaying your smiling mug is sure to assist in reducing your audience’s ever present urge to peek into inboxes or open other windows.  Now that you have your basic tools, it’s time to begin…

Most web conferencing services offer a variety of methods for starting your virtual meeting, whether ‘on-the-fly’ or scheduled in advance.  InterCall Web Meeting for example offers five. This typically boils down to one action - a click of your mouse!  Your next question may be, ‘but where do I point my mouse?’, and here is where the fun begins.

1. E-Mail Invitation
My favorite method for starting a web conference is through the e-mail invitation.  Most products integrate with calendaring systems such as Outlook.   When Invitations are created, links are automatically inserted into the email invitation and the calendar entry.  As the ‘organizer’ of the meeting, clicking the link from either location will get you to the meeting on time.  You are always just a link’s click away from meeting nirvana!

2. Office Programs
WebEx and Microsoft Live Meeting (both offered by InterCall) have the ability to start a web conference instantly from within applications such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word.  When you’re on a conference call reviewing a report you’ve emailed to several people, frustration with “Mr. Readahead” may set in.  An option to “stop the madness” does exist.  Depending on your chosen service, the option to launch a web conference directly from the document may exist so that you can share it at your pace

3. Desktop Icon
Most web conferencing services enable the presenter/host to start a meeting from the desktop icon with as little as one click, often not more than two.  What is a desktop icon?  It is that little shortcut image on your desktop that usually displays a little fancy logo created by the company supplying the service.  WebEx’s Meeting Center (also offered by InterCall), offers the “One Click” meeting, for immediate start of a virtual meeting.

4. Browser
A virtual meeting may also be started by opening a new browser window and entering your web conferencing service URL (i.e. https://companyname.webex.com or https://companyname.on.intercall.com).  Automatic login does not apply here and therefore is not as turn-key, but this will come in handy when working remotely (from a computer other than your own).

5. Start Menu
If your service of choice required a download, chances are it shows up as a program on your desktop.  If that is the case, you can locate and open the program directly from the Start Menu.

Even if a web conference is only needed occasionally, starting your web meeting is just like riding a bike - no one forgets how to use a desktop shortcut icon, do they?  With client based services like InterCall Web Meeting, the service remembers your login credentials so there is no need to memorize these each time.  As long as you have access to your desktop, you can fire up your web conferencing engine! 

Gentlemen (and Ladies)… Start your Web Conference!

Kristen Kosnak is an Associate Product Manager and one of our “Web Conferencing” bloggers.  Kristen has been with InterCall for five years in a variety of facets within sales and product management. She currently manages InterCall Web Meeting, InterCall’s proprietary web conferencing platform. When not collaborating on a web conference, Kristen enjoys spending time with her husband and daughter or soaring down a trail on her mountain bike.

Do I need registration for my virtual conference? August 5, 2008 @ 05:00 AM | By Guest Blogger

In my last post I suggested that you give yourself some time to consider the technology behind your event.  Part of that technology can be a registration system.

When you’re hosting a large event, you will likely need to gather a list to confirm the expected attendance or create follow-up activities.  One of the best ways to do this is to ask your audience to register before the event if they plan to attend.  After a person registers they receive the information for the event. 

First, let’s define registration services.  When you are hosting a virtual event, you may want to have participants register so that you have an idea of expected attendance.  It also allows you to gather more detailed information about your participants without making each person give a lot of information to an operator as they enter the meeting.   You can perform pre-registration by phone or online, but most people opt for the web form…it’s a simple click from your email invitation to register.

Now, why should you require registration for a virtual event? 

1. To simplify the event process:  A pre-registration process can reduce administration time by automating and branding event communications.
2. To increase registration and attendance:  By integrating meeting information with the participants’ outlook calendar integration and having multiple flexible reminders you can increase your registration to attendance ratio.
3. To gather mission critical data:   Gathering demographics and contact information before the event allows everyone to connect quickly at the time of the meeting, because they don’t have to stop and give required information to an operator.  Pre-registration also expands your database, because you will gather information for people who intend to join your event, even if they do not actually show up.  You will also have a way to score leads and may be able to integrate information into your CRM. 

Some best practices for using Event Registration I’ve found over the years include:

• Plan ahead for what your follow-up activities will be, so that you can gather the proper information during registration.
• Check your registration after your event invitations are sent.  Most responses to email invitations occur within one day.  If your registration is lower than expected, consider resending your invitation with plenty of time left before your event.
• If you are going to be using a virtual event for lead generation, don’t be afraid to ask a few qualifying questions in the registration.  But also don’t go overboard...Think about the time demands on your audience.  If your form takes too long to fill out, you may lose some responses as people get distracted at the office.
• Use the information in your registration report to prepare for the event.  If you have asked demographic or qualifying questions, you can tailor your presentation, if necessary, based on they type of people who are registering for your event.

There you go…I hope this “inside view” helps your next event be a resounding success!  And a little easier to manage while you’re at it!  In the next InterCall Blog post, we'll hear from a few different people and discuss the role of the Event Consutant.

Kim has been in the conferencing industry for the past 9 years. She is a Product Manager at InterCall for Mshow Web Conferencing, Events and Registration. She is passionate about the ability to support dynamic, powerful events using audio, video and/or web conferencing. In her spare time, Kim likes to spend time with her 2 ½ year old son, 4 ½ year old daughter and husband. You can often find the Winn family riding bikes together, spending a day at the beach, or going to the rodeo together.

Do you know how to plan a virtual event? July 29, 2008 @ 09:07 AM | By Cambria Vaccaro

Cambria Vaccaro, Marketing Director, interviews InterCall’s very own Kim Winn, Product Manager for Event Services.

What exactly does “event services” mean in the conferencing world?

Because the world of communications continues to evolve and expand, doing a virtual presentation can involve several types of technology, and often those are new technologies with which you may not be comfortable or familiar. 

Event Services is a professional team dedicated to successfully establishing, executing and delivering post-event details.  Event Services are platform-agnostic and customer service driven…meaning that whether you’re doing an audio call (like IR announcements) or integrating streaming video or web conferencing, the Event Services teams coordinate all the pieces that make the event work the way you want it to.

This kind of support allows you to concentrate on delivering the presentation while the Event Services team takes care of the rest.

How involved should a conferencing provider be in helping me plan my event?

The level of activity at InterCall depends on the actual event itself.  But here are a few guidelines we use to make sure your virtual events are delivered beautifully. When you’re planning an event at InterCall, here is what will happen:

• An Event Consultant will immediately engage you to establish all your business and event requirements
• An Event Consultant will schedule and attend a comprehensive hand-off call between, you, the Sales rep and the Event Producer dedicated to your event.
• A dedicated Event Producer will work directly with you for all pre, during and post event details.
• A dedicated Event Producer will be your event point of contact for all your event needs.
• The Event team allows you to concentrate on an unforgettable presentation that you will deliver without worry.

Can you give me 3 “don’ts” for planning a virtual meeting?

1. Don’t consider the technology last – While you’re planning your topic, audience, and invitations, you need to also consider the delivery method.  Giving yourself, your conferencing provider and your event staff time to research your needs and discuss your options is crucial to a successful event.

2. Don’t proceed without an Event team – this is your “ace in the hole”.  InterCall’s Event Services teams help plan virtual meetings every day and are the professional. They will listen to all your needs and wants, help prioritize them, and provide a comprehensive solution, creating your ideal event.

3. Don’t forget about followup – a critical part of your strategy is knowing what you will do after the event.  Whether you are following up with employees on a training you’ve delivered, or prospecting through a list of webinar attendees, or simply archiving the event for later use…all of these things are much more easily addressed if they are identified up-front and coordinated by your Event team during initial planning.

Stay tuned for Kim’s next post on Registration Services.

Kim has been in the conferencing industry for the past 9 years. She is a Product Manager at InterCall for Mshow Web Conferencing, Events and Registration. She is passionate about the ability to support dynamic, powerful events using audio, video and/or web conferencing. In her spare time, Kim likes to spend time with her 2 ½ year old son, 4 ½ year old daughter and husband. You can often find the Winn family riding bikes together, spending a day at the beach, or going to the rodeo together.

Cambria Vaccaro is Director of Marketing, Corporate Communications and our “Industry News” blogger.  Cambria has been in the conferencing industry for nearly fifteen years, and has seen it evolve from traditional video bridging services to cool web features and remote communication services.  She is an avid runner, cook, wife and mother of two gorgeous girls.

Planning for Unified Communications July 15, 2008 @ 09:40 AM | By Ken Kurz

For most enterprise companies, a fully-integrated Unified Communications solution is a huge project and is typically deployed in multiple phases spanning several months (if not years).  A well thought-through plan considers the business objectives your company must realize from a UC solution and always factors in the “readiness” of your network, server architecture, software, and even your organization’s resource ability to execute the plan. Readiness should also allow for the “x-factors”.  For example, What kind of additional resource utilization occurs when a powerful UC application supporting messaging, voice, video, and conferencing media is rolled out to every desktop in your organization?  A good plan considers the necessary cultural and service adoption factors - so that investments in your UC system are adopted and maximized by members of your user community.

Last week, I met with one of our customers to review the current status of their Unified Communications (UC) initiative. Much has been accomplished; just a few days prior to my visit, they completed rolling out the latest phase of the company- wide UC solution to their entire workforce (about 10,000 users). For this customer, the process started early this year and should complete early in the third quarter of 2009.

Here’s what has been accomplished: all employees have a UC desktop application that enables secure, auditable, enterprise Instant Messaging, Presence, and Click-to-Call Voice over IP (UC client-to-client voice). To support this rollout, the UC server pools were completely upgraded with new software and hardware, a new datacenter was brought online, the data networks were engineered to the forecasted usage levels, and new systems architecture was deployed utilizing geo-redundancy to support the multi-national user-base as well as providing failover survival capabilities. In addition, every user was given remote access so that all UC presence, messaging, and voice features were supported wherever the employee happens to be working.

In the coming months, the internal support team will be performing a series of utilization studies. Capacity evaluations will measure the utilization and performance of the new UC solution and the study will provide a capacity management and systems administration plan. During the evaluation, user-community internal support records will be audited for issues. Some adoption hurdles are expected, so the end-user study will contain training and adoption recommendations.

For now, it’s a major accomplishment that the foundations of a UC system have been brought online and are enabling every employee to “IM” or “UC-talk” with a fellow employee. But there is more on the way as this UC initiative has several future phases planned and funded. Federation with partners, vendors, or customers, has yet to be accomplished, but that phase will quickly follow on the completion of the above-mentioned capacity study. And by this time next year, the UC System will integrate with the company PBX so telephony functions like “click-to-call” to any phone number is possible.

I mention all this because I want to illustrate that this customer has invested wisely in an extensive amount of pre-deployment planning, and the successful rollout results are the obvious evidence of a solid plan.

Did you know that InterCall offers “UC Planning” services to our customers? These services grew out of our existing meeting consulting services and our extensive partner relationships with industry-leading UC vendors. InterCall’s UC Planning services are consultative in nature and designed to help you construct a sound UC strategy that is tailored to achieve your business objectives. For example, our engineering studies place UC engineers on your site with your team to evaluate your UC objectives and your communications infrastructure’s “readiness” to support a UC system. The result of the engagement is an extensive study and recommendation - to help define your UC plan scope, phases, requirements, and budget.

In my next posting, I’ll continue this theme. I may have some interesting research to share.  If you’d like more information on how InterCall supports Unified Communications, attend one of our free webinars this month.

Ken Kurz, Director of Unified Communications. Kurz is responsible for the end-user success of Unified Communications deployments; ensuring businesses have a more efficient, easier-to-use communications environment.

5 Annoying Conference Call Mistakes to Avoid July 8, 2008 @ 06:15 AM | By Nicole Scheel

One of the most common questions I get from training colleagues outside of the conferencing industry is “How do you train over a conference call?  There are way too many distractions!”  While I can see where their anxiety may be coming from, I’ve put together a list of 5 ways to remove distractions from your next virtual meeting.

1. Eliminate Background Noise

I could write a whole post on this one!  Dogs barking, phones ringing, babies crying and the airport loud speaker all fall into this category!  The great thing about conference calls is that you can dial in from anywhere and still run training or meet with your team.  However these types of disruptions not only degrade your experience, they affect the whole call. 

So, if your cell phone has a mute button, use it!  Otherwise, most conferencing bridges have a touch tone command that you can use to mute your line.  If you are the leader on the call you should also have the ability to mute all lines except your own and then un-mute those lines for discussion.

2. Watch Out For Hold Music

Some offices and cell phone providers include a hold music feature.  It’s nice if you’re the only one on hold.  But if you put your phone on hold while in a conference, it interrupts the entire call.  Make sure to remind your participants that if they have hold music on their phone and their second line rings, they should not put the conference line on hold.  All participants on the call will be able to hear the hold music. If they love their hold music and are proud of it, feed it into the conference before the meeting starts!

3. Be Cautious of Static

We all love our cell phones (mine is never more than a foot away from me at all times) but, a conference call is not always the best place to use one.  Ideally, everyone on a conference call would be using a handset plugged into a land line.  I know – that’s totally unrealistic.  Cordless phones, cell phones, headsets and wireless headsets are all very convenient but they can all cause static. 

The easiest way to clear this up is to have that person disconnect and dial back into the conference call without the wireless device or using a different phone.  If that person is unable to hear you over the static you can request an operator and they will be able to zero in on which line is causing the static and either mute or disconnect that line.

4. Test Your Speaker Phone

Using a speaker phone is often a great way to get feedback from a group of people.  These days, most speaker phones are full digital duplex and do a great job of delivering sound quality.    However, do make sure you test your speaker phone before the conference. Consider how many people will be in the room, how big the room is and if the phone will cause an echo into the conference.  If your speaker phone is equipped with microphones throughout the room, definitely test and use them.  If you’re the only one presenting, I would recommend using your hand/headset for the call and then using the speaker phone for Q&A so those in the room can hear the questions.

5. Beeps & Blaring Signals

If you are dialed into a conference call from your cell phone or home phone, you probably have call waiting enabled.  When you hear a tone notifying you that another call is coming through, that tone also plays into your conference call.  So, turn off your call waiting during your meeting.

Occasionally, you may also get a loud blaring sound into your phone.  This is usually feedback caused by another electronic device like a Blackberry or laptop.  If you get this noise, try moving away from those devices and the feedback should stop pretty quickly.

With most conferencing providers there should be an option to go online and manage your conference call in real time.  This is a great option that may allow you to see which line is causing the problem and fix it easily!  So there you have it – my top five recommendations to make your conference calls less distracting and more productive.  If I missed one that really bugs you, let me know and I’ll throw out some suggestions as to how to avoid it.  If these suggestions aren’t helping your call sound better, maybe what you need is an operator assisted call where someone can help control the noise for you! Remember that your conferencing service provider is there to help you get better sound quality.  So, give them a call!

Nicole Scheel is the Director of Training, and the “Tips & Training Blogger”. Nicole has been in training with InterCall for nine years and currently manages our internal and customer training departments, also known as InterCall University. When she's not training someone, you can find Nicole volunteering in her community or finishing her Masters in Training & Development at Roosevelt University.