I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up
tight about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

Feedback via chat-like facility.

Must be extremely easy to set up and use. They do use Windows 7 so that
defines the platform for them - but ideally would also work for viewers
on Linux-based and OSX, maybe even Android?

Must be extremely inexpensive - ideally without any charges at all.

Suggestions very much wanted. I am getting very tired of visiting
product after product and then realising what is wrong or not
understanding some aspect. So real-world experience counts.

My personal experience has been with Skype - adequate though not brilliant.

--
Rod

On 16/10/12 13:28, polygonum wrote:
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up
tight about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

There's a Skype-like product developed in the UK by a team with
experience of working with charities. I worked with them while at RNID.
If any of your users require BSL then this place is a good starting point.

http://www.myfriendcentral.com/

I assume that you've considered Youtube? Were there any specific
problems with it? Do you need interactivity?


--
Bernard Peek

In article ,
polygonum writes:
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up
tight about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

Feedback via chat-like facility.

Must be extremely easy to set up and use. They do use Windows 7 so that
defines the platform for them - but ideally would also work for viewers
on Linux-based and OSX, maybe even Android?

Must be extremely inexpensive - ideally without any charges at all.

Suggestions very much wanted. I am getting very tired of visiting
product after product and then realising what is wrong or not
understanding some aspect. So real-world experience counts.

My personal experience has been with Skype - adequate though not brilliant.

My number one gripe with webinars - don't use a webinar to present
powerpoint (or similar) slides. Distribute a PDF and hold a phone
conference instead. That way you don't get the presentor change
each slide when you're halfway through reading it, and you can go
back and refer to an earlier slide anytime you like, and you can
make notes on them during the presentation and keep them for future
reference. If you are not interested in the topics covered in the
rest of the slides, you can drop off the call and do something more
useful instead.

The amount of time wasted by webinars which should have been done
some other way is enormous IME. And that's not even counting the
technology screwups where you waste half the time trying to get
all the participants connected in.

There are cases where webinars are appropriate; some live demos,
for example.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

在 2012å¹´10月16日星期二UTC+8下å�ˆ8æ—¶28分52ç§ ’，polygonum写é�“：
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do

webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up

tight about it!)



Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many

watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.



Feedback via chat-like facility.



Must be extremely easy to set up and use. They do use Windows 7 so that

defines the platform for them - but ideally would also work for viewers

on Linux-based and OSX, maybe even Android?



Must be extremely inexpensive - ideally without any charges at all.



Suggestions very much wanted. I am getting very tired of visiting

product after product and then realising what is wrong or not

understanding some aspect. So real-world experience counts.



My personal experience has been with Skype - adequate though not brilliant.

"polygonum" wrote in message
...
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up tight
about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

Feedback via chat-like facility.

Must be extremely easy to set up and use. They do use Windows 7 so that
defines the platform for them - but ideally would also work for viewers on
Linux-based and OSX, maybe even Android?

Must be extremely inexpensive - ideally without any charges at all.

Suggestions very much wanted. I am getting very tired of visiting product
after product and then realising what is wrong or not understanding some
aspect. So real-world experience counts.

My personal experience has been with Skype - adequate though not
brilliant.

I'd go with some kind of streaming broadcast software like Ustream (it's
free, Google it) for the speaker to use. It's not a conferencing solution,
but if I understand correctly, you're looking to broadcast video of one
person to many people.

If the charity has a web site then it's a simple job to embed the video onto
a page of the site, and point the "watchers" to it. The advantage being that
when not broadcasting, the page could tell visitors exactly when the *next*
presentation would be, maybe along with links to archived previous
broadcasts - there will always be people who can't watch it "live" and will
want to watch later. The other advantage of using HTML pages for the
broadcast is that it is cross-platform, so accessible for Windows, Linux,
Android, I-phones etc without the user needing any special software. Very
simple to set up, and in my experience Google will answer any technical
issues you may have setting it up or running it. There are also sites (see
justin.tv for example) which host your broadcast for you and also have a
live chat facility, although most are full of adverts which is why I'd look
for alternative solutions.

As for chat-like facility, there are lots of free chat scripts out there
that you could incorporate into your page:

www.hotscripts.com

but have you thought about using something like Facebook? You can combine
Facebook and Ustream :

http://www.ustream.tv/facebook

and of course the standard Facebook "comments" section would fulfil your
audience feedback needs. It's ideal for those with limited technical
knowledge, it's free, you don't need any software or hosting and it'll do
all the work for you.

With any of the solutions above, number of watchers is irrelevant, you can
broadcast to one or one million.

On 16/10/2012 13:49, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In ,
writes:
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up
tight about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

Feedback via chat-like facility.

Must be extremely easy to set up and use. They do use Windows 7 so that
defines the platform for them - but ideally would also work for viewers
on Linux-based and OSX, maybe even Android?

Must be extremely inexpensive - ideally without any charges at all.

Suggestions very much wanted. I am getting very tired of visiting
product after product and then realising what is wrong or not
understanding some aspect. So real-world experience counts.

My personal experience has been with Skype - adequate though not brilliant.

My number one gripe with webinars - don't use a webinar to present
powerpoint (or similar) slides. Distribute a PDF and hold a phone
conference instead. That way you don't get the presentor change
each slide when you're halfway through reading it, and you can go
back and refer to an earlier slide anytime you like, and you can
make notes on them during the presentation and keep them for future
reference. If you are not interested in the topics covered in the
rest of the slides, you can drop off the call and do something more
useful instead.

The amount of time wasted by webinars which should have been done
some other way is enormous IME. And that's not even counting the
technology screwups where you waste half the time trying to get
all the participants connected in.

There are cases where webinars are appropriate; some live demos,
for example.

I absolutely agree with your points. But your haing made them makes me
think even more that those wishing to hold them probably don't
understand that - and I shall make it clearer to them. Thanks.

--
Rod

On 16/10/2012 13:41, Bernard Peek wrote:
On 16/10/12 13:28, polygonum wrote:
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up
tight about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

There's a Skype-like product developed in the UK by a team with
experience of working with charities. I worked with them while at RNID.
If any of your users require BSL then this place is a good starting point.

http://www.myfriendcentral.com/

I assume that you've considered Youtube? Were there any specific
problems with it? Do you need interactivity?


That myFriend is really interesting - I suspect it does not quite answer
what we need - largely due to all users having to install something. I
think that we really want it to be accessible directly by browser. But
maybe I am wrong?

Yes - I think interactivity is the crux. The charity already has links
with another video service provider and that works fine for static video
presentation.

Many thanks.

--
Rod

On 16/10/12 16:07, polygonum wrote:
On 16/10/2012 13:41, Bernard Peek wrote:
On 16/10/12 13:28, polygonum wrote:
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up
tight about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in
future.

There's a Skype-like product developed in the UK by a team with
experience of working with charities. I worked with them while at RNID.
If any of your users require BSL then this place is a good starting
point.

http://www.myfriendcentral.com/

I assume that you've considered Youtube? Were there any specific
problems with it? Do you need interactivity?


That myFriend is really interesting - I suspect it does not quite answer
what we need - largely due to all users having to install something. I
think that we really want it to be accessible directly by browser. But
maybe I am wrong?

Another past employer of mine has some suitable software. Steljes sells
conferencing software called Bridgit. You would need to buy a license
for the central system, remote users would just need web browsers.
LogMeIn is a similar product.

If I were you I wouldn't commit to buying anything until it is clear
what elements of the requirements can be met by Microsoft's Office 2013.
The reviews I've read suggest that it can do a lot of what you want. How
you would pay for it is not yet clear. Microsoft has various schemes for
supplying charities with cheap or free software.

Everything that you want is probably possible with a bog-standard
web-site, if you have people who can do the development work.


--
Bernard Peek

In article ,
polygonum writes:
On 16/10/2012 13:41, Bernard Peek wrote:
On 16/10/12 13:28, polygonum wrote:
I am trying to help a very small charity who want to be able to do
webinars. (Hate the term with a vengeance, but not worth getting up
tight about it!)

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

There's a Skype-like product developed in the UK by a team with
experience of working with charities. I worked with them while at RNID.
If any of your users require BSL then this place is a good starting point.

http://www.myfriendcentral.com/

I assume that you've considered Youtube? Were there any specific
problems with it? Do you need interactivity?


That myFriend is really interesting - I suspect it does not quite answer
what we need - largely due to all users having to install something. I
think that we really want it to be accessible directly by browser. But
maybe I am wrong?

For webinars which don't need anything extra installed, and work
on other platforms than only Windows, we use webex.com
I've no idea on the costs, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's not
cheap. If you are going to present slides (in spite of what I said
earlier;-), you can do it from your desktop, but much better is that
you can upload them to webex before, and then they appear as much
better quality. It can do integrated audio too, although the majority
of webexs I end up on actually use a separate conference call for the
audio.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

polygonum wrote:

Very simply - one person at charity does presentation to camera. Many
watch - where many probably means a few tens but could be more in future.

YouTube.

Feedback via chat-like facility.

You won't get that.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/