Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Go-To-Meeting is typical of many of the web conferencing solutions in that both the presenter and the attendees download components that enable functionality directly within a web browser. With a subscription payment the presenter downloads the entire application.

This opens as a panel or console on his or her screen, allows for a meeting to be scheduled or commenced immediately. Since a meeting requires participants, the presenter has various options for inviting others—including a telephone call or an email message generated directly from the console.

Figure 918

As he or she gets ready for the meeting, the presenter in Go-To-Meeting can minimize the console and continue to work normally. PowerPoint slides do not have to be loaded to an online application.

Figure 919

Meeting participants receive an email message with the link to the meeting, along with the telephone number and conference ID code for the audio portion.

Figure 920

Clicking the email link begins the download process for the free Go-To-Meeting client that allows participants to attend the web conference.

Figure 921

Now the presenter can begin the meeting when he sees that his participants have "arrived" within his or her console. To show a presentation with PowerPoint, he simply opens the program and begins the presentation. The presenter now clicks the Show My Screen(s) option and decides to broadcast the screen with the presentation out to participants.

Figure 922

Among the options is to isolate a single application for broadcast (among the open programs) and to show the entire desktop behind the application or to broadcast "CLEAN", with a simple background that hides irrelevant desktop icons from the participants.

The participants will by now have the Go-To-Meeting screen up in their web browsers.

Figure 923

With the screen being shared, they see what the presenter chooses to show—the monitor with the PowerPoint presentation. In this case it's the Gridlock presentation showing them what they are missing by not having to travel to the conference.

But there is a reason why no Whiteboard is needed in Go-To-Meeting, any application can be shared in this manner, and even more important, the control of the mouse and keyboard can be given to any participant. In the next figure, a participant is controlling the presenter's computer through his web browser, and highlighting a word document he has opened for changes.

Figure 924

In addition, any participant can also be granted presenter status and begin to share his or her desktop to the other participants.

Figure 925

As a guest presenter there are highlighting tools available for annotations that become visible in the browsers of all participants and the moderator.

Figure 926

In this way Go-To-Meeting becomes a fully collaborative web conferencing environment.

But there are trade-offs and limitations. Unlike the dedicated video conferencing systems, this scenario generally does not permit a video window showing the participants or the presenter.

And if the presenter attempts to show a slide with video, it generally won't be visible in "real time" to the audience—again due to bandwidth constraints.

This brings up another point for presenters—it is important to know what the audience is actually seeing. Since your presentation system is performing normally, everything happens the way you expect. If you play a PowerPoint slide with builds or animation, you see no delay.

But the audience is dependent upon the Internet for their connection, and some may even be on dial-up connections. In order to see what they're seeing, you might want to log on as a participant with a laptop, and have its screen available to monitor what your audience is seeing.

The current telephone conference scenario for audio can also present some challenges. Sometimes the participants are asked to mute their phones, but bear in mind that this isolates the presenter and prevents him or her from hearing feedback like "slow down" or "speak up."

While chat is a good way to handle Q&A, chances are the presenter won't be able to do that and concentrate on the presentation since both require the keyboard and mouse. A good scenario has an associate or assistant filtering Q&A through the chat area and forwarding the most pertinent comments to the presenter.

Finally there is also an option for recording the entire meeting including the audio portion, which you can then archive online so that those who missed the meeting can review it—generally as a video file in their web browser.

If you need it, you should also look for interactive polling capability which comes with many of these programs. While Go-To-Meeting has annotation features, other programs have a dedicated whiteboard. (Microsoft Live Meeting has these features but at this point seems to lack the ability to transfer remote control).

And then if video during the presentation or of the presenter is an essential part of your conference, you may need to investigate other solutions.

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