Web Conferencing From Your Own Virtual Office

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Virtual collaboration has evolved into a tool that every business must invest in and plan for it it intends to compete in the global marketplace. Technology afforded to Web users has changed the way we work, live – and for many people – socialize. The Web has made virtual offices possible and provided an enormous boost to the HBB (Home-Based Business) industry; and Web conferencing is one of the biggest tools that have increased productivity of employees and the companies they work for.

There are a number of products in the web collaboration field which are brought to the marketplace by technology giants like Cisco and Microsoft, but the most recent display of the importance and popularity of this technology is the Google Hangout which was introduced in 2012 and has become of of the online conferencing products of choice for many (mostly Gmail users of course) who are now holding live meetings in a virtual conference rooms.

Just a few decades ago electronic enthusiast and ambitious business leaders alike could only dream about the prevalent use of virtual offices; but today the use of high resolution video beaming across continents is as much a reality as a routine phone call between friends. The advent of high speed Internet and fantastic QoS (Quality of Service) implementations in the backbone networks has enabled these highly productive multimedia conferences.

Typical conferences once consisted of a dull one-way, non-interactive lecture-style over the phone meetings reminiscent of Charlie’s Angels. Now it has evolved into something highly feature-rich and highly productive. Today’s Web conferences enable online sharing of your presentation material and additional documentation that is needed for the meeting. In addition, it provides the collaboration aspects like shared white boards and live synchronized presentations.

The other main core components are the audio, video and text collaboration. Traditional PBX audio has been replaced with the reach VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) audio features and video has evolved from dull one ways to active-speaker grid solutions. Video has evolved so well that now you can have custom views for each person in the conference, each person can choose the endpoints or cameras they want to watch in addition to the capabilities like automatically getting video of the active speaker in the conference.

One of the more frequently used features is the integrated text chats with emoticons. What a fantastic feature this is, along with public chat modules allowing users get to have their own private chats. While you are in the online meeting you can chat with your co-worker on specific questions and get something cleared without interrupting the overall meeting. This is one thing that is uniquely possible in online conferences which is really an annoyance in real face to face meetings.

You know how some real life meetings can be irksome to the point where you really wanted to use the mute button for that private conversation between a couple of guys in a group meeting in parallel to the main speaker. This text capability in Web conferencing has found really some interesting and useful twists like real time polling and online question submissions.

Think about this feature that lets you send spontaneous questions you want answered in the final Q/A as and when it strikes you. These are typically added to a queue which can feed as the source for the Q/A session that typically follows the presentation or meeting. This feature is very useful in lecture style meetings also. Enough said about the features and let’s take a brief look from the business perspective.

Web conferencing products allow the businesses to setup virtual global offices ready to meet with business prospects and clients at any time anywhere. When I say anywhere I mean contact any one through these online collaboration products having a rich experience like the face to face meeting without costly Flight and Hotel expenses. Global offices also present a great opportunity to telecommute without distancing yourself from your colleagues.

If fact, it often happens that folks who telecommute are usually forgotten by most of their colleagues, but these video and other real time capabilities get telecommuters closer to the rest of the team. One of the awesome uses of the technology is web-casting which is designed to organize live events and then broadcasting these events to employees and customers who are not able to attend the event. This is added with the capability allows businesses to record meetings with unlimited playbacks.

Without much investment in terms of capital equipment you can really get them as online services on an as-needed basis from some of the great companies that provides this kind of technology. There are a number of companies that offer web conferencing – a couple of which were mentioned earlier – and great pricing plans and tutorials. Among the most popular of those companies today is GoToMeeting.com

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