With a conferencing background in full-services, I appreciate those who tackle all the details.  Now that I’m in the teaching business rather than the web event production business, it was with amusement and glee that I finally connected with Dan Roche, Vice President of Marketing at TalkPoint and learned more about their business.

Dan’s a fellow industry veteran who’s seen the world of web seminars evolve quite a lot.  I appreciate his passion for helping customers execute flawless web events (and the experience to know all of the little things that have to be attended to!).

A few things of note:

Full service
Companies tend to outsource for one of three reasons:  they don’t have the expertise, they don’t want to mess with something that’s not part of their core competency, or it’s less expensive.  Sometimes it’s all three.  Talkpoint has a staff dedicated to ensuring web event success for those who’d rather focus on content than production.

Ecommerce
Content that’s of value deserves a price tag, but often the pain of figuring out how to take a credit card or get different systems talking to each other.  Talkpoint has you covered.

Video
If you read my stuff, you know that I have a love/hate relationship with video.  Mostly it’s from talking to marketplace folks who 1) like the idea because “it’s hot” but really don’t know what they would do with it or 2) want high quality production values AND have it be simple as posting last night’s party video to YouTube (live video is a different beast).  This does NOT mean you shouldn’t use video, but it might mean you talk to someone with direct experience and a service team to assist.

Experience
2009 has seen a veritable explosion of self-proclaimed “webinar pundits” (I even predicted it), and I’d encourage you to dig a little deeper.  Your brand depends on it.  For instance, I saw a recent post where the presenter claimed “more than 20 webinars” as experience.

One of biggest challenges, Dan agreed, is that service is an experience good.  Differentiation between the real players and the wannabes is hard to put on a data sheet.  What’s important to you is unique, and so what’s important to you in conferencing service provider is likely unique.  And you might find that TalkPoint is right for you.