Wednesday 28 September 2011

Corporate Houses using the Webcast Technology

LiveStreamPro, New Delhi (India), 9810999475, 9818406080

Many big corporate houses are making use of the webcasting and streaming technology these days. Webcasting means the broadcasting of a live event or an activity over the internet for its virtual viewing by known and sometimes unknown audience. This depends on whether the event is webcasted for private viewing or public viewing.
Virtual Event Webcasted by LiveStreamPro
Samsung Galaxy Tablet Launch

Just last month on August 10, 2011, Samsung launched its much awaited Galaxy TABS 750 and 730 in India and it used the webcasting technology to share it with the world. LiveStreamPro was responsible for webcasting it.

So basically, Samsung invited a few media people to the event who were physically present there and also invited the rest of the world to be virtually present and watch the event over the Internet. This resulted in a huge viewership for the event. And the good news for Samsung team was that they did not have to worry about logistics, and other hospitality issues, and still had the entire world watching them launching the new tablets. And such is the advantage of organizing a virtual event and making use of webcasting technology.

Many other big companies like Red Hat Enterprise and HubSpot use webcasting technology to promote their products/ services. Red Hat uses webcast for training and informing people on its products. Red Hat regularly organizes these webcasts and takes up one topic of discussion and train people on it.

Like HubSpot, an inbound marketing company, that organizes webinars on a monthly basis to educate about their various online services. It works out as a great marketing tool for them as the people participating in the webinar are all their potential customers, and many of them take up their services also.

Moreover, all these webcasted events and webinars are recorded and also put online for future viewing for those people who have not attended it live earlier, and this increases the life of the virtual event or webinar. 

There are many many more corporate houses and businesses which are using the various applications of the streaming technology to promote their business and reach out to their customers and employees globally.



You may also like to read:
a) Adobe Flash Webcasting on the iPad
b) Webcasting can benefit you only if you use it 
c) Webcasting goes Political 


Sunday 25 September 2011

Webinar helped me manage time

 LiveStreamPro, New Delhi (India), 9810999475, 9818406080

I am a visiting faculty at many colleges and educational centres. A few months back I was struggling a lot with time issues. With increasing traffic on roads, the distances  also seemed to be increasing and I was taking more and more time in reaching places. It seemed to me like I was forever on the road. 

Sometimes I even missed my class or reached the class late, because I was stuck in traffic. And by the end of the day I felt tired, exhausted, but more than that I was frustrated. Moreover, this continuous travel was affecting my health and it goes without saying that my work was suffering too.

As a solution to my problems I opted to webinars. Webinars is like an interactive seminar which I conduct from my office and is attended by students either assembled in classrooms or even their respective houses. During my presentation I mute the voices of the audiences, but they can ask me their questions by typing them on the messenger provided on the screen. But I open the sound at the end of the class for question answer session. 

Through this amazing facility I am also able to take back to back sessions for different centres. Sometime I even take sessions for multiple centres together. Webinars have made my life so much simpler. Now I only travel for limited lectures and at times when I can avoid traffic.

There are many interactive options you can have in webinar that your service provider can help you with. And all this makes webinar an excellent technology and has taken education system to another level altogether. A lot of my students attend my lectures from other states too.

To me it means cost saving, less tiredness, less stress, better health and getting a lot of work done. I am now able to manage my time a lot better and also concentrate on activities which otherwise were completely neglected by me.

Good reads:


Wednesday 21 September 2011

Types of Webinars

LiveStreamPro, New Delhi (India), 9810999475, 9818406080

Webinar is short for Web-based seminar. Webinars can be attended from anywhere, from the comfort and convenience of your home or the office or may be a coffee shop. This makes Webinars quiet cost-effective as it saves the travel time as well as cost.

Webinars are basically presentations, lectures, workshops or seminars that are conducted over the Web. Generally webinars are used for selling and also for training or information purposes.

The training webinars are of following types:
  1. Unidirectional Training Webinars: In this, the presenter provides the training over the internet and the attendees to the training just receive the training. There is no interaction between the presenter and the attendees. Generally these types of trainings are recorded and either uploaded on the internet for on demand viewing or sold as DVDs and Videos.
  2. Two-directional Training Webinars: In this type of trainings there is a two way communication between the presenter and the attendees.  The webinars are highly interactive and there is plenty of scope for discussion and doubts asking and clearing.
Sales/ Information webinars have the following features:
  1. Sales Webinars: Identifies the key attributes of a product or service, highlighting its benefits to the customer. These types of webinars should be focused, to the point, light and fast, which sparks the immediate interest of the customer. Customers today are short of time and patience and always need to know what is in for them. 
  2. Hybrid mix of Sales and Training (Information) Webinars: These types of webinars are generally very sensitively handled. While the customers are invited to attend an informative session, there is a sales pitch included in the presentation. The sensitive part is where you do not let the people know that a sales pitch is being made to them, else they feel cheated.
Any type of webinar needs proper planning in order to derive maximum benefits from it. They need to be well thought of and informative so that customers or students, as the case may be, are glued to their computers and the purpose with which the webinar had been planned is fully met.

The webinars can have one speaker or multiple speakers. Coordination and facilitation is one important part to make success of a webinar. And therefore it is very important to choose the right vendor to webcast the webinar for you. Do not forget to find out the experience and technology used by the vendor. 

LiveStreamPro is one such webinar vendor who is technically proficient as well experienced to undertake a webinar of any type and scale. Visit www.livestreampro.com for more details.

Other good reads:
b) Webcasting can benefit you only if you use it
c) Business Applications of Webcasting

Saturday 17 September 2011

Adobe Flash Webcasting on the iPad

MediaPlatform, the enterprise video software company, in Sept, 2011 announced that its WebCaster software is the first to deliver live webcasts on the Apple iPad® using HTTP live streaming (HLS).

The WebCaster software allows iPad users to view and interact with live presentations that integrate video streaming from Adobe Flash Media Enterprise Server 4.5 and PowerPoint slides. The company now provides webcasting to many different tablets since it started offering webcasting to Android devices earlier this year.

"Getting Flash video on to the iPad is an absolute 'must have' for so many of our large enterprise clients," says Andrew Irving, director of Webcasting at Mediaco, a Canadian event production company. "The MediaPlatform iPad solution is an important innovation that fits with our mobile webcasting vision."

According to a recent study from Interactive Media Strategies, 51 percent of corporate users would view business video more frequently if they had access to it on a tablet.

"Enterprises need their employees to be able to access webcasts and other corporate video from whatever device, browser and platform they're using." says Greg Pulier, president, MediaPlatform. "Our introduction of interactive, live HLS webcasting to the iPad satisfies this enterprise need while delivering all the technological and network benefits of the Adobe Flash Platform to the corporate IT department."


Wednesday 14 September 2011

Virtual Events – A Practical & Convenient Alternative

LiveStreamPro, New Delhi (India), 9810999475, 9818406080

Before we get into what the various advantages of Virtual Events are, let us first know what a Virtual Event is. 


So what is a Virtual Event?  According to Wikipedia, “a Virtual Event is a gathering of people sharing a common virtual environment on the web, rather than meeting in a physical location. Virtual events are highly interactive, looking and feeling a lot like their physical counterparts.”

With the prices of petrol and diesel increasing and the traffic growing everyday, all companies are concerned about their increasing budgets and the time people waste on traveling and end up effecting their productivity. And so many companies are resorting to various types of virtual communication like organizing virtual events and making use of webcasting techniques in order to save costs and reduce various expenses in terms of time, travel as well as logistics. 



virtual events
 
Virtual Events can be beneficial to any organization in the following ways:

  • Reach out to larger audiences, both nationally and internationally.
  • Reduce event costs, in terms of time, travel and logistics.
  • Anyone can watch the event from anywhere, individually or in groups.
  • Eases the mental stress caused to people during traveling for meetings and trying to reach on time.
  • Helps reduce pollution, thus contributing to a green environment.
  • The on-demand services available after the event is over, increases the life-span of the event and helps the attendees re-visit the proceedings if they have missed any part.
  • Provides excellent ROI.

Most of the companies today use virtual events parallel to physical events; they amalgamate virtual event and physical events, due to the various advantages they offer. The virtual events are so convenient to organize and are so cost effective that more and more companies are using them.

In a data compiled by ON24, a San Francisco based virtual events company, the environmental benefits of virtual events show that a virtual event with 2,300 participants can reduce carbon emissions by some 3,300 tons; an estimated 17,000 trees would be needed to have a similar effect. Furthermore, a virtual event saves an average of 36,000 sheets of paper per event and can decrease both water consumption and the creation of solid waste.

LiveStreamPro is an organization based in Delhi that excels in facilitating virtual events. We are webcasters of various virtual events for large corporates like Samsung, Chivas Regal and Lanco Group. We are well equipped to webcast virtual events of any scale for all types of organizations – small, medium or large.


Wednesday 7 September 2011

I attended my first webinar today!

LiveStreamPro, New Delhi (India), 9810999475, 9818406080

I had heard a lot about webinars and always wanted to experience one myself. And finally I got a chance to attend one... it was my weekend class for MBA.

I was sent link to the class on my email along with the date and time as well as the username password to attend it and directions on what needs to be done.

On the given date and time, I clicked on the link sent to me and entered my username password. It was a private event so I waited for the presenter to accept my request. When I finally was allowed to view the webinar, it looked something like the screen shown below:

Webinar
As you see in the image, I was able to see the entire presentation and hear my professor explain the concepts in detail. On the right side of the screen, I could see all the attendees to the class. The attendees were from across India as well as from abroad. There was also a screen where we could ask questions from the professor.

The professor was very good. He went on with the class slowly and to make the class interactive he kept on asking questions from the class and the participants typed in their answers. Whenever there were questions, the participants typed in the questions and the professor took on all the questions and answered.

The class could have been very boring if it was only the presenter speaking and we would have got frustrated if we had no medium to convey our queries. But the interactive feature did wonders to the way the class went. A blissful technology indeed and it was very well facilitated by the webinar service provider who was in charge. I logged out 2-3 times because of poor net connectivity and had to log in again. My request was instantaneously accepted, so I did not miss much.

This is the first time I attended a class from my house, without any worries of travelling to the study centre in the mid-day Delhi traffic, finding a decent place to sit and feeling awkward to ask questions in a class full of people staring at you. The experience was just magnificent. I was stress-free, saved me so much of time and I was able to attend the class without any disturbances.

There are other forms of webinars too. In one you are able to see the presenter as well as his presentation. And then there are public webinars which everyone can watch without restrictions. It all depends on the features that your service provider offers you, so in order to get a satisfactory experience, it is very important to choose the vendor who is able to provide you with options you require.