February 1st, 2010 @ admin // No Comments
Back in 2006 we were approached by the Health Informatics Society of Ireland (HISI) to provide services for the streaming Dr. Susan Newbold’s presentation from Maryland in the U.S. After some initial training with Dr. Newbold, she was able to login from her home office and give her presentation to the conference where a group of 400 health informatics professionals listened and participated and Q&A. Here is a brief 4 minute clip of how it went.
Remote guest’s and speakers save time and money by utilising streaming technology this way, events organisers can also benefit from providing streaming facilities for their remote speakers by increasing the chances of availability of the speakers and by simply making life easier for their remote speakers. Dr. Newbold had a standard DSL connection, a webcam and as you can see from the recorded clip, a standard headset.
January 28th, 2010 @ admin // One Comment
Shiv Singh (Author of Social media for Dummies) gives his keynote presentation at the recent launch of Seesmic Look. Well worth watching if you have an interest in Social media.
January 26th, 2010 @ admin // No Comments
There is no question, representatives, at times, need to shake the hand of the person they do business with. What happens after that is where online meetings come in. Business done? Connecting online then allows for a continuous stream of face to face meetings… this reminds customers and groups of people that sometimes a wave is as good as a shake !
We all know that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
A live video call is much more effective than a phone call in many situations. For a start, the call is fully encrypted !
For example, your engineering staff need to show one of your customers a problem with a purchased component.
Visually seeing the part during a videoconference is far more effective and meaningful than trying to describe it over the phone.
You can also have Multi-point Meetings Across Time Zones & International Boundaries – Videoconferencing lets you put together a meeting of various people, from different locations, for a common discussion.
How does it increase productivity?
Used effectively, video conferencing has a dramatic effect on the way people do business and the productivity gains they can derive. The benefits of videoconferencing is the speed of business processes and communication between sites, customers and suppliers, the cost advantages do not have transportation, housing equipment and other costs. So, how are these improvements achieved?
online meetings
Today, video conferencing systems transcend the simple “talking heads” on a screen.
The ability to easily share any type of information has added another dynamic to video communications, often previously not even possible in a local meeting.
The result? Decisions are made faster; bringing products or services to market quicker; and enabling you to stay ahead of your competitors.
How does it save money?
An additional tangible effect of using video is that you start saving substantial money due to reduced travel.
In today’s environment, where many employees are concerned with the safety and time-related issues with traveling, video conferencing will benefit your company in ways you would never have imagined.
Call conferencing would definitely allow your company to save up a lot because you can do away with buying airplane tickets, paying for hotel expenses and other travel expenditure.
But How does it save time?
Video conferencing can be used to achieve significant benefits beyond increased productivity and reduced costs. Notable examples are reduction of “downtime” and increased “quality of life” for traveling personnel, and shortening hiring cycles for key employees. It is an obvious ‘green’ technology allowing organizations to mitigate energy use by dramatically reducing the need to travel.
What is preventing your business from utilising technology… ?
January 25th, 2010 @ admin // One Comment
The National College of Ireland Business Incubation Centre recorded an historic first this week as journalist Mark Little conducted a live webcast interview with incubation centres from Limerick Institute of Technology and the Tipperary Institute, using online meeting room technology. The session was initiated by Bernard Goldbach of the Tipperary Institute.
Working with the OPEN COFFEE movement. Linking a number of locations is simple with online meeting rooms. In this remote recording we have a live interview being conducted and broadcast to a number of other locations. You will see an additional video presentation streamed into the video conference during the interview. Welcome to Mark Little and Calom Technologies to open coffee Limerick, obviously transmission was enabled over the web. A mac with USB webcam was used in Dublin on the @NCIRL network, we are grateful for this bandwidth. Also to thank the other individuals that took part both onsite and through twitter. @skehillr @pinpoints @marklittlenews @LOCC @schregardus @topgold @tippinst @NCIRL @keithdkennedy and of course @davidconde
January 20th, 2010 @ admin // 4 Comments
We recently signed up for UPC’s broadband in Dun Laoghaire, we video conference, so plenty of bandwidth is always great to have. We pay for 30mb download, you can see between 25 to 60mb speeds are frequently received and we are happy with that. Out of habit, we regularly test our speed using speedtest.net and have found that generally speaking they appear to be reliable way of testing bandwidth. After chatting on Twitter with Adrian Weckler from the Sunday business post I decided to actually record our results on video. 3 minutes into the video you can see a download speed of 158mb. I suspect that is limited by the router we are using to connect to the web. At last Ireland is getting this type of connectivity and UPC have stated that these speeds will be rolled out later in 2010.
January 14th, 2010 @ admin // No Comments
Speaking to Brussels from Neville Hobson on Vimeo.
Screen recording by Joe Garde of onlinemeetingrooms.com of the prep and part of my presentation from the UK to the IABC Belgium conference in Brussels on May 28, 2009, recorded in Dublin.
With the kind permission of http://www.Nevillehobson.com
January 13th, 2010 @ admin // No Comments
Starting at only €49 our new web seminar technology is affordable for every professional and company. Seminar is a “one to many” technology that allows you to broadcast your presentation to your guests. The unique selling points are without question the fact that there is absolutely nothing to install for 98% of users by virtue of the fact that we are using the power of flash. Another unique selling point is bandwidth utilisation, you can run your seminar on broadband connections and broadcast using 100 to 200 kbps. If you turn your video off you can stream using voice at approx. 24 kbps. So even if your broadband connection isn’t great you can still get a great result. You can also upgrade your licence to 20, 50 and 100 guests. We can go way beyond that too, ideal for training of very large groups. Check our video out or run your mouse over the image included in this post. You can also contact us if you would like a demo or have any additional questions. http://www.onlinemeetingrooms.com/index.php/webinar/
January 5th, 2010 @ admin // No Comments
A new webinar product from onlinemeetingrooms.com is capable of supporting up to 2000 viewers in a session. Ideal for business training and coaching sessions. The webinar product utilises only 100-200kbps to send video audio and your slides to an audience. Drawing functionality and presentation download is also integrated with a chat function. Truly web based there is No install or download required, all browsers and Operating Systems are supported.
Take a look at our introduction video. Pricing will be released by the end of January 2010. Contact us for more details.
January 5th, 2010 @ admin // 2 Comments
Companies, organisations or governments can save money, tax payers money, bottom lines, mileage allowances, work efficiencies and get true return on investments. They must absolutely accept the virtual option in 2010 and beyond through online meetings. So often touted by the so called and ever increasing large entities that are MS and Cisco, government bodies are typically directed for various reasons to buy into the employers within their country. Of course, employment and revenue is on the mind of every elected politician. The fundamental flaw in democracy starts here, politicians cannot get elected without funding, who funds the politician ? And so unified communications or “unfunded communications” (if you fund it) started. What a ridiculous waste of money and time this term and implementation causes. What smart phone battery or laptop truly supports voice and video over IP for any length of time? What software and what proprietary licences do you need to subscribe to if your organisation wishes to avail of these services ?
Open source video conferencing has been around for many years, notwithstanding the power of the flash plugin, why reinvent the wheel? – just upgrade your switches … get a little more bandwidth, even get a dedicated element to the management of your bandwidth, you have the kit! you probably have the network – web based, without the need for massive investment in servers, no need to buy anything else with the exception of a webcam and a headset.. how hard can it be to reduce your annual spend on meetings via travel?
Accepting our political leaders are not software savvy for the most part, their advisors are supposed to be. Do you need to install something ? #FAIL. Do you have to have windows for it to work ? #FAIL. Do you need propriety hardware for it to work ? #FAIL. The solution must be web based for future proofing and economy of scale. Bandwidth is the key, switches allow data transfer, everything else is down to your vendors “cloud” or in our case rackspace << a data center, why would your company take on more than you need to… why reinvent the wheel?
December 8th, 2009 @ admin // No Comments
A Piece from InsideView
This academic semester, I’m bringing founders, promoters, directors and effective social media communicators into my Social Media classroom and letting them explain how they frame their online business dealings with a personal dimension. We will record and share most of those guest appearances through clips recorded through Online Meeting Rooms. Those success stories reveal honesty, passion and commitment to the extended online communities that I’ve used to good effect since 2004. In 2010, my students will have stories >> read the full post
A Piece from the Anseo Blog.
After a couple of months of trying, I finally found a school willing to try out videoconferencing with me. Using Online Meeting Rooms, a brilliant online package from http://www.onlinemeetingrooms.com, my school, Carlow Educate Together hooked up with the Athy Model School, 20km down the road for a Christmas Carol sing-off.
Each school sang two Christmas carols to each other. Our school were treated to two popular Church of Ireland carols and we sang “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” and “Ceallóga Sneachta ag Titim”. The kids were really enthusiastic and clapped and cheered each rendition. Read the rest of the post.
A Piece from the IIA
Our white papers are now coming close to publication. We intend to widen the circle of collaboration and with this in mind we plan to publish the documents (via the wiki) in draft format. We will then invite people to review and post comments directly to the wiki. We also intend to host a review session for each document, online of course, using the services offered by OnlineMeetingRooms.com. I’m personally very excited about this as it provides the opportunity to gather the expertise from practitioners and interested business professionals in a constructive and engaging manner. Read the full post.
Using Firewire DV and onlinemeetingrooms.com
Getting the most out of desktop web and video conferencing through onlinemeetingrooms.com can be as simple as taking an old DV camera and porting it through your firewire option. In most cases webcams suffice but if you want that extra clarity and powerful zoom Onlinemeetingrooms.com supports DV along with high resolution bandwidth server side. Thanks to Bernie Goldbach for the use of his video.
So many business professionals rely on PowerPoint to get their message across to an audience. As previously demonstrated the New .FLVplayer allows you to stream a flash video into your meeting. I use a number of different tools when it comes to online meetings. One I particularly like is Camtasia 6 (which is Now also available for MAC) from Techsmith.com. (Download for PC here) Camtasia is highly recommended if you are involved with making tutorials, streaming presentations from services like Screencast , if you like slideshare or you’re involved with coaching and training. For the purposes of this demonstration I have borrowed an excellent PowerPoint from Mr. Bernard Goldbach A senior multimedia lecturer inTippinst.ie .What I have done is simple, I have recorded the PowerPoint (quickly, for the purposes of the tutorial) in Camtasia, rendered the video out in .flv format and hosted it on another great service, my dropbox. Then I’ve called the public URL (you can see the link in the image) and posted the URL in the .flv player. Notice too that you can allow users to scrub the play head, this means users can play, pause or “scrub” to the slide they want to focus on. This gives the viewer control over the pace of the presentation. You can also switch your guests video streams off during the video presentation. This can be a good idea sometimes when trying to reduce possible distraction from the main presentation video you want your guests to see.
VLE, Whiteboards, video conferencing and budgets.
Computers in schools from what I have seen, and agree with the author have been in place but rarely used. I have often discussed with Bernie Goldbach the need to connect Third levels to second levels in some form or fashion using onlinemeetingrooms.com We have done it before with guest speakers at Tipperary Institute and Principles of other Schools, in this case Daithi O Muruchu. Daithi was unable to attend the conference, he was streaming to the conference from another http://www.gaelscoil.com/in Newcastlewest, Co. Limerick. http://www.anseo.net/?p=1538
This is an example of how the principle of a first level school is able to get involved with a third level hosted conference. Whiteboards connected to a PC could give a valuable window into any third level or any School for that matter. As the Anseo piece goes on to say Schools can find the budgets for the whiteboard. If the school also has a broadband connection education could change significantly in Ireland with just a few simple connections. Teachers and lecturers could work with different classes in a simultaneous, sychronis way… Students, the digital generation are ready for this type of interaction, specialist teachers could extented their skill sets to class rooms throughout the country as well as to remote schools or desktops at home. Training is of course the key, the complexity of any “solution”, platform, VLE call what you like is the barrier to entry. Streaming Video, screen sharing and whiteboarding are the future, if so, many schools have them they are one step away from the digital classroom.
