Click Meeting

          Webinars – What, When and How Long? With today’s multitasking work styles and short attention spans, it’s essential to plan meetings and presentations so you grab and hold your audience’s attention. You need to allow enough time for each section, as well as for the entire event. This is especially important to avoid those “drop outs” who become bored quickly. It’s your job to make your event interesting and interactive, with enough breaks to keep the energy high. Before we give you some proven ClickMeeting tips and tricks, let’s check out… What the Experts Say. We asked Marta Eichstaedt, webinar expert, business coach/consultant, and certified online trainer, how she determined the proper length. This is what she advised us: “The length of a webinar depends on the goal we want to achieve. There are, however, some rules and techniques that apply. In general, when used as marketing tools, webinars should last between 30 and 60 minutes. This length should take into account time for interaction with your audience. Training events can last longer. For example, I organize online workshops for trainers who want to run their own online training series. These workshops take 90 minutes and the whole course includes 7 meetings. The attendee group is really small (maximum 6 people) and there is a lot of interaction and activities performed by the attendees themselves. However, even with highly interactive workshops, I wouldn’t recommend exceeding two hours per session. Another example is an extended conference like the Social Media Success Summit which comprises 4 weeks of training in weekly or biweekly webinars, each lasting about 45 minutes. They hold three webinars a day, with 20-minute breaks. The whole event is about 20 different webinars altogether and this format turns out to work best for this topic and audience.” After hearing from the experts and, based on our own experience, we can conclude that webinars typically last around 60 minutes – about the length of an installment of your favorite TV series. This also makes it easy to fit in most of your attendees’ calendars. What should a webinar include The crucial thing is to plan your content so that it’s interesting and allows enough time to cover the essential topics and activities. And practice! Here are some tips to consider: Polling. This tool provides both feedback and interaction. And the best thing is you can continue speaking while your attendees answer the questions, then quickly sum up and present the results with an animated chart. Alternate tabs. Use tabs to quickly switch between content (just make sure to upload the documents etc. before the webinar). This will keep your audience entertained without wasting your time (and there’s nothing worse than making your attendees wait until your PowerPoint uploads). Pace yourself. Don’t rush, making it difficult for the attendees to follow you. Try to find that perfect balance whereby you cover all the material, capture feedback, and make some decisions. Now this may take some practice. But it’ll be worth it. Hold a Q&A session at the end. Wrap up at least 15 minutes early to let people ask questions. Don’t forget to put this in the meeting agenda as this is a popular item with attendees. Then they’ll be sure to stick around till the end. When to schedule a webinar? There are as many date/time preferences as there are people, so it’s best to use your own judgment and follow a few common-sense rules. And always think about your audience first. Think of when you like to attend webinars – Monday is usually when people are busiest after the weekend and a lot of unexpected projects pop up. The same can be said about Fridays, plus you have the “TGIF” factor. So sometime around the middle of the week is probably best but, as I said, this is not a strict rule. As for time of day, one factor to keep in mind is that if your audience is international, you obviously need to pick a time when the greatest number will be able to attend, regardless of time zone. Of course this, again, depends on your audience so the best thing to do is place yourself in their shoes. If you run a series of webinars, you can always poll your attendees or prepare an online survey and ask your audience what days and times they prefer. This is likely to be true for other people who might join your webinar, too.
       

Cisco is going to change the internet forever

Cisco has been claiming they will "change the internet forever" and their impact on individuals, governments, and businesses will be revolutionary. While Cisco is making these claims, what exactly are they doing that is so monumental that it will change the internet and the way in which we browse online?


Cisco announced a new networking router that is going to be top-of-the-line and transform the internet. This revolutionary product is known as the Cisco CRS-3 Routing System. This new router is setting the standard for all future growth of the internet, especially for video growth to occur. It has about 12 times more traffic capacity from other systems. It transfers about 322 terabits per second, which is absolutely amazing compared to other systems.

How fast is it really? Well according to Cisco you can download the entire Library of Congress in about a second. Pretty impressive right? The internet is going to keep growing and advancing and users are demanding faster service, better download capabilities, and better online browsing. It looks as though Cisco is listening to these demands and they are trying to meet the expectations of customers.




Cisco is focusing more on the overall design of the internet, versus more about web surfers and the internet. By fixing some of the problems customers are seeing with the actual "pipeline" of the internet the normal internet browser will see improvement.

Video and other communications are the future of the internet. This is why Cisco is so focused on making the internet as advanced as possible because dealing with slow video chat connections and other things can cause a lot of problems for a number of customers.

AT&T is working with the CRS-3 routing system to test it out and see if it is worth all the hype Cisco is talking about. Cisco is focused on the improvement of the internet now, but they are building products that are focused more on future generations as they will thrive on video communication and other communication devices to stay in touch with one another.

Which companies have the best potential for growth and development with Cisco? Right now it looks as though health care industries are going to benefit greatly because they can get in touch with doctors and researchers all over the world to provide the best care to patients battling a number of conditions. Other companies that are going to benefit include government organizations and educational institutions. Having the online video sharing tools they need allow you all to get in touch with each other faster and it offers better and faster service for everyone.

Cisco is being seen as the "core of the internet" by a number of other companies as they are creating a stronger backbone for the internet to offer better service for everyone. If this is what Cisco is doing now future generations are only going to benefit more with the new technologies that are coming out to make video conferencing and download times faster and better.

While Cisco isn't really all that impressive to the standard user, it is pretty amazing to designers and others that see more in the core design of the internet. The consumer-level customers may notice a difference in their internet speeds and download times but the experience everyone will experience online will be noticeable, even if it doesn't initially "wow" you and turn your head towards Cisco. However Cisco is drawing a lot of attention from a variety of users and designers that see where Cisco is taking the internet and the new technologies they are creating that will make your life much easier and better.