Webconferencing…always have a back up plan

Earlier in the week I wrote about trying Macromedia's Breeze and Convoq's ASAP today I had the chance to put ASAP to the test. As it turned out this test not only tested ASAP but LiveMeeting and proved again why Boy Scouts are on to something.

My meeting today was scheduled to be held over LiveMeeting. The plan was that I wouldn't be leading the presentation, just commenting as needed. I should've known there was going to be trouble when I saw the LiveMeeting invitation come through. When it came into Outlook the simple click and enter the room URL wrapped onto two lines. In order for it to work as intended I had to edit the e-mail. I had done this for our potential client when I forwared the e-mail to him, but I think something else got lost in translation, as it were.

I had already gone over to LiveMeeting last week to load up the ActiveX widgets that power the whole LiveMeeting experience. I hoped that this wouldn't be a problem for our potential client, as it turned out he didn't even get that far.

So picture this, me and my two colleagues are on the conference call with a potential client (three people in one person's office) and listening to him struggle with typing in the case sensitive meeting information. He's not doing well and the frustration in his voice is coming through loud and clear. Side note here: One thing that really helped save the day was that my two colleagues and I had an open MSN IM session going so we could chat without the client knowing, or “hearing” the panic in our typing.

Now as any six year veteran of the Boy Scouts would, I had the backup plan ready. I had already converted the presentation into ASAP’s Flash-based format and set up a meeting in ASAP. I had also used the “Prepare a meeting” function so the slides were all queued up and ready. Before we lost the client in a fit of frustration, I invited my two colleagues via IM and the client via e-mail into the ASAP meeting. In less than two minutes the meeting was back on track. I gave a quick wave on the camera, then went full screen on the presentation. Technologically, the rest of the meeting went off with out a hitch.

First test, Convoq ASAP pulled it off in the clutch. LiveMeeting. No dice.

I’ve been a supporter of web conferencing for years. WebEx, LiveMeeting/Placeware, I thought they had it all set. But to be honest when I was setting up those conferences, I was always a little bit nervous that there would be a firewall issue or the e-mail woudl get hosed in transmission. I think these Flash-based tools I think are a safer bet. Sure the e-mails from Breeze of ASAP could get hosed, but at least ASAP can go via IM and it seems that the e-mails from ASAP are pretty solid. I’ve sent them to my friend on OS X using Apple Mail, my wife on XP using Eudora, Outlook users, and today might have been a Notes user.

After today’s little extravenganza, my colleagues who were lukewarm on ASAP before the meeting, are at least installing the trial version we have. I’m pretty sure we’ll be using ASAP for our next meeting in a couple weeks.

Lessons learned:
Always have a back up plan, even if it’s just being able to e-mail the slides at the last minute.
If all the presenters aren’t in the same location, IM can definitely save your skin.
Giving a Flash-based web conferencing/presenting tool a trial maybe worth your while.