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Now that the Internet is connecting people on so many levels, it is only natural that virtual events are becoming more popular. Professional Event Planners are realising how much money they save in fuel cost, surcharges, and equipment when they can create a virtual event and without ever having to leave the office.

Different types of virtual events are available for services like Second Life, Constant Contact, Meeting One and Virtulis Center. Below are a few basic tips to follow when creating a virtual event, Internet trade show or corporate sales kickoff.

Objective

Do you want to simply make a presentation for a large audience, or do you need to have interaction and break out seminars? Determine your ultimate objective early in the process so that you can design the correct platform for your setting. Virtual meeting rooms can be outfitted with audio/visual equipment, white boards, handouts and business card distribution. Map out a storyboard that takes the meeting from registration to participation to wrap up and develop a timeline for all presentations.

Design

Craft your presentation to your particular audience and set the tone to match their knowledge of the subject. Sales presentations and product rollouts obviously have a more upbeat, enthusiastic attitude than scholastic or scientific presentations and both are quite different from public presentations to an audience that is unfamiliar with the subject. Use technologically appropriate language, especially in virtual display booths and resource centers.

Virtual Guides

When the basic structure of your virtual meeting determined, develop a concise guide to online registration, attendance and feedback. If necessary include instructions on translations of both written and verbal presentations. Also provide direct contact information, especially phone numbers, for participants who are experiencing technical difficulties with a computer or Internet connection.

As part of the Virtual Guide, provided a reference sheet that has suggestions for operating platforms, recommended software and Internet connection speed. Also have a direct link to online real-time support for use while the conference is in session.

Partnerships

Be on the lookout for companies that can partner with you on virtual events. Select vendors to help you customize your venue and create additional attractions for participants. If appropriate, setup links between your web sites to promote the virtual event, products presented or information discussed.

Follow Through

Once the event is completed in real-time, make arrangements for it to be archived on the Internet and accessible for replay for at least six months. Make sure all links to video presentations or online documentation presented at the conference have live links for easy access.

Business practices change constantly with new inventions. Video conferencing is one of the latest ideas to make things easier around the workplace.

Enhanced Technology and Communications

Video conferencing has been around for a while, but only recently has it gained enough in quality to make it worthwhile as a tool for most businesses. Lagging internet connections make for jumpy movements and disconnected voices, but increased infrastructure is improving that.

Less Travel and Reduced Environmental Impact

Meetings that once required days for travel and required accommodations to be scheduled now take place with people at their desks or in nearby conference rooms. Educational opportunities widen as virtual students pop into classroom world-wide.
More Business Meeting Options

For today’s businesspeople, that means options are changing. The benefits of seeing someone in a meeting or presentation give more to communicate with than phone or email can provide, since visual cues are lacking during most of the correspondence.

Saving Time and Staff Absence

While cutting some of the travel is good for the budget, removing the days out of the office for the staff to manage meetings with other locations is a better reason for video conferencing. Commercial flying to remote locations can take a day or two out of the work week. Finding a larger meeting room off-site to accommodate all the participants takes more time to track down.
Working Flexibility for Employees

For larger projects, video conferencing allows an employee to work at home, rather than relocating temporarily to another location for the duration. Larger companies can take the world-wide stage as an option to stagger work in different countries to meet deadlines and schedule video conference meetings to keep all involved on where to start and end for the day’s work.

There are still occasions that call for actual travel, but video conferencing can help you make the most of those business decisions by knowing how to get the most out of the options available to you.

Stay organised and make certain you personally use the video conferencing option to understand how to make the best use of it before telling all your employees to use it. The best management practices lead by doing and make the most of everyone’s time and abilities.

Keeping up with the video conferencing angle allows great flexibility for businesses to expand and grow into better practices for profit and productivity. It is a great information and communication tool for companies to build their ability to work.

Here are 10 of Video Conferencing’s newest (and sometimes, unlikely) users:
Health Professionals

Patients are accustomed to visiting doctors in their offices, but video conferencing can change some of those visits. Disease management for treatment of a long-term disease, specialist referrals, support services in campuses and remote offices, remote patient monitoring, and nursing call center services all bring new opportunities.

Telecommunication

Journalists are beginning to get press videoconferences to allow international presence. Access to a computer allows them to ask questions and report on more events without relying on second- or third-hand information.

Education

Classes taught by video conference bring teachers and students together over long distances to experience the classroom feeling without extensive travel. It also creates options for virtual tours and meeting exciting people who can’t visit a classroom, like NASA officials or native language speakers in the same age group as students.

Surveillance & Security

Remote monitoring, motion detection, and video broadcasting are some of the features used for surveillance. Warehouses or empty facilities keep things safe by the video conferencing tools. They also could set up a person to reason with if someone enters during a time other than the norm without automatically alerting authorities.

Government Ministers

Busy officials can link in to meetings via video conferencing instead of traveling. This means they can get more use out of their time and still attend meetings at more than one venue when necessary.

Emergency response
During an emergency they’ll show up at the door, but video conferencing helps keep them trained to deal with the worst that can happen while saving on fuel and travel expenses.

Budding families

Families spread over large distances or in different countries are beginning to use video conferencing to keep in touch and show how much the babies grow. This alternative can be cheaper than plane tickets, especially for new grandparents who want to make weekly or daily appointments.

Prisoners

Video Conferencing makes for easier connections between parents and children, especially when getting regular visits scheduled with out-of-state children. Lawyers and judges are finding video conferencing benefits for hearings and depositions to speed proceedings by increasing the number of arraignments and “Assignment of Counsel” sessions per day and eliminating travel to the jail.

Seniors

Letters, phone calls, and emails only go so far, and all of them lack the nonverbal cues so vital to communication. Ideas to keep seniors included in the family life are meals and sharing stories to different generations. They also have added security when alone in the house to call someone on the video conference to stay alert during times when a repairman is expected.

Churches

Whether it’s bringing conferences to more people or simply spreading the message from the church, video conferencing proves to be very effective. There are no virtual sermons yet, but group counseling, education, and meetings between officials are on the rise.

Here are some of the most annoying and embarrasing habits of Video conference calling. Make sure you don’t get caught out!

The Mute Button

It’s important to remember whether your mute button is on or off. As a facilitator, you must give the respondent time to take the mute off and answer.
The responders must use the mute button when not speaking and remember to put the sound on when necessary. Don’t mutter into the microphone or talk to yourself. Always assume they can hear you. Limit sidebar conversations within the room and pay attention to the speaker.

Gestures

Be aware of every single gesture you make. Talking with your hands might be acceptable when in the room with other people, but watching it on video can make others nervous or dizzy.

This is especially true when lagging video may only catch a few movements and makes the image at the other end of the conference jumpy and disjointed. Gestures may also give someone a bad impression of you, so try to isolate any bad habits, like scratching your nose, ahead of time to keep them from creeping into the video conference.

Forgetting Introductions

You may not see everyone at all times during a video conference. Introductions make people feel more like they know who is talking. Make nameplates with at least 4 cm letters for easy reference.

When more than one location is involved, make a plate with that name, also. Address everyone directly when asking questions. “Mike, did you have those numbers?” “Susan, can you tell me…?”

Something Else in Your Mouth
Food, gum, or other items that might otherwise occupy your mouth are a definitely no-no during video conferencing. While you might not always have the camera on you in some larger meetings, no one wants to look over at you and see your jaw working.

The kindest assumption they can make is you’re attempting to talk and not being heard. At worst, they see your open mouth and what occupies it during their possibly lagging connection.

Time

Begin and end all video conferences on time. This is respectful to all attendees, because they definitely have other work to do even if they are not scheduled for another meeting.

It also lets them know what to expect. If someone constantly drags meetings from a half hour scheduled to two hours actual time, no one wants to go and their attention wanders. Adults are alert for 30 to 45 minutes at a time; schedule appropriately.

In today’s fast paced business environment, speed, efficiency and cost effectiveness are central to establishing and maintaining competitive advantage. Technology has made many of the perennial expenses of the business operation dissolve. The days of the door to door salesman strike us as almost primitive up against the social media networks that are presently all the rage. Conducting business meetings via video conferencing calls is gradually making traveling an obsolete requirement. The future of video conferencing has all the characteristics to suggest its inevitability as a staple product of business innovation.
As strictly a matter of saving time, the benefits of video conferencing are virtually irrefutable. A click of a few buttons versus all the exigencies related to travel give video conferencing a natural advantage over traveling. In the same manner, the constraint on finances is clearly mitigated with video conferencing. The exorbitant cost of traveling far exceeds the cost of investing in a reliable system to conduct the video calls. An elaborate cost-benefit analysis isn’t needed to prove the validity of choosing the one over the other.

Accessibility is yet still another benefit derived from video conferencing. This is particularly true for a business’ client base, which tends to value ease of access without removing the advantages of face to face meetings. Also, as a way to streamline one’s business operations into a more fluid and dynamic system, video conferencing provides a unique tool. Whether it is clients, partners, associates or co-workers, both the small and medium sized business and the transnational business gain by utilizing the video conferencing option.

The expenses saved in time and money by using video conferencing transpire into the more collective interest of protecting the environment against the unnecessary strain that the prodigious amounts of business travelling places on it. As more businesses adopt video conferencing capabilities, a pattern of business practice can be instituted that will serve to enhance their role in being socially responsible stewards of society.

Video conferencing is the 21st century response to many of the challenges facing businesses as they try to gain greater participation in the global market and remain competitive. Saving time and money, creating ease of access and facility of operations and protecting the environment are all achieved in this one simple solution.

Business meetings, for however critical they may be, can be one of the biggest contributors to a person’s carbon footprint. Think about it: you have tens, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of people coming from all corners of Europe. Many people will take public transportation, but just as many people will drive themselves, which contributes 40% of the average person’s carbon footprint. This number will be far higher for a person who has to drive themselves to a meeting several times a month. In fact, even though it is public transportation, flying, as well, contributes a huge amount to a person’s carbon footprint.

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However, there is a way to solve this problem. This is to use videoconferencing. Video conferencing, using special software, allows a group of people to converse via the internet, with both sound and video communicated simultaneously. With a large enough monitor and a good enough internet client, this sort of conferencing can be as close to real as possible, and just as effective as anything else. In fact, with enough technology involved, video conferencing can be more effective, allowing people to exchange documents and photos at the same time as you conference, which can be very efficient.
Clearly, this can also be used to reduce a person’s carbon footprint. Even traveling in a carpool, the average passenger will produce approximately one quarter pound of carbon dioxide per mile. This means that even if you travel in a carpool one hour to and from a meeting per week, that is almost one ton of carbon dioxide per year. This is not even including the additional items that will create carbon dioxide emissions. For example, consider the power needed to run the air conditioning system, the lights and other utilities, even the restroom where the meeting is being hosted. Everything is creating carbon dioxide. In fact, liveearth.org says that for every three video conferences held rather than an in-person meeting, the power saved is equivalent to taking a car off the road for an entire year.
One argument against this is that the computers that you are using are probably generating carbon dioxide, as consumer electronics do use a huge amount of power. However, consider that most people would probably be bringing their laptops to a modern meeting anyway. Furthermore, these electronics would probably be using even more power than in a video conference interview. This is because an in-person meeting would require projectors as well, which use even more power.

Web conferencing actually started before the Internet was very popular. The first web conferences appeared as text chats in the late 1980s. By the mid 1990s, web conferencing had become quite popular and well-used. Modern web conferencing has many additional features that were not present in the original forms of conferences.

The first forms of web conferencing were not live. They were based more in the format of message boards. Some of the first live web conferences were formatted like chat rooms. Members all gathered together in one chat room and discussed certain issues. Usually a moderator facilitated the meetings.

Modern web conferencing started gaining popularity when Internet speeds began to enable much faster downloads. This started in the early 2000s, and has improved from there. Now it is possible to use many different forms of communication such as instant messaging, chat rooms, video conferencing, voice chats, and application sharing. Application sharing has become one of the most popular features of modern web conferencing because it enables everyone in the conference to download the same program or file simultaneously.

Web conferencing has quickly turned into a business venture for many people. A lot of vendors sell web conferencing slots that businesses can rent out and use for special occasions. Other businesses often advertise on these vendor sites for products that businesses can use for their companies. Some vendors charge a monthly fee to use their service, while others charge per use. Some vendors even sell a program that enables the different companies to use the web conferencing programs on their own servers.

The future of web conferencing is unknown. It is hoped that the future will bring about more regulations for the structure of the programs. People who use web conferencing hope to see such features as standardized memberships, multiple media sources, meeting notification services, better floor control, and other similar features that would facilitate the conferencing process. If this is accomplished then businesses will be able to save thousands of dollars in hosting live events and meetings in hotels and other travel expenses. Hopefully web conferencing will greatly limit the need for employees to travel for businesses.

With a few simple steps you can ensure that every one of your video conference call presentations is direct, accurate, and engrossing.

Be sure that yourself and the screen are properly bright:

This is something that can be very easy to forget, yet very difficult for a viewer of your presentation to deal with if you do. Simply be sure that you have some type of light, at least a fluorescent one, shining directly on you, preferably on your face and not directly above your head. This way you will be clearly seen. When doing video presentations to a large group, rather than through conference calling, also be sure to adjust the brightness and contrast of your presentation screen or projector beforehand in order to ensure that everyone can see clearly.

Have Physical materials available:

Be sure to hand out, or arrange to have handed out, important and interesting physical materials that people in attendance can read in their own time and take home with them. It’s important that they aren’t redundant with information from the presentation, and aren’t too dense, or filled with unimportant points, but this will engage the audience members and maintain their interest. Also, remember that during video conference call presentations these materials must be pre-arranged with your hosts on each site to ensure that they’ll be handed out.

When using onscreen text, be direct:

This can happen occasionally in PowerPoint, or other textual presentation arrangements, where the presenter will fill the entire screen with a huge, indiscernible block of text-

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This usually takes too long to read, since the slides change earlier than you’re able to finish, and is also dizzying since it forces the viewer to focus for so long on a digital screen, which is difficult and painful on the eyes. Simply arrange your points using simple statements and then expand on those yourself within the presentation. Don’t rely entirely on the screen since too much text tends to cancel itself out.

Use Visual Aids:

While your video presentation might include the flashiest animation and video graphics imaginable, it can still become difficult to stare at the exact same point for too long. It can be effective in video presentations to include photos or props in order to vary the attention of your viewers. This can also work well in video conference call presentations, even if you’re using on-line graphics or video to, again, vary the types of things your viewers are seeing.

Post-presentation Q and A:

This one is very simple and also very effective. Your presentation is an interactive experience and making certain that your audience members understand you is crucial. Open up the floor for questions at the end of the presentation, even at the end of each subject, and things will move much more smoothly. Don’t spend too much of your time doing this, but answering even one question after each subject can do a lot of good for everyone.

Humor not only helps to get a point across with a bit more impact but it also has the ability to grab our attention long enough to allow the complete point to be made. A recent video teleconferencing commercial has used humor in one of their recent commercials that allows the commercial to make an effective yet very interesting point.

In the commercial a boss is on one end of a teleconference in the office discussing business with three of the people that work for him that we assume are out on a business trip. Halfway through the commercial the background behind the three employees falls over to expose that they are really on the golf course. They attempt to smash their laptop to severe their connection with the boss but he can still hear everything they are saying. It is a commercial that is effective on many levels.

The commercial shows how work can get done from anywhere using the video conference calling and it also shows the effectiveness of video conference calling versus conference calling that does not involve the video element. Not only can more work get done for less money with video conference calling but now the boss can be sure that business trips are used for business and in a struggling economy where every penny counts that is a winning situation for any company.

In this economic climate it is important to look at some business facts when you are considering ways to enhance and grow your business. Travel expenses on business have become a burden and are taking away from corporate bottom lines. Hotels and rental car companies are adding in charges that did not previously exist and with the way these companies are structuring their agreements with customers it is nearly impossible to avoid paying many of these extra charges. Air travel has spiked in cost in the past year or two and where it used to be financially feasible to fly out to see a client just two years ago it is now a financial nightmare to try and book a last minute flight or make any changes to your flight arrangements once you have finalized them. Businesses need alternatives to travel and video conferencing is the answer.

As high speed and broadband Internet services become more widely available all over the world more companies are turning to video conferencing services to help reduce the cost of travel. With a video conference you eliminate the cost of plane tickets, car rental, meals, hotel rooms, and any incidentals that get expensed to business travel. You and your customers can still see each other for important meetings, share visual information, and close the deal with video conferencing.

Video conferencing is good for much more than just sales calls and client meetings. Many technical companies offer on site support to their clients and many of those technical companies are starting to offer support via video conferencing. Depending on the product or service it is possible for a qualified technician to diagnose and treat even the most complex issues using video conferencing. A technician can walk the client’s representative through the repair process using video conferencing and the technician can use real life models of the product to make the process simpler. Companies that did not offer on site technical support can now offer a video conferencing as a method of onsite support and the cost to the technical company is almost negligible.

Video conferencing also has other business implications that may not seem readily apparent. People that are hearing or speech impaired can now get involved in long distance meetings without having to leave the office. Sign language can be used as a form of communication during a video conference. If you own a company that deals in educational products you could use video conferencing to reach children and teachers all over the world and expand your customer base without ever leaving your office.

There are endless possibilities with video conferencing as you can apply video conferencing to almost any situation that you would normally have to address in person. With some creative thinking you can even develop ways for your product or service to reach clients all over the world you would not normally have a chance to meet without video conferencing.