A repeated mantra of mine is that it’s incumbent upon us in live events to “talk with, not at our audiences.”  With the ease and quantity of sites enabling online video exploding, it’s no longer a difficult thing to be in the personal broadcast business.

The challenge is twofold:

One, the “asking price” (even for free webinars) is high when measured in terms of time.  “Be sure you show up at 10am on Thursday” is going to have less respondents than “view this now.”  To be sure, it’s a lot less cost than travel (and all the other arguments), and I’ve blogged about their unique place in the communications mix before.

Two, “content marketing” strategic plans aside, the world probably doesn’t need more noise to sift through.  This means that if you’re not going to strive to take advantage of the live-ness of the connection, you’re probably asking people to show up (at a specific time) for what otherwise could easily be an on-demand bit of content.

And that leads me to Telenect.

If the challenge for many presenters, especially those broadcasting/webcasting using video, Telenect has done a great job of making it easier for presenters to respond to their audience.

Simple and focused
The interface, both for the presentation team and audience alike, is simple and on-task.

Audience members see the video and slides, can choose which they want larger, and can make the video full-screen if they wish.

For presenters, the interface is delightfully suited to how I prefer to present…seeing the audience questions/comments so one can respond in realtime.

Moderated, but self-serve is coming
At present Telenect offers their services only in a full-service model, meaning they provide the moderator and production.  I understand that a self-serve model is coming for those who are more comfortable producing their own events.

As a business, Telenect is focused on serving speakers and speakers’ bureaus, but I believe that that’s more a focus of go-to-market strategy for a segment.  The same value of connecting presenters and audiences would be useful for many corporate clients as well.  For those who want video and the ability to more personally connect with their audiences, Telenect might just be another to add to the “need to investigate” list.