The First CMM Webinar- The Aftermath and the Rerun
On January 3rd, a monumental event was held- the first ever Cranky Middle Manager Webinar. We met with 10 CMM listeners from around the world. The topic was “Managing Remote Employees- Using Webmeetings to Keep Them Engaged”
The good news- it was a big hit and we had listeners join in by chat and voice from 5 countries. of course , if you’re one of those who was on that meeting let’s hear what you have to say…. let folks know if it’s worth tuning in for.
The bad news- I screwed up the recording so you can’t hear it, which got me thinking- let’s do another one at a different time so people in Australia can come and folks in North America can join in after work….. why not?
So: We are Repeating the Webinar on Tuesday Night January 29th at 9 PM (Central time in the US) Which is 2 PM January 30th in Melbourne, 8:30 AM in Mumbai. Drop me an email to sign up- we have 20 spots available. You don’t need a phone, just speakers, earphones, and if you have a mic for your computer we’ll get to hear your questions live.
This time I’ll get it recorded and put it up on the shiny new CMM website which goes up this weekend, tech gods willing.
If this one goes as well as the last one we’ll do lots more of these over the course of the year.
January 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Dimdim
A meeting was held via Dimdim. It’s better to describe the system first because it were the features that mostly defined the action.
I should confess I used to think why not to make a conference call via skype? And dimdim seemed to me a system for international calls like jaxtr.com. I realized limits of my vision then :)
Dimdim is a sophisticated system, a bit misleading first time (non-intuitive) and has following features:
a list of attendees with statuses (like x-statuses in icq: you can highlight your mood, having a question and so on. A strong tool in skilful hands (and Wayne has one of them). Microphonу management is also held there (for not more than 1 microphone to be turned on simultaneously),an area for presentation, where a presenter manages the slides,a webcam area (as I understood, only a stream from a leader can be translated, as thus it will cause more requirements for bandwidth),chats (overall and private ones).
А leader interface probably consists of more features but I didn’t have a need to study it.
User interface of the system, what made some problems for me caused by my plug-ins restricting autoplay.
The system also has its own disadvantages:
a system of invitations. I don’t tend to treat myself as a dummy user, but it took me huge time to realize that not being unable to accept invitation before the meeting is NORMAL. I first tended to write an e-mail to Wayne but then realized the issue. But when I received a second invitation 15 minutes before the meeting and failed to login I started flapping :) I managed to login with some manipulations I don’t remember, what I rememer is that it was really difficult.non-intuitivity I mentioned earlier. Wayne had to explain me waht to do in private chat to start the conversationhow it finished. After Wayne (as I expect) pushed a finishing button, everybody were throwed out from the meeting room. It’s good yhat I managed to realize to make a local backup of attendees’ information, but out chat is likely to disappear :( It is worth to give a pause to finish the conversation.
The process
1. The beginning.
I am likely to be the most disciplined among all attendees :) and logined to a meeting first.
As it turned out then, only Karthik, our counterpart from India and me have never sent e-mails during web meetings. It was mentioned reasonably that we are certain not to have participated in them :) They are right but I don’t to distinguish web meetings and conference calls from this point of view.
All in all due to problems with plug-ins I skipped the very beginning and joined an already started conversation.
2. Introduction, testing. I didn’t realize from the beginning that my voice is not to be heard :) and settled down only after the testing.
3. The presentation. The presenter led the process using his slides, we simultaneously writed down questions (mostly when Wayne asked us to do so). Web meeting itself were the topic of our seminar and we were shown what engagement is practically, giving attendees opportunity to ask questions and thus participate in the meeting.
The meeting posed a question to be answered: is it possible not to lose concentration in such a stream. From one side, I suppose that being more experienced I could better navigate in ths stream and cope with difficulties experienced thiss time. And a guideline from developers or ведущего could probably be very helpful. From the other side, it is impossible not to lose concentration
4. Q&A. Those who can (like me) asked questions orally, others - in a written form. Due to time limitations everybody really has an opportunity to ask the only question, because 2 minutes for questions of 9 attendees is 18 minutes.
Resume
1. Unusual impressions from new technology. Cool and engaging!
2. Nevertheless the question is to be asked if it is real not to lose yourself in this information stream.
3. Most disadvantages not seen when it is your firs experience are probably catched by Wayne and next time he will conduct the presentation even better.
4. Taking part itself was undoubtly useful because it gave knowledge my common conversaion (e.g. conferece calls) as well as an opportunity to judge on web meetings’ usefulness at whole.
5. It is worth using Web meetings in my job, but on permament basis, because at stand-alone presentation listeners are likely to be lost in wide range of possibilities granted by the system. Or it is worth to substitude Dimdim with other service :)
January 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Wow, thanks Pavel. Dimdim, like all of these technologies has its plusses and its drawbacks. In the case of our worldwide audience the main plus is that we don’t need to use expensive international calling for us to join together. 5 countries on one call… oh, and it’s free. Just I’ll have to ask everyone to take off their popup blockers and dial in a couple of minutes early.
You’re right too- having done this once I can’t wait for the rerun on the 29-30th….