Enter Robb Cason and a little backstory. I met Robb in 1999 when I walked to the (very empty) end of the 6th floor office at EnvoyGlobal, a teleconferencing firm, early web conferencing reseller and the first place anywhere to offer independent webinar event services.  I could choose any open desk out of 40. Only two of them were occupied, one was Robb. We later co-founded Corvent (acquired by Intercall).

Anyway, Robb’s now VP of Adoption Services at Vidyo. I recently connected with him and received a demo of Vidyo’s solution. Here are a few thoughts.

User Experience
Vidyo Desktop supports up to 9 cameras (presenters), and up to 300 viewers of those cameras at a time. Using my MacBook Pro from the home office, I had to download and install the Vidyo desktop app. The default view on launching the app is a settings panel. The good news: there’s a lot of flexibility. The bad news: I’m not sure I’d want the first thing an attendee sees being a settings panel.

Given that I was on a home broadband connection (on wireless, no less), the service worked fine in our time together. I did learn one nice thing…Vidyo auto-adjusts video frame rates at the individual user level. With the vagaries of the internet, this is a nice touch…end users don’t usually know (or care) what’s wrong, just that it’s working or not. This is a big improvement over many services that don’t have similar smarts.

Of particular interest to me…but untested in this case…is how the experience would unfold for mobile users (e.g., iPad). There’s a general rush on in the industry to be mobile friendly (as well there should be), but if this is important to your user base, I’d test it. The “RFP checkmark” for many organizations still delivers a lackluster user experience.

Techie Stuff Made Nice
Robb knows how to point out things that drive value in an organization, and that’s one thing we always agreed on…it’s first about “how do I do my job better and deliver value to clients, prospects, shareholders, etc?” To this end, one of the things that Robb’s figured out is that a key decision maker for many organizations isn’t the end user, it’s the IT department. A few things they’ll appreciate might include Vidyo’s approach to having one super-connected gateway. The geeky behind-the-scenes stuff means you can connect Vidyo with other things (e.g., that expensive telepresence suite near the CEO’s office) or other solutions such as Microsoft Lync, IBM Lotus Sametime, Adobe Connect. IT wizards tend to like this stuff because they answer to senior management who doesn’t care how this happens, they just want it to happen.

Bear in mind that I’m well aware that many video conferencing solutions are attempting or have solved this problem. Often, however, this is a response to necessity rather than being a strategic “we’ll play nice with anyone” approach.

The Bottom Line
I don’t get into pricing/packaging in posts like this, but here’s a little speculation based on a dozen years in the conferencing market: Vidyo probably isn’t targeting small and medium business. Note that they may, in fact, have something for the little guy (call them, not me ), but much of what I saw will appeal to larger organizations who need to deploy quality video conferencing and have it play nice in an enterprise environment. The web/data conferencing was functional, and while I’m not sure it’s going to light anybody’s fire, it’s not their lead story. For many, sharing a desktop (or PowerPoint thereon) is all that’s needed. These things also change quickly, so as always, it’s worth adding Vidyo to your short list if a solid video conferencing experience is a key criteria in what you’re looking for.

The reality of presenting online is that sooner or later you’ll experience some kind of challenge with your audio.  The downside if you’re using VoIP is that you lose both the audio and web connection (one reason to use the plain old telephone that conferencing providers aren’t quick to point out).  I’m not saying never to use VoIP, but you’ll want this plan in your back pocket either way.

The good news?

Technology failures on the part of web conferencing/casting companies are quite rare.

Either way, let me challenge the ancient wisdom of turning off your mobile phone when presenting online.

True enough, you most certainly want to be polite and avoid distractions by having it ring during your presentation.  Here’s what I do in addition to using VoIP or my desk phone.  Your variation may differ slightly based on your mobile phone, but the backup plan will save you a lot of anxiety.

Add “backup phone plan” to “pre-webinar” routine.
If you don’t have your own checklist to make sure you’ve got your bases covered, you should.  Create your variation of this plan and do it…every time.

Benefit:  peace of mind, and you don’t forget stuff in the heat of the moment

Dial the mobile phone into the audio conference in advance of the webinar
I usually do this after I’m all logged in and ready to go on the primary speaking device.

Benefit:  in the event you need to dial in again (from this other line), you can hit re-dial and save yourself typing in the number again.  Trust me, when the doo doo hits the fan, you’ll find yourself fat fingering phone numbers.

Plug in your ear bud or Bluetooth device
Hands free is good when presenting, and it’s not that you can’t present while holding a handset, but I like being ready for action.

Benefit:  you’ll quickly be managing with both hands (it’s hard to type into chat with one hand or your neck crimped).

Put the mobile phone in airplane mode or mute
I use airplane mode because I don’t even want the thing vibrating.  Note that it takes just a second to find the mobile tower, so if you want uber-fast you could skip this and just mute the thing.

Benefit:  distraction avoided, you’re ready for rapid re-dial

If for some reason you’ve lost audio and web connection, at least you’ll be talking with the audience making alternative plans or having someone else push your slides.  If, as in my case, it was just my own phone connection that was the problem, the disruption is minimal and you keep right on going.

Don’t turn off your mobile phone, make it your backup

I had the pleasure yesterday of speaking with Matt Fok, CEO of eLearningZoom ~ and getting an on-the-spot demo of his new service.  Matt’s got a long history in high tech, including seven years at IBM, and I think he’s on to something with his approach to the market.

Targeting smaller and medium enterprises, eLearningZoom has focused on making learning management – both synchronous and asynchronous – an easy-to-use proposition at a very affordable price.

I won’t write an exhaustive review here (deferring you to learning more from Matt and his company’s web site), but there were a couple things that caught my eye.

One, developing a course is simple, containing the essentials you’d want.  You define the steps in the learning process, attaching the media type you want to each step.  That media type could be a PDF, a Flash file, etc.  An integrated testing option allows you to assess at each step and redirect or allow permission to proceed based on pass/fail scoring.

Two, the emeeting platform is based on DimDim (who I introduced you to a couple months back) in part, according to Matt, their open-source approach to their platform.

Third, integrating a contact manager I think would be quite useful for many SMBs – especially when working with customers and partners external to the organization.  A potential use case I didn’t think to ask Matt at the time was how one might synchronize that data with an existing CRM/contact manager – but it’s unlikely this is a showstopper.

Finally, integrated e-commerce!  This is a fast-growing need for many companies who don’t wish to undertake the pain of setting up their own credit card clearing and bank relationships.

It was unclear to me how seamless it was to integrate the on-demand content/modules with live web seminars in terms of testing and permissions to complete the course, but I wouldn’t let that stop you from investigating the options eLearningZoom provides.  Know your use case, and more importantly, evaluate the offering relative to its affordable price.

If you’ve ever wanted to explore an LMS and the price tag was offputting, eLearningZoom is worth investigation.

Sometimes you need to offer an audience a multiple choice option (like a poll), but you face the problem of there 1) being way too many options to fit into the limit of answers the web conferencing tool offers you or 2) you need to give the audience a chance to comment or qualify their vote.

Here’s an example I recently used:

I did an exercise where I asked participants to choose among four options.  In reality, there were a couple dozen ways to answer the question, so I took the four most common answers and turned those into a poll (which automagically labelled them A, B, C, and D).  Then I asked the audience to choose which of the four options (on the poll) was most like the answer they’d written down during the exercise.  And you guessed it, I also offered via verbal instruction the option for them to submit their own description of what they’d written via the Q&A panel.

As I often quip, the virtual presenter must learn to “fly by their instruments” meaning, like a pilot must both learn to fly by sight and their gear, so must virtual presenters learn new ways of doing old things.

Add a trick to your bag.  Consider using polls and Q&A at the same time.

If you need an easy-to-use registration system that includes e-commerce and simplifies how you take your web seminar recording and get it posted (again with e-commerce), EventBuilder should be on your list to investigate.

Separately, EventBuilder has a system for broadcasting video of local sports events (that could easily apply to many other types of events) that is truly intriguing…and within reach of average budgets.  Worth a peek.

BUT, we have hearts of teachers and servants, so when it becomes easy to point you toward a resource that would be useful, I’m not going to hold back.

In this case I bumped into a blog post – details below – about how to edit a Citrix GoToMeeting/Webinar recording using a third party tool.  And the reason I’ve chosen to share is this:

Web conferencing tools are optimized for collaborating and presenting live.  NOT for content authoring.  And while it’s easy to make recordings with web conferencing tools, if for any reason you want to edit the recording, well, they just don’t do that.

Some (like Webex) allow you to truncate the beginning or end to cut off the welcome script or end-of-event Q&A, but there’s no cutting out the f-bomb that the veep dropped in the middle (true story).  Others (Microsoft LiveMeeting, Citrix GoToMeeting, et al) allow you to download a standard .wmv file that’s editable in a tool capable of editing video.  And when you’re shopping, don’t forget to ALSO ask the vendor about how you then host the edited video…

Which brings us to a useful blog post about editing GoToMeeting recordings using Camtasia.  I don’t know Sam, but this useful even if you aren’t a GTM customer, and I thought I’d share.  Why?

Every day I get asked about free or cheap conferencing, often in relation to Webex or other premium service.  The pre-supposition is that they’re all the same, and something else is cheaper.

ALL conferencing is inexpensive when compared to the cost of labor – and unless you figure out how labor and process is impacted in your organization, you’re not asking pro-level questions.

Get clear on your use-case and your process.  A pickup and minivan can both haul gravel or kids, but…

Just where did “DimDim” come from?

I don’t know, but next time I talk to Kevin Micalizzi (kevin-at sign-dimdim.com or on Twitter @meetdimdim), the Community Manager at DimDim I’ll find out.

Truthfully, I don’t spend a lot of time talking about tools (vendors are happy to do that), but I’m often asked about free or affordable web conferencing options.  And most of the time I remind folks that NOTHING is free.

Like many vendors, DimDim offers a free option with premium goodies available for an affordable fee.  And it sounds like they’ve got some noteworthy announcements coming in the near future.

One value worth noting:  you can have up to 20 participants on the free version.  I only know of one other vendor that gives you that much (and I’ll post on them another time).

Selfishly, this means it’s as easy as ever for anybody and everybody to experience the power of presenting virtually…and some portion of them are going to figure out that mastering the medium is part of connecting, engaging, persuading.

Meet DimDim.  And stay tuned.

And a tip for presenters… repeat this to your attendees several times during your presentation.

Don’t assume the audience heard, remembers, or was even present for the welcome speech when instructions were given.