Now Offering Adobe Connect Pro Integrated with InterCall Audio Conferencing

Today we announced a strategic, global reseller/distribution agreement with Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) that will allow InterCall to sell a complete, fully-integrated Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ Pro web conferencing solution to our customers. The new InterCall/Adobe offering is now available in North America and will be offered globally in early 2010.

With Connect Pro, you can securely support dynamic online meetings, training and events. And since 98% of Internet-connected computers worldwide already have the Adobe Flash® Player runtime installed, your audience can connect instantly with no downloads required.

What’s really great about this offering is that we have fully integrated our audio conferencing within the platform, allowing customers to manage the audio portion of their meeting from within the Connect Pro interface, providing a truly seamless user experience. This enhancement will be made available to current Adobe customers with the release of the new 7.5 version of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro.

For more information, and to read quotes from Kathleen Finato, InterCall’s senior vice president of marketing and business development, and Arun Anantharaman, vice president, Connect Pro at Adobe, check out the official press release.

And if you’re interested in learning more about Connect Pro, contact your InterCall meeting consultant at 800.341.2447 or send us an email.

Dan Uhlmeyer is a Sr. Product Manager and the "Web Conferencing" blogger.  He has nearly ten years of product experience in Web Conferencing and has managed several services at InterCall. When not punching on the keyboard, you can find Dan enjoying time with his wife and two children or running a marathon.

Need to Meet? Try a Conference Instead.

Our own Kathleen Finato, senior vice president of marketing and business development, is today’s featured guest blogger on BusinessWeek’s Small Business tips blog. In the article, you’ll learn three common myths about replacing face-to-face meetings with conferencing.

“Myth 1: You always need to be in front of your customer in order to take care of business.
In a recent study by Wainhouse and InterCall, 56% of respondents felt that if more in-person meetings were replaced by conference calls, both parties would be able to get more done. Conferencing allows you to stay in your comfort zone and conduct meetings with anyone, anywhere. Being there can simply mean dialing a couple of numbers and making a few clicks.”

Read the entire article.

Have you found success and savings by replacing face-to-face meetings with conferencing? Let us know about it. We'd love to hear from you! 

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

Do You Have a Pandemic Plan in Place?

The World Health Organization announced Friday that H1N1 cases are on the rise in China and Japan, while the virus is continuing to initiate an early start to the winter flu season in Europe, Central Asia and North America.

A quick check of Flu.gov, a comprehensive interagency web site, will provide you with a slew of information on ways to identify, prevent and treat the illness. Among the various recommendations, a few items that pertain to the workplace stood out.

Come up with a Plan
The site encourages businesses to plan appropriate prevention and response strategies in order to maintain business operations and minimize adverse effects.

At InterCall, we launched an internal plan last spring in order to protect our workers while still offering the highest degree of customer service and support. Because of the nature of our work, InterCall has the flexibility and capability to manage and support most operations remotely when necessary. We’ve even developed instructional programs in order for additional staff to be trained on essential operational duties in short notice, emergency situations.

Communicate Your Plan
Once you’ve established your pandemic strategy be sure to communicate it to employees and stakeholders. Flu.gov says:

• Establish and clearly communicate policies on sick leave and employee compensation
• Encourage ill persons to stay home during a pandemic and establish return-to-work policies after illness
• Establish policies for sick-leave absences unique to a pandemic (e.g., liberal/unscheduled leave)

Don’t Forget Conferencing!
Finally, in mitigation guidelines issued by the CDC, "teleworking" strategies are cited as an effective method for reducing contact among susceptible or afflicted individuals and groups. Flu.gov encourages businesses to limit face-to-face meetings and modify workplace practices by promoting the use of conferencing as an alternative meeting solution. In addition to reducing contact among those who may be ill, the site says that conferencing “would help employees balance their work and family responsibilities.”

Need to keep your germs to yourself? If you think you’re experiencing symptoms but still feel well enough to work, if you’re in the minimum 24-hour post-flu exclusionary/recovery period or if you need to stay home with sick kids, try a conference instead. With simple tools you already have at home—a phone, computer and Internet connection—you can hold meetings just as if you were in the office. You can get a free one month trial of InterCall Unified Meeting, our integrated audio and web conferencing service, to see how easy and convenient it is. Just visit our web site to get started today.

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

5 Tips for Boosting Webinar Attendance

One of the biggest concerns for any webinar host is attendance. It is, for better or worse, the most common barometer for gauging event success. Of course, we all know quality prevails over quantity, right?

But as I’m sure many would have to admit, it’s nice to tout an overwhelming number of attendees. So how do you encourage both quantity and quality at your next online event? Here are some tried-and-true tips:

Be Considerate

When scheduling your event, make sure you’re considering what’s best for the audience. Would they be most likely to attend in the morning or in the afternoon? Midweek or on Monday or Friday? Are there any conflicts, like a big industry tradeshow or conference, which might interfere with attendance at your virtual event?

Make It Matter

Be sure you’re providing content and speakers that your audience is interested in. Has the speaker you hired delivered the same content multiple times for other companies who might share your audience? Are you continually offering identical webinars with just a different title? Mix it up, stay relevant and ask your audience who and what they want to see and hear.

Try, Try Again

Send multiple invites to get your audience to register: one a couple of weeks before, one a week before and maybe one a day or two before. Remove people who have already registered for the event before sending subsequent invites and try different email content and subject lines with each invite. You never know what’s going to grab someone’s attention. Increased registration should hopefully lead to increased attendance. But with industry average attendance rates at anywhere from 30-50%, you should do everything you can to convert those registrants into attendees!

Keep It Simple

Make registration easy. You’ll have an opportunity to gather information throughout the process, thanks to surveys and polls, so limit registration fields to the essential contact information–name, email and maybe a phone number. That gives you an opportunity to ask a couple more questions that can help you qualify leads and even improve your presentation. For instance, you could ask for registrants to submit questions ahead of time, which can help shape content and delivery to the expectations and needs of the audience. Be sure to incorporate this information as a way of letting your audience know that you’re listening to their needs. And don’t forget to send an immediate email confirmation.

That Reminds Me…

Speaking of emails, you have to remind your audience. Then remind them again. Make sure you send multiple email reminders with clear, easy to understand instructions on how to attend, a link to the event, phone numbers to dial in and support contact information--just in case they need it. And be sure to include a ‘save to Outlook calendar’ option.

Some other tips:

Cross promote – Post it on your web site, partner web sites, your blog, Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools that you participate in, or use free event listing services like EventSpan.
Use the force – Your sales force, that is. Have them add a link to their emails, make calls and ensure it’s top of mind for their clients and prospects.
Buddy up – Find a co-sponsor and have them promote the event to their database.
Reward the behavior you want to promote – Incentives can work. If your goal is to increase attendance, make sure the giveaway goes to an attendee–and perhaps announce it end of the event so the audience stays to listen to the entire presentation.

Finally, sometimes people just can’t make it. Be sure to record your event! You’ll increase the value of your event investment and continue to capture leads over the lifetime of the recording.

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

Own a small business? You’re using web conferencing, right?

There are many tools online to help the small business owner be successful. You can network, schedule meetings and manage your customers. But in the end, creating a successful business is about the relationships you are able to create and how well you communicate with your stakeholders. If you own a small business you should be using web conferencing. Why? Here are 3 things that web conferencing can do for you.

1. You save money.

Travel is expensive. There are flights, rental cars, hotel rooms and dinners out with clients.  When you use web conferencing, you save money. Instead of traveling to meet with potential clients, meet online. Hosting a virtual meeting keeps you focused on business instead of worrying about the ROI of the trip.

2. You look like a pro.

Integrating a conference call with web cam video or desktop sharing shows that you are a tech-savvy professional. With conferencing and collaboration tools, you can avoid emailing documents back and forth or using a subpar “free” conference call service that may not have lines available when you need them.

3. You can get started now.

When you use online collaboration tools, you are building a partnership with your conferencing service provider. That provider is partially responsible for your success. The great part about this is that you don’t need to buy any expensive equipment or consult your IT guy. It’s packaged and ready to start using the day you decide you need an audio conference or video meeting.

Now, I’m not a salesperson by nature.  But if you think you are ready to give web conferencing a try, we do have a nifty free trial offer available for you. Let me know if web conferencing does everything I’ve promised here. If it gives you other benefits (and it will) come back and let us know about them.

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

The Internet is Changing Business

Please welcome our guest blogger and recent webinar speaker, Jerry Cahn.

Recently, someone asked me, “How has the Internet changed history?” Since the Internet is relatively new, we’re actually living through a period of “history in the making”. I brainstormed on the many ways the Internet is changing our lives both as consumers and as business people and considered what future implications and directions might be. With all things that change, it’s not all good or bad; the issue is what do we do with the new technologies: improve our lives or not?

So, when InterCall invited me to write a blog post, I decided it might be interesting to explore how the Internet is changing business-related communications and invite everyone to share their ideas. What’s changing and what’s not, including psychological and social implications?  (As a psychologist, that’s always my slant.)

Since I’m writing this blog on the day I delivered a webinar for InterCall on “SuperMentoring: Creating a Performance Culture” and announced a calendar of other webinars from now through December, let’s focus on webinars for a while.

There are some key advantages to webinars. You can:

• Deliver live presentations to an audience from your desk
• Save time and money by not traveling
• Reach a large audience at one time without having to rent out space 
• Build a relationship with an audience through polling, Q&A, etc.

As a result, webinars are ideal for many purposes including:

• Introducing info (such as a health or retirement plan)
• Educating employees, vendors, consultants
• Marketing to customers and investors

On the other hand, webinars are NOT ideal for such things as sales and negotiations where “reading” and “relating” to the other party are vital to success. So use webinars to reach the audience and face-to-face meetings to close.

What determines impact usually isn’t mastery of the webinar technology; rather it’s the use of fundamental presentation skills when designing and delivering the presentation—content, structure, succinctness, organization, engaging graphics and the communication power of the presenter—are what really count.  We’ll talk about these issues in the next entry and then turn to other communication issues.

Share your thoughts with me in the comments below.

Jerry Cahn, Ph.D., J.D., is a presentation master, organizational strategist and executive coach. He helps clients design and implement effective business strategies, sharpen sales and marketing performance, develop leadership skills and performance cultures, and produce winning sales, marketing and investor presentations.

3 Things You Should Know About Webinar Chit Chat

Chatting. We all do it. Some of us do it by the water cooler in the break room. Others send an instant message to a co-worker and chat it up.  And from what we’ve seen on Twitter lately, many people send tweets or chat during conference calls and webinars. I admit I have been guilty of sending a quick message myself. 

However, when you’re putting on a webinar or web conferencing event, do you really want to encourage your participants to chat amongst themselves? Many virtual events use Twitter to take questions during their session, which generally results in a bit of banter. But, a public forum within your presentation dedicated to chit chat could be damaging. Here are a few reasons why.

You Will be Sharing Attendee Information

If you’re publicizing audience information during your web meeting (for example, the attendees’ first and last names or even email addresses), what’s to stop a competitor who may be in attendance from looking up that person or their company? With today’s social media tools, it’s not too difficult to find people online. Another concern is that if you have less than anticipated attendance, allowing attendees to 'see each other' highlights that there is a small audience, potentially discounting the quality and importance of your message.   

Not All Chatting Will Be Safe for Work

Chat panels are frequently used for support, meaning audience members can type in questions about the materials or speaker. If the moderator posts a private response to those individuals, other audience members could be left with the impression that those questions were ignored. Any time there is a public forum, you run the risk of less savory attitudes being on display. I have even seen some ambitious sales people post their contact information in the chat panel. No one wants to be spammed when they’re trying to focus on the speaker’s presentation.

Your Audience Will Be Distracted

Finally, there’s the distraction factor. If you have an important message to deliver, you probably want your audience to focus on the speaker and the content rather than to carry on side conversations that may veer off topic.
These problems underscore the advantage of hiring an event management professional. Event managers can walk you through all the possible event scenarios and help you make decisions that ensure the success of your event—like whether to use public or private chat. They can also provide assistance behind the scenes of your live event by monitoring chat logs, replying to technical issues and forwarding content related questions directly to the speaker.

If you’ve experienced other issues with public chat functionality or have solutions to some of the problems I mentioned, please tell us in the comments section below.

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

Heavy Duty Web Collaboration, Lightweight Tool

Are you looking for a web conferencing service that has simple pricing, easy installation and an intuitive user interface?

Then IBM LotusLive: Meetings is for you!

Most people want an easy-to-use conferencing service but demand that it be delivered from a well known software provider. With LotusLive: Meetings offered by InterCall, that’s precisely what you get. There are three easy reasons to choose LotusLive.

 

It’s easy to buy.

Too many pricing options and additional charges for each little add-on can sometimes confuse everyone and slow down the decision making process. How many licenses do I need? Which tier is the best for my organization? Is there a set up fee? What if I go over my pricing package agreement? Are there overage charges detailed in my contract? Lotus Live: Meetings offers simple and affordable pricing packages. It’s named user pricing, but it’s unlike any other. It works like this: “Price x Units” That’s it. It really is that simple. 

It’s easy to launch.

Lotus Live: Meetings is a lightweight browser-based offering, so all you need is the browser on your computer and you are ready to connect instantly—whether you are meeting with one person or 999. No required downloads for participants means fewer meeting delays. There is no custom site creation or building branded pages, which allows you and your participants to always access LotusLive: Meetings through one centralized login page. And, forget about ever having to search for conference codes before you join every call. Now you only have one permanent conference code for your LotusLive: Meetings account.

It’s easy to use.

Surveys show that 98% of web conferencing users use two features: presentation and application sharing. Most users are looking for a lightweight tool that meets those needs and is easy enough to start using without hours of tutorials or training classes.

Take a look at some of the features included in LotusLive: Meetings:

Sharing and Remote Control - Share select applications or your entire desktop and pass control

Recording - Record audio and web content as offline media or produce self-contained Flash formatted presentations

Hand raising - Ask questions and tally results based on animated raised hand images, controlled by the attendees

Videocasting - Share presenter webcam video up to 125 participants

Chat - Chat with individuals or send broadcast messages to all attendees

Multiple presenters - Facilitate collaborative working sessions by clicking an attendee name and passing control

Summary report - Receive a summary email at the end of each web conference for reporting of participants’ join/exit times and polling results

The nice thing about LotusLive: Meetings is the basic, intuitive interface and toolbar.  You can take charge of your meeting content without needing someone else to run the show.

We’re proud to offer InterCall customers and IBM fans a conferencing solution that defines easy. Take a minute to check out LotusLive: Meetings. Just like buying, launching and using it, choosing Lotus Live: Meetings is easy too. See a demo here.

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

Huddle Case Study

At InterCall, we are committed to helping you conduct more effective meetings and ensuring your success begins well before the first participant joins the conference. Our recent partnership with Huddle is just one example of how we seek out solution providers that not only enrich your meeting experience, but provide you with additional communication tools to make you more productive.

Around the world, organizations are using Huddle to work better together and conduct meetings more efficiently. One example is London-based brand and communications agency, Rufus Leonard, who implemented Huddle as a fully branded client extranet, connecting all relevant teams, files and discussions internally and externally. They delivered their work without wasting time or effort sending large files via email. Control and ease-of-use were key requirements for an extranet and Huddle was able to provide everything they needed and more. They were able to get all their internal staff and clients trained and using Huddle within two weeks from launch and were instantly proving the benefits of working more efficiently and professionally.

Hear more about what Huddle does for Rufus Leonard by clicking below.

Rufus Leonard case study from Zuzanna Pasierbinska on Vimeo.

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

Training on a Budget

  

It seems that no matter who you talk to these days, the conversation turns to the poor economy. Budgets are being cut, travel is being reduced, people are getting laid off and yet the need for training and education never diminishes. As training professionals, we’re asked to keep the same volume of classes and produce high quality training, but with fewer resources. For some, this can prove to be a challenge, while others get creative in their pursuit of keeping up with the same standards.

Those same standards typically include on-site training, which can be very expensive. Let’s look at the numbers: For a one week on-site training class, typical expenses you can expect to incur, per student, include:

$700 hotel + $400 airfare + $300 food + 100 transportation = $1500 cost for 1 business trip

After $1500, you’ve got the person geared up with what you need them to know. Now, factor in your costs for supplies, room, projector rental and group activities such as dinners and drinks, etc. For a ten person, one week, on-site class you’re looking at almost $20,000. Depending on the frequency of the class, and the location, your budget dollars start to rapidly dwindle.  Keep in mind that you’ll also need to account for the time lost to travel, which most likely amounts to a full day.

Let’s take that same example and, instead of being at an on-site meeting, plug in using audio and web conferencing. Depending on your usage and the platform you prefer for your conference call and web meeting, they rate you pay for the combined services will differ. In this case, let’s use something on the higher end and say that combined you’d be spending $0.60 per minute per participant. With a few breaks and lunch, you’re probably figuring that you would be online for six hours per day.

 

360 minutes x 4 days = 1440 minutes of conferencing per participant
10 students x 1440 minutes of conferencing = 14,400 weekly conferencing minutes
14,400 x $0.60 = $8640 total cost of online training

That’s an overall savings of $11,360 per class! Offer that class once each  month and you save $136,320 on your yearly budget! That doesn’t even include those “extra costs” that we tend to forget about—binders, printing costs, pens, flip charts, etc.—that aren’t needed with online classes. ALL of these extras are already built into our web conferencing platforms.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog postings, 95% of the training we do here at InterCall is online. That word online can mean different things to different people. In this case, I mean that we have a “live” class that is facilitated by an instructor using real-time audio and web conferencing.

Now I realize that I work for a conferencing company, so I’m a bit biased as to the ease of use and the ability to transform classroom led training into virtual training; however, I would encourage any of you to try it out, even if it is just for one call. To show you just how easy it is, I invite you to register for one of our FREE (another budget friendly option) training sessions.

If you have any of your own budget-friendly training tips, I’d love to hear them, so please comment below. Also if there are any questions or comments please leave them and I’ll make sure to follow up. Thanks for reading!

  

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.