How about you? Are you straddling the fence, wondering when the technology will become easier to use or more reliable? Are you concerned about support? Do you worry about security? You may want to check out some testimonials to change your perspective.
Meanwhile, consider these arguments in favor of Web conferencing in your future:
- No travel time. You can meet with your class, colleagues, team, or organization anytime, from anywhere. No rental car, traffic jam, airline security scan, hotel stay, hunt for decent food. No need to change clothes. Take travel out of your budget and bring the world to your desktop.
- No back seats. In the face-to-face meeting or class room, somebody sits in the front and others have to sit away from the speaker, away from the screen, and removed from where the action is. Not so the Confer room: everyone has equal access to the presentation content and the speakers' voices. No straining to hear or craning to look around the person in front.
- Better brainstorming and interaction. That's right: in the Confer environment, you'll get better sharing of ideas than in the face-to-face situation, provided you use the tools. You can let participants add ideas anonymously to a whiteboard, respond to polls, chat privately and publicly, and convene in private rooms to work out side issues.
- Your reach can exceed your grasp. Your local campus or office building will always be an obstacle to some of your potential audience members. The home-bound, handicapped, geographically challenged, schedule-challenged, or otherwise-unable-to-come-to-you student or colleague can be reached now with little effort from either of you. The world is literally available to you, and you to it.
- Kodak moments. Did you ever wish you could capture a class you'd taught or attended so that you could review it later for better understanding? Do your meeting notes and minutes suffer from an inability to "rewind" and get the statements right? With Confer, recorded sessions are a snap to create and access.
