Here’s a recent question from the inbox:
Hi Lee…I attended one of your sessions a few months back – Was terrific and learned much. Wanted to ask you – We are looking into doing webinars where consumers can register to attend, see either video or PPT slides while a moderator is chatting at the same time. Do you have any recommendations of a company or product that would allow us to do webinars? Some kind of webinar host company?
A. First, I’ll give you the MacGyver method, as demonstrated in Twitter 152. Use a video streaming service like Ustream.tv and embed slides using Slideshare.net. That lets you show slides while streaming video from your webcam. It’s all free. A little clunky maybe, but free.
I recently had an experience with my friend Lucien Engelen (@zorg20) in which he showed me a product call VuRoom, which is a plug-in for Skype that allows up to 8 people to be in a video chat together. The same company also has a product called VuCast which I haven’t tried, but looks like it can handle 10,000+ participants.
Other choices are WebEx, GoToMeeting, Windows LiveMeeting and Adobe Connect. I have used all of these as a guest presenter, but haven’t signed up for a contract with any of them. Here’s a chart (consider the source) from the VuCast gang that compares features.
What is your experience with these services? What do you see as the pros and cons of each?
Forget WebEx and GoToMetting. Try Fuze Meeting instead. Better service, no downloads.
Ustream has a hosting service called Watershed (watershed.ustream.tv) that I will be using for an upcoming forum. So far (i.e., as I am practicing) it seems like a worthwhile investment. The different pricing options are helpful (including pay as you go, which is great for small or infrequent events), as is the ability to brand and overall produce a slicker webinar.
BoinxTV (http://www.boinx.com/boinxtv/overview/) is another, similar option. The software seems to give you a wider set of controls, and the cheaper version (called Sponsored Edition) is generally sufficient. Sponsored means there is a five second commercial in the beginning, and it’s quite unobtrusive.
The MacGyver method also works well, particularly if the moderator/speaker is seated in front of a computer.
It depends somewhat on how produced you want/need the event to be. And the video/sound equipment you have at hand. But overall there are great options for relatively little investment.
We dropped Webex after a few huge mistakes on their part and moved to gotomeeting with no complaints.
If you really want to give your slideshows some zing I highly suggest http://prezi.com/. It makes powerpoint look stone age.