Virtual Conferences: Voice-Over-IP Solutions

A virtual company needs a virtual meeting room. In the past, we have been experimenting with a couple of systems. In short: none of the systems we tested worked without problems.

Ideally, we would like to have a system that includes the following features:

• voice-over-IP
• video
• whiteboards and writeboards
• sharing documents and collaborating in real time
• sharing desktops

Our default system is Skpye. In its current version, Skype allows up to 25 participants in a telephone conference. If somebody doesn’t have access to a computer, we can connect them by calling their land line or mobile telephone, using Skype Out credits. By the way – this is a strange notion in our modern world – who wouldn’t be further away more than 500 yards from the next Internet connected computer? If you are not in the Amazon. And if you are in the Amazon, it is either a holiday and you wouldn’t participate in a conference, or you are on an expedition, and then you would have a satellite Internet connection with you. In essence, we have learned that Skype is the easiest possibility of connecting the voices of team members. Skype is free or cheap respectively if you use Skype Out. Technology works pretty well although sometimes one has to be patient to get 5-6 peoples’ audio equipments working. Also, people drop out from time to time and the conference manager has to reconnect them, which distracts the conference participants. Skype doesn’t have a real writeboard but one can use the Skype chat to take notes.

The other option is WebEx. I have only participated in 2 WebEx conferences and I liked them. WebEx has voice-over-IP, whiteboards, chat, and some other nice features. I also like the nice desing and its structure. So, I wanted to test it more and subscribed to a free trial. The first time, the free trial worked (but I had only one more person connected). After that, the system refused further login attempts. A series of telephone and email conversations with hotlines and service staff did not help. At the end, the WebEx staff obvioulsy lost interest in me because they stopped contacting me although I filed a strong complaint. Here I am – I would like to test WebEx further but don’t know how. Not a good start. The fees for a WebEx conference seem to be pretty high, but I haven’t really gotten into price negotiations (like other similar software providers, they do not publish their entire price list but want you to negotiate with their sales persons).

In the past, we had used Hotconference quite successfully, and sometimes I consider going back to it. I even did Webinars through the system. Hotconference includes voice-over-IP, video, whiteboards, chat, desktop sharing. The technology problems are the same like in other software platforms. Obviously there is a generic problem which is related to the audio systems of computers – these are the only problems we have faced in all applications. Some audio equipment just refuses to work, and even worse, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Bandwidth is another inhibitive factor in most of the systems. The advantage of Hotconference is its price – much more affordable than other systems. However, when we stopped using it, I had the feeling that they didn’t put much effort into further development. For a long time, the system wouldn’t work on Macs, and I don’t know whether they have introduced this option later on. The CEO of the company, Joel Therien is a viral marketer. He continues to send you emails even if you have told him 5 times that you don’t want them. Fortunately they now go into my spam folder right away.

Then, there is Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (which used to be Macromedia Breeze). I am excited about the possibilities and the flexibility of that software. It has voice-over-IP, video, white and writeboards, chat, presentation and desktop sharing and you can arrange the parts as you like. Additionally, it is programmed in Flash so you don’t need to download software to your computer (which many organizations wouldn’t allow). However, the problems of audio equipment are the same like described before. And it is pricy, too.

The technical problems of voice-over-IP solutions reduce the efficiency of virtual conferences quite dramatically. We usually spend 15-20 minutes at the beginning of each larger conference to adjust all our machines; and in long conferences, people drop out and have to be reconnected.

An alternative to the described platforms is the use of classical telephone conferences combined with a software that does everything except connecting voices and videos, such as GoToMeeting and others. I will write about these possibilities at another occasion.