Comments on: All My Webinars Feel Like a Verizon Commercial

By: Mathieu Plourde

Mathieu Plourde — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:22:32 +0000

@Alan – It’s funny you should mention the opening slides. I created opening slides for Breeze live some years ago when I worked for Universite Laval. They are in French though, so you might have to find someone to translate ;-)

http://www.fsa.ulaval.ca/apti/plourdem/Breeze/trucs_breeze.swf

And I created another one to discuss audio issues in general before using Elluminate.

http://www.fsa.ulaval.ca/apti/elluminate/microphones/

We can Skype if you want more details (I’m “plourdem” on skype).

@D’Arcy – Yeah, weather stinks. What about abortion, politics, or religion then? ;-) Let’s break those taboos! LOL

By: Alan Levine aka CogDog

Alan Levine aka CogDog — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:29:13 +0000

@Mathieu – I need to develop some opening slides with some of the important tech checks for users; I always like the way Jonathan Finkelstein does this for Learning Times. There are a few things we can do with the 18 inch issue

@D’Arcy- Uh oh, I better find some better pre-session openers than asking about the weather!

By: D'Arcy Norman

D'Arcy Norman — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:42:50 +0000

Elluminate can be just as bad – it decided that for the last class of an online course I was taking that I didn’t need a working audio source. I wound up typing for my presentation. We never figured out why the microphone on my end was borked – it worked fine in every other app I tested, but not Elluminate.

And once you get past the Verizon “can you hear me now” session during the first 10 minutes of every online meeting/class, there’s another 10 minutes of “we have weather here. do you have weather there? weather is good/bad.” Sigh.

By: Mathieu Plourde

Mathieu Plourde — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:48:54 +0000

These web-conference platforms all have the same issue: audio should be prioritized over everything else, period. I don’t care if it takes 10 seconds for a slide to completely show up. I need to hear what’s happening.

The other issue is the client side. You should ask your audience if they know how to get to the audio settings of their computer. Lots of users don’t know how to change the audio source from the speakers or the built-in mic to the headset, or the opposite. Sometimes, they don’t even know their sound is muted. So in addition to dealing with network bottleneck and internet wizardry, you have to deal with code 18 issues as well (18 inches in front of the screen). And since your events are one shot deals, your audience is always a n00b.

I agree with you that Adobe Connect feels like a sales pitch environment. Elluminates does a much better job putting the interaction settings at the forefront, giving more fine-grained permissions for different modes of communication like the video, the whiteboard, etc.

Don’t give up though, we need access to that knowledge, especially now that we’re all office bound because of budget cuts.