Web Videoconferencing

Web Videoconferencing
Web conferencing is mainly used for training or sales presentations where you use your Web
browser, connect to a Web conference Web site, and view a presentation with a few or even
hundreds of participants. Web conference participants can reside anywhere in the world and
attend over a broadband connection or within a corporate network. Web conferencing does
not contain any video options. Web videoconferencing adds video to a Web conference
providing you a more interactive solution allowing participants to see the presenter and
potentially one another.
Web videoconferencing enables everyone to see body language and expressions and
provides the ability to hold up things that all the participants can see, like an actual product,
or for the presenter to show something speci?c to the participants. Web conferencing or
Web videoconferencing has basic options like desktop sharing, viewing Microsoft
PowerPoint presentations, markup, whiteboard, and chat, for the participants to ask ques-
tions, and all the features needed to control the conference. Participants usually connect
audio by making a telephone conference call and if the solution is internal to a company
can even use VoIP for the audio portion. Web videoconferencing is a truly collaborative tool
whereas the solutions in Chapters 6 and 7 are for one-on-one video calls or multi-user
video calls with some conferencing or collaboration capabilities.The main difference
between solutions we already discussed in Chapters 6 and 7 and this chapter are features and
the ability to have hundreds of participants.
We are often asked,"How do I have video calls with multiple people?" Well, the answer
is: it depends on how many people you want to communicate with. We de?ned early in the
book that personal videoconferencing was one-on-one, but as we discussed in Chapters 6
and 7, it can be roughly up to four users, with some exceptions, on your typical broadband
connection. So how do you have video calls if you need to conduct a training session or
give a presentation with lots of people watching? We have limits to what we can do with
Other Videoconferencing ? Chapter 8
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our home broadband connections and we have tried to convey that home broadband is best
used for one-on-one, but you could join a very large Web videoconference in order to
watch a presentation from the company president or for a training presentation, for
example.
Basically, Web videoconferencing is a one-to-many video call, meaning one person is
sending a lot of people his or her video and all the attendees can see the conference leader's
video. Unfortunately, the attendees are limited in what video they can send to the confer-
ence leader. Like in personal videoconferencing, you are also limited to what home broad-
band can handle and thus are limited to roughly four to twelve simultaneous video sessions
per Web videoconference. Everyone, however, can send text messages and participate with
voice via a telephone conference call that is part of a Web videoconference. Since you will
not know what the end user's broadband connection speed is, you should take this into
account when you decide how many participants in a Web videoconference you will allow
to receive video.Testing and trial and error will also show you how many users are practical
for your Web videoconference calls. Know that the number of users you can have will
improve over time as the solutions develop and as home broadband connections get faster
and as video call technology gets better.
The Web videoconference solutions do, however, enable the presenter or presenters to
control who can send video.The presenter or conference leader, for example, could change
the people allowed to send video to any of the Web videoconference participants, so in
effect, they could be able to see each of the people in the Web videoconference at one time
or another during the Web videoconference as needed.To fully understand the options
behind Web conferencing, consider reading The Web Conferencing Book (AMACOM, ISBN:
0-8144-7174-9) by Sue Spielman and Liz Winfeld.

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