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http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/09/prweb1376714.htm

Video conferencing & Webinar Hosting is now available to a much larger audience at an affordable price. VideoSeminarLive operates through a web browser which gives businesses the capability to hold meetings, webinars, webcasts, presentations, training seminars, or strategic planning sessions with multiple clients and employees from remote locations.

Fresno, CA (PRWEB) September 25, 2008 — VideoSeminarLive, (VSL) a Central California company, announces their launch into the web video conferencing and webinar world. With increasing gas prices and travel costs the web video conferencing market is exploding with growth. VideoSeminarLive uses most of the same technology as the very sophisticated Video Conference systems but operates under a the much simpler and common browser based technology. Video conferencing is now available to a much larger audience at an affordable price.

Video Conferencing is not a brand new technology. It has been around for more than a decade. The advancement in Video Conferencing came when the technology became 100% internet based. President of VideoSeminarLive, Paul Taggart, said this about the recent development, “The reality has been until just recently, only companies with deep pockets could afford to use live real-time video meetings. $80,000-plus systems based out of fixed locations are not feasible for the majority of businesses. The costs are not the only prohibitive factor. Business in the year 2008 is significantly different than even 5 years ago. Today businesses operate and connect with professionals from varying locations all over the world. Browser based conferencing solves two big Video Conferencing issues.”

With an array of products services VideoSeminarLive offers businesses the opportunity to cut down on costly travel expenses while maintaining the ability to expand customer base and support. Offering up to 6 live video feeds, board meetings & weekly conference meetings can now take place online without the travel. As more and more companies embrace the new technology, they have witnessed operating costs go down and employee productivity go up. Offsetting heavy travel expenses and losses in production time have helped businesses keep pace in a changing economy.

VideoSeminarLive operates through a web browser (i.e. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari) which gives businesses the capability to hold meetings, webinars, webcasts, presentations, training seminars, or strategic planning sessions with multiple clients and employees from remote locations. Employees can also meet with outlying clients, offering more immediate customer support, cutting out the need for long distance travel. Features like built-in voice communication, 6 live video feeds, presentation sharing, text chat and interactive whiteboard allow business very interactive online meetings. Webinar hosting features like event registration, content management and on-demand session recordings available 24/7 provide webinar minded business the tools they need to connect with a much larger audience.

“What VideoSeminarLive offers to businesses is the chance to utilize this technology and really compete in the marketplace, at an incredibly affordable price,” said company president and co-founder, Paul Taggart. “It just makes sense for any business concerned with the bottom line.”

Taggart and his business partner, Lorin Brown, share a background in small business operations, business consulting, and strategic planning. As they have worked to help businesses succeed, they realize how vital this technology is for more efficient operations. However, many business owners are discouraged and wary of the high costs often associated with web conferencing. In most cases, it would only take one canceled business trip to pay for the system for the entire year.

Video Conferencing and webinar hosting is currently embraced by a vast array of businesses, organizations, individuals and entrepreneurs. Co-Founder, Brown, said, “Business owners contact us on a daily basis that would like to use the system in a way we had never even thought of. Many of the ideas are absolutely brilliant and leave us saying, wow!” Current Clients range from large world wide corporations, non profits, educators, mentor coaches, consultants and sales organizations. Entrepreneurs are finding new and creative ways to use this system in order to reach customers and clients to subsidize their income and boost revenues.

VideoSeminarLive also offers a free trial for the product as well as a Starter’s Guide which answers the most commonly asked questions and offers equipment recommendations.

For more on this technology and pricing, visit www.VideoSeminarLive.com

25 September 2008 | 9:19 pm

You don’t have to spend $250,000 or $80,000 to Video Conference.

Video Conferencing is now Affordable and available to business owners everywhere. Connect with clients and colleagues all over the world for as little as $49 per month.

Take your business or webinars to the next level with completely web based video conferencing.

16 September 2008 | 8:04 pm

We have recently developed a very simple PayPal integration into our Webinar and Video Conferencing product. We have made it so easy for you to charge for your webinars and Video Conferencing sessions. Event registration has been highly demanded and we have responded. We are one of the very few vendors that offers payment capabilities with our registration plugin.

Our belief and experience, if you provide good content, you will have no problem charging people to listen.

Here is a great read on the subject:

Can You Charge For Webinars?
(from Ken http://wsuccess.typepad.com/webinarblog/2008/07/can-you-charge-for-webinars.html)

Of course you can charge people to attend your webinar, but is it practical?

It’s often small businesses that ask me for advice and assistance with setting up fee-based web seminars. These may be consultants and service professionals who provide valuable knowledge and experience to their clients. They get paid when they go to a customer site and consult. They hold local room-based training classes and charge people to attend. It seems perfectly natural to extend their reach over the internet and offer that same professional value in a webcast.

Unfortunately, what seems reasonable in theory turns out to be fraught with difficulties in practice.

The first big problem you hit is crowd psychology when dealing with internet-delivered content. The public has come to expect information to be available for free on the internet. The same people who will buy a business book or pay to attend an in-room lecture balk at paying for content on the Web. The ubiquity of search engines, community forums and wikis, and free business collateral and product information have made the internet a virtual soup kitchen… All you have to do is show up and someone will fill your bowl with nutritional content, no charge and no questions asked.

The second problem arises in dealing with the webinar technology vendors. It’s extremely rare to find a webinar vendor that has payment processing built in as an off-the-shelf solution. Vcall from PrecisionIR is one web conferencing product that offers fee collection as a registration management option. But the registration management costs extra. Several vendors will design and integrate payment processing as a custom professional services project, but this is seldom time and cost effective for small businesses trying out the idea to see if it will work for them.

The third problem with charging for webinars is administrative. Most of the big webinar vendors have a way to assign a password to an event. Only people with the password can attend. But if it’s the same password for everyone, you can’t stop an unscrupulous person from registering and passing on the login information to others. Secure login for a paid event should verify each attendee individually to make sure they have paid and are logging in only once. What do you do about people who don’t attend? How about those who have technical problems or simply feel the content wasn’t worthwhile? Are you prepared to offer refunds? Will you still have to pay your technology provider for those registrants?

Both Business Expert Webinars and Brainshark Content Network act as portal operations to give businesses a way to try out fee-based presentations… They manage the technical side of things and you submit your content as a provider. Of course you don’t have the same control you would have in putting on your own event and you have to do some fee sharing with the portal company. They can also choose to reject your content if they deem it inappropriate for their audience or standards.

KRM Information Services produces fee-based webinars as a steady business, concentrating mostly on special-interest events targeted at associations and affinity groups. And there are a few companies out there that provide registration management as a separate technology offering, allowing it to be integrated with various web conferencing products. Corvent AMP, EventBuilder from Encounter Collaborative, and MeetingOne’s EventPlanner are examples.

But there is a niche waiting to be served for low cost webinar technology that includes self-service registration management with payment processing and appropriate event security. Get busy, vendors!

26 August 2008 | 4:20 am

By David R. Woolley

You’ve probably heard the buzz about Web conferencing by now. Maybe you’ve even attended a Web conference or two — an online meeting arranged by someone you work with, or a free “Webinar” hosted by a vendor. But it might not have yet occurred to you that Web conferencing could be a useful tool in your own work. Or perhaps the thought has crossed your mind, but you’ve put off doing anything about it because the whole subject seems too big, too complicated, too fraught with peril, and you’re not sure how you would use Web conferencing, anyway.
Consider this: In a typical week, how much time do you spend in meetings or phone conferences with people who don’t work in your office, be they coworkers at other locations, clients, or consultants? If it’s more than an hour or so, it’s worth taking a look at how Web conferencing can improve your communications and possibly even save you a lot of time.
Let’s start by looking at a few of the reasons you might be avoiding Web conferencing:
• It’s too hard to use. You might have visions of a software program that has so many buttons and controls that it resembles the instrument panel in a jet cockpit. And, indeed, some Web conferencing software can be complex. But software meant for small group meetings tends to be simpler. If all you need to do is share what’s on your screen with a few coworkers, you can use software that does exactly that, nothing more. Screen-sharing software is so simple that you can be an expert user within minutes. And that’s if you’re the meeting organizer. All your teammates have to do in order to participate is fire up their Web browser and go to the URL that you provide them.
• It’s too expensive. As Web conferencing solutions become more advanced and widespread, prices have become more competitive. Also, Web conferencing packages can be tailored to your usage needs and the size of your organization, which can also help you keep costs under control. Frequently, Web conferencing costs work out to a small sum per person per month. Considering the travel costs you’ll be saving, Web conferencing begins to look like a no-brainer.
• It’s too unreliable. A few years ago when Web conferencing was on the bleeding edge of Internet technology, getting it installed and working properly could be, shall we say, a challenge. Thankfully, conferencing software has matured. Web conferencing vendors have improved setup, configuration, and user experience, even managing to go through most firewalls without a lot of hair-pulling and reconfiguration.
• It’s too insecure. Of course, you don’t want your competitors — or even the wrong people from your own company — listening in on your meetings. Fortunately, because just about everyone who uses Web conferencing in business is concerned about security, every conferencing vendor has to be concerned with providing a more secure experience for customers. In general, you can expect Web conferencing vendors to have a detailed security strategy in place to address this critical issue. (You’ll be sure, of course, to review this strategy before you make your decision.)
“Okay,” I hear you saying, “maybe Web conferencing isn’t really so scary. But you still haven’t told me why I should bother with it.”
One word: Pictures.
Yes, pictures. You know, those things that are worth a thousand words?
A Web conference is like a phone conference, only with visuals. Think of any situation in which you might conduct a meeting by phone, and chances are that there’s something you’ll all want to look at together. It might literally be pictures: an architect’s sketches, storyboards for a new advertising campaign, a graph of last quarter’s sales figures, even medical x-rays. Or it might be some other kind of document: a spreadsheet showing year-to-date revenue and expenses, a draft of a movie script, technical specs for a new product. Whatever it may be, most meetings go better when everyone is looking at the same thing.
Of course, you know this. That’s why the last time you arranged a phone conference, you probably faxed or sent something by e-mail to everyone ahead of time. That’s fine as far as it goes, but what if there are last-minute changes? What if, after the conversation has started, you realize you need another document? Even when you’ve managed to get all the relevant documents in front of everyone beforehand, the meeting itself can be frustrating. Does this sound familiar: “Wait, which paragraph did we just delete? I don’t see it. What page are we on, anyway?”
In a Web conference, every participant sees whatever the facilitator is showing at any given moment, so you can make sure everyone is literally “on the same page.” Any document on your computer can be pulled into the conference and shared with everyone at a moment’s notice. You can give a tour of a Web site, or a software demo, or run through a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentation, as easily as if the other participants were sitting in your office. You can use markup tools like highlighting or freehand drawing to call attention to specific items on the page. And all the while, you and your colleagues are simply talking with each other in the way you would in an ordinary phone conference.
In fact, it might actually be an ordinary phone conference. Many people hold meetings by having a traditional phone conference, with a simultaneous Web conference carrying the visuals. That’s the most universally accessible method. But if every members in your group has a headset that he or she can plug into a computer, you can save on long-distance charges by letting the Web conference carry the audio, as well. The technology has improved to the point where conversations carried over the Internet usually sound just as good as conversations over telephone land lines — and better than those over cell phones or speaker phones.
Of course, this being the world of computers, you can do plenty of other things in a Web conference that you can’t easily do in a phone conference. Examples include seeing a list of who’s present, which is updated automatically as people join and leave the conference. Or, recording the conference so people who missed it can play it back later. And if you have webcams, you can even incorporate live video so that you can see one another’s smiling faces.
But these are extras, like retractable sunroofs and heated leather seats in a car. Luxury features can be nice, but the important thing is getting to your destination. And when it comes to phone meetings, sharing a common view through a Web conference means you won’t be driving blind.

About the author David R. Woolley, president of Thinkofit Inc., has been a pioneer in online conferencing since the early 1970s.

29 July 2008 | 11:28 pm



29 July 2008 | 11:18 pm

by Alf Nucifora

The promise of online get-togethers has been touted from the very first days of the Internet going main stream. The truth is the technology never took off. Old habits die hard. The initial attempts at web conferencing and online collaboration ran up against the traditional new technology obstacles–not particularly user friendly and a royal pain for the busy executive who had neither the patience nor the skill to deal with a play toy of the techno geeks. Since 9/11, however, things have changed. The difficulty and rising cost inherent in today’s business travel coupled with the need to constrain expense as a result of an ever lingering recession, has forced a second look at web conferencing, not just as a means of bypassing the traditional face-to-face meeting, but also as an opportunity to train, demonstrate and inform without the loss of time and dollars associated with gathering bodies in a hotel room or meeting facility.

What’s Changed?

Improved technology, the dramatic growth in penetration of high bandwidth via cable modem and DSL connection and the rapidly declining cost of online communication have all helped make web conferencing a viable option for today’s small-to-medium sized business. Web conferencing was a half-billion dollar business in 2002 and continues to grow at an annual rate of 30+%. At a broad average price of 50-60 cents per minute, it’s now a viable alternative to the face-to-face meeting and a preferred option to the traditional teleconference where one can never see the whites of their eyes.

Web conferencing is nothing more than a productivity tool. In addition to saving money and allowing a company to use its employees’ time more effectively, it also improves communication, both internal and external. That’s why the sales and marketing people have been its most ardent supporters. They see the technology’s value for hard core selling and demoing of the product. Say’s David Thompson, Chief Marketing Officer for industry leader, WebEx Communications, “It expands a company’s business beyond geographical territory. More importantly, it’s a great tool for post-sales support, particularly for customer training.” Scott D’Entrement, President and CEO of Netspoke, supports the claim, “One of our major clients is using integrated audio and web conferencing to conduct and archive training sessions while another has realized substantial savings by using web conferencing technology to allow its IT department to conduct technical training online and to work remotely, thereby avoiding the need for increased staffing.”

Web conferencing and online collaboration will never replace the face-to-face meeting, but it’s an effective way to fill the gaps. Given that most of the leading providers offer tried and proven technology at equivalent price points, the prospective buyer for web conferencing services needs to pursue the fundamentals–a quality product with flawless 24/7 customer service support and so easy to use that even the harried executive can adopt the technology with a minimal learning curve and with an ease and speed that one normally associates with the ATM or e-mail.

29 July 2008 | 8:59 pm

Jill Smart, an Accenture executive, was skeptical the first time she stepped into her firm’s new videoconferencing room in Chicago for a meeting with a group of colleagues in London. But the videoconferencing technology, known as telepresence, delivered an experience so lifelike, Ms. Smart recalled, that “10 minutes into it, you forget you are not in the room with them.”

Accenture, a technology consulting firm, has installed 13 of the videoconferencing rooms at its offices around the world and plans to have an additional 22 operating before the end of the year.

Accenture figures its consultants used virtual meetings to avoid 240 international trips and 120 domestic flights in May alone, for an annual saving of millions of dollars and countless hours of wearying travel for its workers.

As travel costs rise and airlines cut service, companies large and small are rethinking the face-to-face meeting — and business travel as well. At the same time, the technology has matured to the point where it is often practical, affordable and more productive to move digital bits instead of bodies.

The emerging trend, analysts say, goes well beyond a reaction to rising travel costs and a weakening economy. “These technology tools are going to change the way corporations think about travel and work in the long run,” an analyst at Forrester Research, Claire Schooley, said.

Past predictions that technology could replace travel have been frequent and premature. The main difference today, analysts say, is that the technology is finally catching up to its promise. No single breakthrough explains the progress, but rather a series of step-by-step advances — and steady investment — in telecommunications networks, software and computer processing.

The results can be seen not only in the expensive new telepresence systems like those from Cisco Systems or Hewlett-Packard, but also in more mainstream collaboration technologies — Web conferencing, online document sharing, wikis and Internet telephony. The audio and desktop presentations in Web-based meetings, for example, are now more likely to be in sync and interactive.

Companies of all sizes are beginning to shift to Web-based meetings for training and sales presentations. “Only in the last two years has the technology gotten to point where it really makes sense to use it,” said Alan Minton, vice president for marketing at Cornerstone Information Systems, a 60-person business software company in Bloomington, Ind.

With his sales force doing many product demonstrations online, Mr. Minton estimates the group’s travel costs of have been cut by 60 percent and the average time to close a new sale has been reduced by 30 percent.

No one suggests that the face-to-face meeting is becoming obsolete, or that it is time for a requiem for the road warrior. Companies talk about using digital tools mainly as a way of making business travel more selective and more productive.

Still, the potential for digital displacement of business travel is substantial. A report last month by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, a group of technology companies, and the Climate Group, an environmental organization, estimated that up to 20 percent of business travel worldwide could be replaced by Web-based and conventional videoconferencing technology.

The most dedicated business travelers tend to be management consultants, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers and technology services consultants. Much of their work has to be done in person with clients. But these professionals are increasingly using online collaboration tools for work within their firms.

At I.B.M., Michael Littlejohn, a work force and technology expert in the company’s global services unit, said two years ago, he was on the road 13 to 15 days a month. These days, he says, he travels 8 or 10 days a month. “But my time spent with clients is not less,” he said. “To really understand a client’s problems or to close a deal, you need face to face.”

Corporate training and education is a field many companies are moving online, in part to trim travel costs. Darryl Draper, the national manager of customer service training for Subaru of America, used to travel four days a week, nine months of the year, presenting educational programs at dealers nationwide. Today, Ms. Draper rarely travels and nearly all of her training is done online.

Previously, Ms. Draper estimated, in six months she would reach about 220 people at a cost of $300 a person. She said she now reaches 2,500 people every six months at a cost of 75 cents a person.

A range of companies offer the mainstream online communications and collaboration tools, including WebEx, Citrix, Microsoft, I.B.M. and others. The most rarefied offering, though, is telepresence videoconferencing. Today, it is an elite product supplied by a few companies, including Cisco, H.P. and Polycom.

Completed telepresence rooms, typically with three huge curved screens (and a fourth screen above for shared work), custom lighting and acoustics, cost up to $350,000 — though that is down from $500,000, when H.P. sold its first system in early 2006.

The resolution on telepresence screens is even sharper than on high-definition televisions, and images can be magnified to inspect products. Engineers at the far-flung labs of Advanced Micro Devices, for example, scrutinize the microcircuitry on new chip designs using the company’s telepresence systems. And the images of people on screen are life-size.

Cisco, which has more than 200 telepresence rooms, figures it is avoiding $100 million in yearly travel costs, and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions from air travel by 10 percent. H.P. says air travel among its offices with telepresence rooms is down 25 percent.

When used regularly, the rooms pay for themselves within a year, analysts estimate. Sales of telepresence systems will more than double this year to 627, estimates the market research firm IDC, and reach more than 8,000 by 2012.

There is a certain paradox in telepresence, in that it is all to simulate the richest form of human interaction: people talking to each other, face to face.

And it is not a perfect substitute. Ms. Smart, the chief of human resources for Accenture, still travels about 10 days a month. “You don’t learn about other cultures in telepresence,” she said. “You get things from being there, over breakfast and dinner, building relationships face to face.”

29 July 2008 | 7:20 pm

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