The first Buyer's Review kicked off yesterday with more than some surprises for all attendees. The free live event, which will showcase next time videoconferencing tools, started a few minutes after 12 noon EDT.
Of the official 55 registered participants, over 37 joined the event (68%), showing an extremely high interest for and desire to participate. Most conferencing events report a participation ratio between 50% and 65%. The first Kolabora Live! event, which took place about a month ago, had 225 sign-ups and only 120 actual event participants (53%).
The live presentation technologies integrating live video and VoIP which I had selected for this event were:
1) InstantPresenter
2) Virtex C3 Collaborator
The technology platform utilized to deliver the live event was iVocalize, which provides excellent VoIP, co-browsing, text chat and integrated recording of the event. iVocalize performed very well, and I was very happy with the overall performance, ease of use and features it provided me with.
Robin Good says welcome to Ralph Poole at Kolabora Live! Buyers Review
As a complement to the iVocalize delivery solution I had selected PresenterNet to deliver my presentation slides and a nifty interactive survey mechanism embedded in the slides themselves. The idea was to capture as much information from the participants about their own preferences for collaborative and live presentation solutions. Features, traits, pricing and more was meant to be extracted from the audience by the effective use of integrative full interaction controls in the slides and capturing all of the data from each individual user in a full-blown database. Well, this is really any marketing man's dream, to be able to interact with other people interested in something while being able to collect valuable feedback and preferences. The more the interaction is made to enjoyable, intuitive and fun, the more useful data can be extracted during these interactions.
Much of this data can have enormous value in allowing companies operating in these industries to gather valuable data from beta testers, early adopters, testers and customers registering for a trial of their product. But as you can rightly imagine it can only be used in thousands different ways for training, research, and sales efforts of different kinds.
Unfortunately, PresenterNet and its servers went through some pretty unique rough times just the night before the event started and for some particularly fortunate cosmic coincidence the servers set themselves off to backup all of their data for all the active customers just a few minutes into the event. Worst than that Doug Wolfgram at PresenterNet had no way to stop the process remotely and what I would have not wished to anyone did indeed take place live, with me at the command post.
Slides would not run, PresenterNet would hardly come up on my control screen, while I had 37 people anxiously waiting to see what I had to say.
Happily enough, I had left the doors open to the back stage in the hours before the event, creating a more relaxed atmosphere in the conference area as people would trickle in, some hours before the event, and would start chatting and meeting up with the other people who had come by to test their system.
I offered some opportunities for play, testing and discovery of some of the things that I was going to show and I clearly felt that people enjoyed thoroughly getting out of the formalities imposed by most of these events.
But when it came to start the show, I was blocked against a beautiful black screen, and left to take a decision as to what to do in a fraction of a second.
All the people were there. Sitting and ready. Though 37 is not a crowd-type of audience, it was a pretty good number for the limited promotion we were able to pull together and I was actually quite happy with the turnout.
What was I going to tell all of these people now. That the technology did not work and that the show was cancelled?
Some hundred billions thoughts flashed through my awareness in those apparently interminable minutes, while, talking live to the attendees, I was trying to see if the server was coming back up to rescue me.
But as hardly I could try to refresh and press F5, I could not get more than a blank screen and an unmoving progress bar staring at me.
So, I diplomatically shared with my audience that there were indeed some problems in the backend, and while our globally dispersed team went at work on the issue, I set myself at least to give the introduction I would have made, if the slides had been there in the first place.
I took some comfort in seeing that my participants were rather glued to their chairs, and nonetheless the blank screen, hardly anyone appeared of wanting to leave the space. I guess the thrill of some "real" problems happenig in front of them, was indeed more enjoyable and curious than listening to the typical boring monotone presenter showing some slides.
I then gave my introduction to the event while explaining the approach and the route that we would have followed.
It then suddenly stroke me back the memory that I had set-up a very simple and home-grown video room to allow people to show their faces live during the Q&A session that was planned for the last part of the event.
I decided then to call up this video room up and to display it in place of the black slide, so that people could also see me live and anyone who wanted could come up to the second video window I had set up there. That worked well. The video room, brewed with Mike Bondi of Bridgeconferencing in South Africa, is all based on the Flash Communication Server and it simply allowed me to pull up instead of a Web page, a URL where I had placed this .swf file (Flash) which provided full video broadcasting of me plus any other one person in the event.
Participants seemed to enjoy the sudden ability to be part of a live presentation, missing the opportunity to showcase the two technologies that had been specifically selected (nonetheless three more passionate attempts at resurrecting the PresenterNet command center).
Almost naturally the focus switched to the technologies we were using to communicate right then and there, iVocalize and Flash, and away from the planned ones. I answered some quite interesting questions and called up to the podium both CEOs of the two companies invited to let them introduce their products briefly, while sharing URLs for immediate try-out or demos of their technologies.
Click to enlarge - InstantPresenter CEO Costin Tuculescu
We ended up covering quite some ground, with many live questions and answers and with over 32 participants hanging in the room up to the very last minute (after 1 hour and 15 minutes).
Since, the event, really did not showcase the technologies that had been invited, I have taken personal commitment to rerun this event in a new date soon to be established, and to offer a free full recording of the event, to all those who have participated yesterday but were unable to get to see their technology starts on stage.
Audio Recording
An audio recording of yesterday's event is available and is kindly hosted by Voxwire, the best VoIP solution yet available on the market.
Listen to the streaming version or download the WMA version here:
http://www.voxwire.com/kolabora/ buyersreview/20040422.html
Voxwire knows no competitors when it comes to providing reliable VoIP under the most adverse conditions. Starting at USD $ 29.95/month (10 people room)this is a tool that is hard to beat.
Next Friday, April the 30th, The Competitive Edge, first event also in a new series devoted to industry trends, and in particular to new tools, features and best practices in the industry, will take off at 12 noon EDT.
If you are interested and want to sign up: http://tinyurl.com/358l4
The Competitive Edge is sponsored by:
http://www.Communicast.com/
Thinkofit
Conferencing on the Web:
A comprehensive, independent guide
to products and services
http://www.ConferZone.com/
The next Kolabora Live! Buyer's Review will take place Thursday May 13th at 12 noon and will focus on live videoconferencing solutions.
Sign-up here: http://tinyurl.com/2zfcq
The Buyer's Review is sponsored by:
http://www.ivocalize.com/
http://www.ConferZone.com/
Thinkofit
Conferencing on the Web:
A comprehensive, independent guide
to products and services
