I made this comment on Rich Jacobson's post here
I think the next venue for REBarCamp should be a live web conference; The sponsor's contributions would go to funding the conference Webinar host account and maybe providing webcams at low cost to participants. Sponsors' ads could be displayed in a side panel or banner during the conference.
GoToWebinar cost is $948 annual for unlimited Webinars with up to 1,000 attendees each. (In fact, I'm feeling kind of tempted to set up a GoToWebinar account for my office.....)
And the more I think about it, the more interested I become.
Anyone else using some type of online webinar software for office meetings? What do you think of it?
What about meetings for community service groups? Kiwanis, Rotary, whatever? Imagine if some nice business person volunteered making their webinar account available for hosting their local school's parent meetings...
The concept is pretty neat, the delivery system is still a bit slow (personal experience) Gaps in instruction or conversation &/or slide show type presentations for me make viewing in live time a bit annoying. The couple of seminars that I have gotten the taped version were better b/c I could multitask &/or move around the room with out worrying about missing something. If I wasn't clear on what was discussed I could back up and re-do a section.
For company workshops to keep employees on the same page, it would be cheaper than flying everyone in for a central meeting. I could see a lender, real estate broker and insurance agent and a home inspector going in together and doing seminars for the public and then each would have the link to share with clients the process.
How would you implement this for you office? cw
I'm a practitioner.
I'd remember that every solution has it's ups and downs. Citrix Online offers great value for the money... and there are more expensive solutions that offer more features, and cheap/free solutions that offer less.
For a few resources about Citrix GoToWebinar, here are some documents that might shed some light... http://www.docstoc.com/profile/RogerAt1080GroupDotC
Good luck with your search!
Peace
-R
I've gone to a couple of these with GoToMeeting with Michael "Mr. Internet" Russer with his Online Dominance course. The overall performance is spotty and varies between flawless and slow/clunky.
Here's my take on webinars, generally: for some things they are great - pure presentation of material is one example.It's very orderly, with a moderator taking questions one at a time and filtering out duplicate questions.
However, when audience participation is a key factor in the process (such as REBar Camp) it really takes away from the energy of the "in-person" experience as well as the free flow of ideas. It is also very easy to get distracted during a webinar (for me). I would also miss the body language, tone, and, of course, the social aspect. Introverts tend to become more introverted when they aren't even in the same room. There's no chance to go up to someone after the meeting for one-on-one follow ups or networking or coffee or whatever.
The bottom line for me is that webinars are good for simply pushing out pre-packaged, pre-designed infomration but not so good if you want lively interaction.
Just like Google apps and Zoho docs can now be used as a free/much cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office Suite, there are a number of web conferencing products out there that do not cost thousands of dollars a year. I work for Yugma, an online collaboration tool that is a more affordable alternative to what the big guys offer. Yugma offers a free level of service and professional plans start at just $9.95 a month. You can share desktops, mouse, keyboard and files. We have a number of users in the real estate industry who use our web conferencing product to do demos for prospective clients and to keep in touch with current clients. Clearly you cannot take face-to-face meetings out of real estate, but web conferencing doesn't have be viewed as a poorer substitute to live meetings. It can be a tool that makes you more accessible to your clients, and combined with live meetings, can make you a much more efficient and productive professional.
Hi Cheryl J: My CPA uses GoToMeeting to access my Quick Books software. It is so COOL! I don't even know what all you can do with it, but it was very user friendly for that application.
Rebecca -- Thanks for the tip about Yugma! I'm going to take some time to study the website http://www.yugma.com -- Since I'm just "dipping a toe in" at this point, Yugma's price sure sounds attractive!
Cheryl P -- Didn;'t know about that feature! Interesting!
Cheryl - I used to use Microsoft NetMeeting all the time at the last company I worked for. We found it very acceptable. I have not tried GoToMeeting. I do have Meeting Space here on my Vista machine but have not tried it. It is free.
Hi Cheryl,
I have been using vyew.com for the last couple months with great success. It's free to sign up and use (for smaller groups), there's no software install and I have found that users and guests like the ease of use.
I wrote a little blurb about it in my Real Estate Tech Blog
Thanks,
Matt