Luca is a successful businessman living in Rome. Luca has a communication agency specializing in the design, organization, and delivery of medium to large conferences for important companies and international organizations.

Luca's staff selects beautiful locations as classical Italian villas and castles in which to arrange memorable companies' yearly conferences or special holiday's celebrations. Some other organizations contact Luca's agency to have him find a suitable convention centre and to have him provide all of the logistics connected to the event.

Among the many services Luca provides to his prestigious customers, most revolve around hostess services, printing and distribution of materials, documentation, preparing and distributing transcripts of the event speeches and presentations, selecting gifts and incentives.

Me and Luca have been friends for quite some time as we both enjoy daydreaming of a different world in which he can survive while teaching windsurf and I can keep on sharing the new things I learn from a sunny, relaxed sea-kissed resort.

So in one of our recent face-to-face chats I engaged him on an idea that had been buzzing in my mind for a while.

How valuable would it be for his clients to actually broadcast their event to a distant audience made up of those who cannot or do not want to travel to the conference location?

Would the extra reach provide an added opportunity for exposure and prestige to the conference sponsors and organizers as well as an opportunity to expand the business into new realms?

Could the online venue actually enrich the physical event by providing outside interventions from distant experts, far-away colleagues and offices and even from the public at large?

Could he not propose the organizers to offer access to the event also to an online audience thereby providing extra opportunities for sponsorship, exposure, ticket sales, and more?

Luca's eyes were already showing green dollar bills rolling like cards on a slot machine. He said without hesitation:" Can this be really done? I thought this would cost and arm and a leg and you would need out of this world technology to do any of this live! Are you sure you are not running too fast with your ideas?" he asked me with a worried face.

I said: "Luca, you can do all of this and more today, without owning Microsoft and without needing a million dollar budget to make it real. Your customers are not going to believe your prices when you tell them how little it going to cost to extend these events to an online audience!"

"Really?", he said, "Tell me more, please, don't leave me dreaming like this. If it is possible, I want to do it now!".

"OK" I said. "You can truly start testing and trying out a number of real-time conferencing tools that will allow you to:

• Broadcast live any part of the conference presentations or speeches.
• Provide a recording of the same for later access by those who could not attend it live.
• Broadcast live presentation materials including slides, documents and any other presentation material.
• Allow distant participants to interact with the presenters by posing questions via voice or text chat
• Facilitate the distribution of files and documents to live participants while saving on time and printing/duplication costs
• Allow attendees to send in materials, proposals, files and documents for review. This may include surveys, tests or event filled out forms for applications.
• Create the opportunity for press engagement by having remote journalists invited to interview event panellists.
• Optionally deliver video feeds of the presenter to attendees.
• Poll audience for feedback and evaluation of new products or ideas.

...I could have gone on for at least 20 more points.

Luca stopped me and said: "Robin, I honestly didn't know that all this was possible, and I am fully interested and avid of finding out more so that I can leverage these fantastic new technologies to make my service more competitive and unique. I am sure, not many others have thought of this yet.

But please, tell me the bad news Robin. How much do I need to spend to broadcast a real conference to 500 or more active participants?"

"Luca, chill out! The best part of my story is yet to come!
Not only will this cost you less than 1/100th of what it would cost you to add those real participants to a live physical event, but it will cost you such a small amount of money you will not believe it.

Let me give you one example:

VoiceCafe OfficeMaster can be rented out for unlimited meetings in a month for up to 250 people for USD $ 2,350 (setup fee $ 312.50). The same tool is available for up to 500 people for $ 3,750 (setup fee $ 625)!

By the way, the OfficeMaster provides:

• Voice conferencing
• Polling
• Co-surfing
• Application and document sharing
• Video feeds (slow video)
• Text chat
• File Transfer

Do you think that will be enough?

Luca could not believe what he was hearing. We set an appointment for the next day to activate immediately two different real-time conferencing rooms where he could start practicing with his staff the potential extra uses for this new tool.

He is now online moderating the international forum of the World Pharmaceutical Association, that after having briefly met in Monte Carlo has spun off an extremely successful forum on new approaches to epidemic and bio-terrorist threats which has triggered the interest of thousands of participants. Useless to say his clients are very excited and Luca is as happy as anyone could be.

 

Do you need the same things that Luca has just found?

You too, like Luca, can get today a lot more than you are ready to bargain for. A whole new breed of cost-effective live conferencing tools for individuals and small companies are available for immediate use.

You don't need WebEx, Centra or Placeware to do the things that Luca is now doing.

To find out everything about the best conferencing technologies to broadcast live presentations from real conferences please give a look to:

Robin Good's Official Guide to SOHO Web Conferencing and Live Presentation Tools