Starkwood, a private US military and security company is engaging in some seriously nefarious business, seemingly planning on waging biological warfare against its own country. Former CTU hero Tony Almeida has been kidnapped by this rogue organization and is in grave danger. When a Starkwood agent interrogates Tony, a top executive within Starkwood kills the agent and promises to reveal the bioweapon's location for immunity. Tony contacts FBI agent Larry Moss to broker the deal for immunity. The President needs to be conferenced in to sign the document that Larry's team has already drafted. Time is of the essence, every second counts.
If you missed it, that's a snippet from last night's episode of Fox's 24. So how did this situation play out? With web conferencing, of course! Agent Larry Moss uploads the document to his Cisco Webex meeting, invites Starkwood and the President to join the meeting, and communicates via audio and video conferencing. The President provides a virtual signature on the immunity document and Tony and the Starkwood agent are on their way to uncover the covert operation. Check it out.
While the situation is highly implausible, it's very exciting to see conferencing technologies referenced in popular culture and media this way.
Cisco had previously showcased their Telepresence technology on 24: Redemption, a 2-hour mini-series that aired just prior to the current season 7, and has had a long-standing relationship with the series showcasing its products.
Irene Psimenatos is the Web Collaboration Product Manager at ACT Conferencing
irene.psimenatos@canada.acttel.com.
For some reason, I’m just not good with remote controls. It doesn’t matter what the remote actually controls – VCRs, DVDs, TVs, stereos, you name it. The remote doesn’t seem to register my selections, or it doesn’t behave the way I expect (menu navigation is extremely troublesome for me – returning to the last screen instead of moving down in a list, for example), or I push the buttons so hard that I wear them out completely and render the remote unusable. And let’s not even try to talk about remotes that control multiple systems!!!
My most recent battle occurred yesterday when I was in a conference room trying to get our video conferencing system turned on. There were three of us in the room, and none of us was particularly video-savvy. I decided to be brave and attempt to use the variety of remotes sitting on the conference room table to get us into our meeting. Of course, I had my usual difficulty and after about 7 minutes, I was full of anxiety and frustration. We were late, and there was no time for my remote control fumbling. Unfortunately, no one else in the room seemed to have any better skills than me. The pressure was on! Miraculously, trying what seemed like the right button one more time finally got us to the conference. I sat wondering how many of our customers have the same challenges.
Conference calls, whether they are audio, video, or web, are supposed to be about the meeting, not about the equipment or technology. Conference calls are just virtual meetings, but, for me, joining a video conference was always a fear-inducing prospect! Anyway, I settled into the meeting, and although I’ve been in many video conferences previously (always making sure someone else had the responsibility for using the remotes), I was struck again by the effectiveness of being able to see and hear our colleagues overseas – to see them nodding along, to see hand gestures, facial expressions, etc. In the end, it WAS all about the meeting. The meeting was effective and informative. And I realized, that somehow I’ve got to emerge triumphant from my battle with the remote. Who knows, maybe I’ll even give desktop videoconferencing a try now!!!! So, for anyone else out there who avoids using video conferencing because of remote control issues (like me) or uncertainty about new technology or whatever else, I encourage you to give it another try. Good luck and happy meetings!
ACT is 20 years old this year. I’ll be 40 years old this year.
In the past 20 years, ACT has had a number of “firsts, bests and onlys”. (I have had a few in my 40 years, as well.) In 1997 ACT Conferencing delivered the first real-time allocation Global Reservations System (GRS). In the old days, when dealing with global conferencing companies, if a customer wanted to book an audio conference call in a different country, they had to call that center directly or wait until the office was staffed so liaising could happen. Real-time GRS allows callers to book their audio conference calls any time, in real time. Eerily, in 1997 I shifted course from a career in radio, to a career in Marketing, which would eventually lead me to ACT Conferencing. Coincidence?
Fast-forward ten years. In 2007, ACT Conferencing introduced Global Bridge Linking (GBL), which is like “meeting in the middle”. In other words, rather than calling an access number on the other side of the globe or having your provider backhaul your voice to central location, GBL allows ACT customers to access the call through a locally recognized toll-free number that terminates on a local bridge. The benefits are huge! With GBL, conference call users get an attendant with a familiar language and local accent, they get the same audio quality they have come to expect from ACT, and even better, GBL can reduce conference costs by up to 33 percent. (And these days, we all need that 33%.) To continue with the theme, also ten years later (in 2007), I had my first interview with ACT Conferencing. See how crazy the world works, sometimes?
Congratulations to ACT Conferencing! We have recently been named to the list of Top 10 Conferencing Providers by the Telecom Association. See the Top 10 Conferencing Providers press release.
Interestingly, this brings up an ethical issue. We did not pay to be included in this survey, and we didn't offer any money to make the top ten. The Telecom Association simply polls its members on a variety of categories, and the good companies get recognized. I think that's the way it should be.
But if you search around the web for "best" or "top 10" anything ("best conferencing companies", for example), you are bound to run across a handful of lists. Some are reputable, some are not. Many so-called "impartial" websites offer lists of who they think are the best companies in certain categories. What some don't tell you is that they a) accepted a fee to consider particular companies, b) were paid outright for listings (more money = higher ranking), or the most likely scenario, c) are getting a referral fee for every person who clicks through to the companies on the list.
Options A and B are obviously wrong, at least when the list is being presented as an unbiased report. Option C, however, tries to toe the line. Even if the list creator made every effort to be impartial, wouldn't he face at least some pressure to rank the companies with the best referral payouts first? And would he not have incentive to keep those companies on the list even if they are no longer legitimately among the best?
I haven't seen any other articles on this recently, though I'm sure they exist. People should be a little more outraged. As we do more and more research online, we need to know who is unbiased and who isn't. But in the legally nebulous world of the internet, anyone can say anything (they even let me talk occasionally), and nobody is required to write out their motives.
I'm happy for our win, and I'm more happy that we won the right way.
If you missed my previous entries on the topic, check out part 1 and part 2.
So now to review the remaining concerns that web conferencing vendors can address for successful adoption of their technology, all while taking pointers from the success of email, of course!
It’s too complicated to use.
Imagine that you’re about to start typing your first email ever, but the UI is so chock-full of buttons and options; you don’t know where to start. Totally frustrating!
I remember when I first opened my Hotmail account; I was able to figure it out without the help of a user guide or a call to technical support. Everything was clearly laid out for me so that I could do what I wanted to do: write and send an email.
The same goes for web conferencing. New users don’t really care if you can manage three sub-sessions within a meeting; they want to know how to upload a document to share with their meeting participants. You’ve got to keep it simple!
However, a web conferencing tool must be flexible and customizable to meet the needs of users at all skill levels.
Now, imagine you ONLY had the option to compose a new email, change the font face, size and color, and add a file attachment. Horrors!
The true beauty of email today is that it has fused other useful tools together. The ability to sort mail into folders, to schedule tasks and reminders, to manage contacts and appointments is very important, but we only appreciate the value of these options now that we’re familiar with the basic principles of email. If I had all those options available to me as a beginner, surely I would have either a) not used the tool to its fullest potential or b) given up and continued writing letters.
Web conferencing is still an emerging technology, even though it’s been around for just over a decade. And while it’s important to make it accessible to beginners, it’s equally as important to keep mindful of the early adopters whose needs have evolved over time.
I don’t understand how to get signed up for it / get started.
What if the only way you could get to use email is by purchasing a cumbersome server and software package, just to complain to your friends about how the latest season of Heroes is a complete departure from its origins? Not exactly practical.
By opening up (free) email through the Web, companies like Microsoft and Yahoo! made it accessible to the masses. There was no catch (other than those annoying ads); just sign up and away you go.
Web conferencing needs to be just as easy to access. It should be easy to get signed up (online) and easy to log on. Software downloads, aside from being unnecessary and annoying, tend to kill a meeting’s momentum and often stop it from starting on time.
Removing barriers to entry and enabling a seamless start-up process that doesn’t require the customer to ever have to place a call to the vendor or speak with a sales person is an important part of the formula.
I don’t think this will help me in my daily life.
Here’s the tricky part. Email is the pervasive communication tool it is today because it has very clearly defined applications in both the business world and the social world. At 10:05am I can remind Jim that I need him to check on a customer’s outstanding balance and at 10:07am I can send my world-famous devilled eggs recipe to my aunt.
To date, web conferencing has been almost exclusively a business tool, but a lot of the sharing and collaboration capabilities it offers are found in the social realm, under various media. Instead of uploading and sharing our photos in real-time with family members, we use sites like www.flickr.com. Instead of connecting to a web conference to talk over VoIP, we use products like Skype. Instead of using web conferencing as a means to review wedding plans with our relatives overseas, we use email!
The potential of web conferencing as the all-in-one social collaboration tool is there, we just need to harvest it.
And that’s it! Though, I’m sure you could come up with other parallels to draw between email and how its success could be applied to web conferencing. That’s your challenge, if you choose to accept it. I look forward to receiving your comments and opinions.
Irene Psimenatos is the Web Collaboration Product Manager at ACT (
irene.psimenatos@canada.acttel.com).
I’m working on a premise related to collaboration which goes something like this – unified collaboration is a process not a tool. No brainer, right. Still, most solutions today focus on functionality rather than a collaborative process.
Last blog, I proposed nuances between productivity and achievement, the latter being the true goal or a team. So, to help people achieve results, our goal is to
design solutions which place a customer experience of working together to achieve results at the center of our product development process, versus adding features to a “
conferencing service”.
To accomplish this, we’re chunking the collaborative process into phases. Here’s how I’ve broken it down so far, but this is a work in progress so I’m interested in your comments:
- Awareness - Recognized need to bring people & resources together to communicate and collaborate.
- Scheduling – Coordinating and reserving resources to create an environment and venue which facilitates achievement of objectives and productivity, “on-command” or at a pre-determined time.
- Initiation - Allow participants to conveniently join the event any time, from anywhere, from any device.
- Collaboration - Provide an environment, a venue, which promotes team work and getting things done.
- Achievement - Manage and track accomplishments against goal & objectives to ensure results.
- Assessment - Evaluate the effectiveness of the event, venue, tools, and collaborative effort and improve.
As I said, it’s a work in progress...
For some reason, “enterprise social networking” has collected some baggage, as it’s now often viewed as something which occurs within the bubble of a costly enterprise-wide software deployment. But think of it as nothing more than people working together in new and innovativeways. Any new wiz-bang tools should only help facilitate, not dictate, how people work together.
If you view meetings as an experience designed to achieve results, you’re more apt to get the engagement you want from your teams, and you’re more likely to create more innovative solutions to business or market problems.
These days, most people use the word “conferencing” when referring to all types of conference services (audio, video, web, …). They may clarify with “audio conferencing,” “web conferencing,” or “video conferencing,” but you don’t often hear “teleconferencing” anymore. A few years ago, we changed our name from ACT Teleconferencing to ACT Conferencing, and this seems to be an industry-wide change in terminology. Most conferencing providers don’t even have the word “teleconference” on their sites anymore.
So, why not call it “teleconferencing?” At the time we changed our name, it seemed like a natural progression to me. After all, “teleconferencing” implied “telephone conferencing” didn’t it? So, if you dropped the “tele,” you were actually broadening the meaning to include all types of conference calls. Seemed pretty obvious to me.
I had intended to write today about the two different words in terms of how conferencing as an industry has expanded to include many types of transmission methodologies and how new technologies were being added all the time. But, I decided to do a little research first. I started with Wiktionary. There was something strange there. There were two etymologies for the word:
1. a contraction of telephone conference - which fit in exactly with my thinking
2. from the Greek tele- (distance) and conference (a meeting of people who confer about a topic)
Wait a minute! That second etymology doesn’t say anything about “phone” – it just says “distance.” When did I decide that “tele” meant “phone”? In fact, it makes much more sense if “tele” means distance – there is no phone in “television” or “telepresence,” or even in “telecommunications,” for that matter. So, I’m back to why not “teleconferencing?” And I don’t really have an answer. Maybe the “tele” is just a victim of our society’s move towards a more mobile/text/chat language (LOL, brb, ttyl), and maybe some day we’ll just call it “conf!” Or maybe the word “conferencing” is less technical and sounds more adoptable to users. Or maybe the word was just too long. What do you think?
At ACT, we're very fortunate to have a wealth of experience just walking around the office. For example, Gary, one of our regular blog writers, has been in conferencing and telecom for somewhere between 10-80 years. (I don't remember exactly how long it's been. I could go over to Gary's office and ask, and that probably would have taken less time than writing this explanation.) But occasionally you want a perspective from outside the company. When we were given the opportunity to partner with a company that spends all day, every day studying the industry -- how to get the most out the technology, what's new and exciting, etc -- we jumped at the chance.
I'm happy to introduce Paul Waadevig, Senior Consultant - Unified Communications at Frost & Sullivan. Paul will be writing exclusive articles for us each month throughout the year to talk about best practices in the conferencing and unified communications space. We decided to call the series "Leveraging your conferencing platform", which pretty accurate describes what Paul will be talking about.
Read the articles!
In response to Paul's first two articles, I'll have to add my quick two cents in agreement. At the end of February's article, we see several good examples of how to create a "sticky" corporate culture -- in other words, providing an environment in which employees feel more connected with the people around them, and doing so without making everyone fly across the country or the world every couple of months. Improving corporate culture is a great possibility, to be sure, but I think many of these concepts could be brought to day-to-day gatherings as well. What about creating more sticky meetings?
To set some background, I was blessed with great concentration...... on one thing at a time. My friends always know when I'm trying to watch TV while talking to them because all my responses are three beats late and consist of 95% verbs. "Multitasking" at work typically means typing an email as fast as I can and hoping I remember there's a meeting going on around me before someone asks me a question. Even if you're slightly more multithreaded than I am, let's face it, we all find ourselves working on something else when we're not actively engaged in an audio-only call.
Enter web and video conferencing. If you need to run a sticky meeting -- keeping those eyes and brains focused on your message -- one of the best options is to take up more of your audience's senses. Personally, I find myself much more involved if I see the leader clicking through a PowerPoint, and even more so if I can actually see the person presenting (not to mention if they can see me). The visuals give me another point of reference. Even if I had to respond to an instant message from my boss during your presentation, I can click back to the web conference and see at a glance where we are. With audio only, I often find myself scrambling to catch up.
And this leaves me curious --- what is the strangest story you have about a person (maybe yourself) who was caught concentrating on something else during a meeting? I bet there are some good ones out there.
For anyone who missed part 1 of this blog post, check it out here .
Before I get into how web conferencing can leverage email’s success, let’s review my reasons for not embracing email in the early 90s. These are typically reasons I hear from people who have not yet converted to web conferencing today.
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It’s a new technology with which I’m not familiar
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I’m more comfortable with in-person meetings
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It’s too complicated to use
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I don’t understand how to get signed up for it
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I don’t think it will improve my daily life
Now, these are just one Product Manager’s observations, by no means a fool-proof formula, but I think that if web conferencing providers can address these simple concerns, wide-spread adoption is inevitable.
I don’t understand the technology.
Thankfully, the World Wide Web is very well rooted now (my mother uses it), which is one hurdle web conferencing doesn’t have to overcome. Not so in the early days of email, which was one of the main reasons why I didn’t hop on the bandwagon right away. The Internet was a big scary world, where only the tech-savvy and nerds dared tread (according to me anyway).
Setting aside having an understanding of how the technology actually functions (which isn’t important to most users,) the user must have a fundamental understanding of what the tool does. Simply putting forward a list of features and benefits won’t do either. Providers must clearly identify a value proposition for their web conferencing solution for a variety of personas. The value for an IT manager who needs to have collaboration between her globally dispersed teams is different from the value for a Marketing Director who needs a forum to conduct focus group sessions. This is akin to how the value of Hotmail for individual consumers is different from the value of Microsoft Exchange for enterprises.
Helping the user understand what the tool can do for them will go a long way to gaining acceptance and ultimately, adoption.
I’m more comfortable with in-person meetings.
There will always be a need for in-person meetings, and a subset of the population who will refuse to change how they do things today. There’s not much we can do about that, other than create alternatives that are viable and user-friendly to facilitate the switch.
If I had to follow a 10-step process to send an email, and there were built-in restrictions on the type of words I could use when communicating in this way, for sure I’d still be writing letters. Luckily, that’s not how email works and it’s in fact a much easier way to say the same things I would using a pen and paper.
Similarly, I couldn’t consider web conferencing a viable alternative to in-person meetings if the set up process were cumbersome, and if the collaboration available during the meeting were limited. In many cases, setting up a web conference is as simple as following standard invitation processes through email plug-ins or even through instant messaging applications. There’s nothing different or out of the ordinary the meeting organizer needs to do, except that at meeting time, she can connect to her meeting virtually, from home, an airport, an internet café, rather than get up and go to a boardroom.
And that leads into another ingredient to success: ease of use, which I’ll cover next in my next blog entry.
Irene is the Web Collaboration Product Manager at ACT (irene.psimenatos@canada.acttel.com)