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| Path: Main Street > Resources/Library > Research Articles > Feature Article |
Holding web conferencesBy Gillian Kerr, RealWorld Systems
The information in this article is current as of September 16, 2003.Web conferences can be defined as meetings of any size (from two people up to hundreds) that use the Internet to share information during the meeting.
Web conferences may include videoconferencing so that you can see the faces of the presenter and participants, or they may provide only data sharing. Data sharing may involve touring web pages together, watching a PowerPoint presentation, and/or sharing full applications such as co-editing a document.
Web conferences are often done in conjunction with teleconferences, so that the audio conversation uses regular telephones while the visual information uses the Internet. This ensures that the audio quality is good even for people with dialup Internet access.
Advantages of web conferences
Web conferences have many advantages over both teleconferences and face to face meetings:
- They save travel time, of course, for people who are in different locations. Even though time is required for installing and learning the web conferencing tool, it will almost always be faster than traveling to a meeting.
- Compared to teleconferences, web conferences give participants more of a feel for being "in a shared space" because everyone is looking at the same document or page. This helps people focus on the meeting rather than blanking out or reading email. Presentations in particular are a lot more successful when the presenter can walk participants through PowerPoint slides as she speaks.
- Many web conferencing services allow participants to work actively on shared documents, co-editing them, drawing diagrams, writing meeting notes together, and so on. This is a tremendous advantage over face to face meetings, and replaces flip charts hanging all over the walls.
How to make web conferences work
Web conferencing tools are still pretty complicated and usually expensive. They require access to an Internet connection and a telephone, and they need to be accompanied by a teleconferencing service, which adds to the cost. (However, see Groove, below.)
Most web conference services are based on Windows PCs and a recent version of a standard Web browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape. If you want to include Macintosh or Linux users, or people with very old systems, you may have difficulty. Ensure that the service you plan to use is accessible to your participants, and if necessary, discuss the options with them. For example, some meeting participants may prefer to call in on mobile phones rather than book enough time to go back to their office computers. They would have to be convinced that web conferencing is worth the extra hassle. Or participants may be reluctant to download a new program or plug-in, so whenever possible you should select a service that is completely browser-based for the participants.
Almost all web conference services require the presenter to install software or a plug-in before being able to share or upload material to the web. An alternative is for a meeting facilitator to load the software and presentation materials on his/her computer, which would allow the presenter to say, "next slide please".
The most essential resource you'll need is a facilitator on your team, either volunteer or staff. This person is the enthusiast that plays with the web conference service and helps everyone else how to use it. He or she answers questions, demonstrates the service, troubleshoots, encourages other participants, and generally makes the technology easier for everyone else. Without this person, don't even attempt web conferencing. He/she should expect to spend at least two hours playing before facilitating a real meeting. This person is not necessarily the presenter or official facilitator, by the way. It may be an informal IT champion, or an administrative assistant who is comfortable with technology.
You can count on some frustration and problems the first couple of times you try this. Don't be discouraged. For a detailed description of the problems you may run into, read this research report (pdf file) on working with collocated teams. It was written in 1999 but is still completely relevant. And here, in case you want to see all of the choices out there, are two lists of web-based collaborative tools that summarize current services and prices (one in Excel format and the other in a web table).
Using Groove for web conferences
I'm excited about Groove these days. I wrote about it last year in the context of team collaboration and online workgroups, but was unsuccessful in convincing anyone on my own team to use it. Even though a basic version of Groove is free, it's such a memory hog that people with older computers flatly refuse to tolerate it. Only the fastest computers with the biggest memory chips can comfortably use Groove for day-to-day work.
So for the last year, I've been trying to figure out how nonprofits can use this powerful collaboration tool. And at the same time, I've been looking for ways that nonprofits can have productive virtual meetings. Well, it finally clicked. Groove can provide a rich, functional workspace for people in live meetings. It is okay if it slows down their computers during the actual meeting, because they should be paying attention to the shared information anyway rather than their usual multi-tasking. And the experience of entering a meeting room, whether it's physical or virtual, does involve a transition from one space to another. So the transition into the 'groove space' isn't so annoying. The secret is to open Groove only for meetings, and keep it closed otherwise. It was designed as a complete work space that could handle all projects and teamwork, but it's just too cumbersome.
At any rate, here is a sampling of the tools that Groove can provide:
Each Groove workspace contains a set of distance collaboration tools, to enable people to share documents, co-browse web sites, draw diagrams and so on. Individuals must be invited to the workspace. As soon as they enter the space, they receive all of the files and documents that have been put into the space, such as agendas, background materials, web sites and so on. It takes only a couple of minutes to create a workspace.
- The Meetings Tool allows participants to see or create the agenda, minutes and action items related to your meeting.
- The Groove Files Tool lets you share files and documents in several ways. You can present a slideshow by highlighting a PowerPoint file and clicking on 'Start Presentation'. You can co-edit a Word file by highlighting it and clicking on 'Co-Edit', using the Chat window to wordsmith quickly. And you can ensure that everyone is working with the correct documents by uploading them into this space before the meeting.
- The Groove Web Links Tool lets participants browse the Web together, share shortcuts, and take turns leading the others.
- The Groove Sketchpad Tool lets shared space members draw or share diagrams together.
- The Groove Text Tool is a real-time rich-text editor. Online members see each other's edits as they're made, and can paste in text from other programs.
There are many other tools, such as a full-featured Document Review function, but the above are sufficient for most meetings.
Groove also offers chat and audio conferencing. If participants have headsets with microphones, they can use Groove for web conferences without telephones. This might be appropriate for staff who want to collaborate cheaply, without long distance phone charges and teleconferencing, but the voice quality may not be great.
Drawbacks of Groove: The program is a large file, over 17 megabytes, so it takes a long time to download it on a dialup connection. It works only with Windows PCs, and if you want to have more than three workspaces you must pay for it ($149 US). Most people won't need more than three workspaces though, since you can delete the ones you're not using.
Other web conference services
The market leader in web conferencing services is WebEx, which charges 45c/minute US per user, plus any teleconferencing costs. In other words, it's prohibitive for most Canadian businesses and nonprofits, but it gives you an idea of the mainstream pricing. It requires a download for all participants. Another key player, PlaceWare, was recently bought by Microsoft and added to the "Office System" of collaboration tools. Knowing Microsoft, they will probably redefine the web conferencing marketplace over the next three years. PlaceWare offers a 15 day free trial - you can take advantage of it for several experimental web conferences. It costs 35c/minute US.
We have been using three web conferencing services besides Groove.
Webconference.com is relatively inexpensive, but certainly not free (starting at $69/month US for up to 6 participants, and the participants can be different each time, so agencies can share an account). However, it's so user-unfriendly that most people, in our experience, can barely stand it. Also, it requires Internet Explorer and a small downloaded plug-in which is blocked by some firewalls. We've almost completely stopped using it.
Glance.net costs $40 US/month for one presenter, with no limits on number of participants or usage. Each presenter can install it on two computers, so one of the 'presenters' could be a computer in a conference room. Glance is extremely easy to use for participants; all they have to do is go to a web address (http://username.glance.net) and fill in a session number. Participants see the entire computer screen of the presenter; in other words, it provides full one-way application sharing. Advantages: Participants don't need to download any software or plugins, and it seems to work well over firewalls and on non-Windows computers. I tested it on a Lindows machine with Netscape. It's inexpensive compared to other services, and very simple to use. Disadvantages: Glance shows EVERYTHING on the screen, including embarrassing instant messages that might crop up during a session. The actual number of participants should be under 20, because the speed of downloading the shared pages is limited by the slowest connection. One person with a crummy dial-up connection to the Internet would slow down the entire presentation for everyone. You can sign up for a one-day free trial here, which you could use to lead a presentation, and test your system here.
Enunciate's Empower service, launched in August 2003, works with most operating systems and any recent version of Internet Explorer or Netscape, and doesn't require downloads unless participants want to share their own files with people in the conference. It's easy to use and is integrated with Enunciate's excellent teleconferencing service. We are using this service for many meetings that can't use Groove. It costs about 25c/minute/person Canadian (the pricing varies), plus any teleconferencing costs. You can use your own teleconferencing provider, or 'daisychain' 3-way calling. Empower is good for important meetings, but the costs mount up - a five person meeting would cost about $75/hour. It would only make sense if the alternative was high travel costs. It offers full two-way application sharing, plus a simpler service that posts PowerPoint slides to the web and allows a presenter to show a series of slides.
Finally, if you want to web conference with just one other location, you can try the new version of Windows Messenger from Microsoft. It's free, but it requires the Windows XP operating system. Windows Messenger allows you to share any program on your computer, including a web browser, with another user who also has Windows Messenger and an XP computer. You could use it to give a distance presentation with a group of people who were all viewing one computer screen, or to collaborate with one other person. It does not allow multiple users. Windows Messaging offers audio conferencing so if you have a headset you don't need a separate phone line - that saves on long distance charges. You would have to test the quality of the sound to ensure it was adequate. We're having firewall problems with it, so haven't had a chance to test it.
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Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.
President, RealWorld Systems
gkerr at realworldsystems.netRead my weblog at http://blog.realworldsystems.net
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