Conferencing News

Google Voice - with Conference Calling

June 21, 2009

What Conferencing News said in 2003

With all the media coverage of how the airlines will suffer mightily because of increased adoption of conferencing, we thought it appropriate to revisit the views of Conferencing News to see what we had to say back in 2003.

"The smartest thing the cost-cutting, non-union, exceptional-service-providing, premier US-based airline JetBlue should do with its wonderfully valued stock price is acquire Genesys, Webex, Raindance, and Act and transition the aggregated company over the next ten years as the brand to set up meetings with - via conferencing or flying to get there face-to-face. ...The airlines that cater to businesses will never - ever - enjoy the huge revenues it once commanded. The current hustle and bustle at airports today for business travel are the last twitches in the corpse of the airline industry. ...But ever-better and cheaper conferencing services over the next 10 years will take away 75% of the typical business travel by planes that we spend lots of time and money on today. Those shuttle flights full of business people - wasting money and time - you hear scraping the sunny morning skies look to me like flying dinosaurs. Extinction is coming their way. JetBlue should buy in. The cult of conferencing will kill the airline industry."

Read the 2003 interview

Recent articles about conferencing and the airlines:

Travel Goes the Way of the Dodo at Cisco

Southwest Airlines' Next Competitor? Cisco Systems

Gartner Predicts Video Telepresence Will Replace 2.1 Million Airline Seats Per Year by 2012, Losing the Travel Industry $3.5 billion annually

February 9, 2009

The Inside Scoop: InterCall

A little birdy just landed on the window sill of our loft office here in SoHo and chirped that InterCall will announce tomorrow something called "Click-to-Start Conferencing" with InterCall Unified Meeting. It also sang that "Using InterCall Unified Meeting, sales professionals can host product demonstrations without requiring their customers and prospects to download software; marketers will find InterCall Unified Meeting a cost-effective way to announce new products; and project managers can bring people around the world together to give status updates and make quick decisions."

Evidently, InterCall Unified Meeting is the foundation of InterCall's unified communications strategy. Why our little tweety bird isn't integrated into their communication solutions is beyond us.

Look for the InterCall release (now available here).

January 21, 2009

Meeting Jets

"In preparation for landing, please check to make sure your seat belt is securely fastened, and your seat back and tray table are in the full upright and locked position, and shut your pie hole and turn off the videoconferencing system."

Have you ever called someone on your cell phone while you secretly walked up to him or her? Surprise! What a fun trick! Oh the laughs! ...Well, it seems a cloud-computing analyst from Gartner wants to do that with jets. That's right: instead of making a cell phone call and walking up to the called person to surprise, an analyst from Gartner, we'd conject, wants to hop on a jet, have a videoconference meeting with someone, then go surprise them with his face-to-face presence. Oh the fun! The Gartner analyst demanded of John Chambers of Cisco at a recent conference, saying, "I want to be on a plane and have TelePresence in front of me," to which Chambers replied, "Well, the answer is, you are probably going to."

We don't make this stuff up. Here's the title and link, folks: Cisco CEO sees videoconferencing on planes within 18 months Maybe this cloud-computing stuff is getting a little too literal for some. We can see the report for $2995: Cloud-Meetings - An Emerging Market. Or the webinars: Hosting Effective Web Events in the Sky.

Let's see here... Burn more jet fuel and increase carbon emissions? CHECK. Increase ticket prices for expensive TelePresence systems? CHECK. Create annoyance for other passengers? CHECK. Provide awkward self-consciousness and privacy issues for the person videoconferencing from the ground? CHECK. What a great idea!

Maybe our idea we "gifted" to Cisco about Telattepresence isn't so bad after all. The "third place" of Starbucks just might be followed by the "fourth place" of gathering on planes to have videoconferences. To get the ball rolling, we'd suggest putting Telepresence monitors on the back of every seat in this plane.

Can't we just get cell phone and web access first?

October 15, 2008

The Buzz on Compunetix

Compunetix is on a roll. They've got a new corporate and brand identity manifested in a nicely designed website that includes a blog that promotes effectively their products and people. Jerry Pompa just got elected to the IMCCA's board of directors. And recently Compunetix acquired the assets of Sonexis, an in-house audio conferencing bridge maker.

What did Telespan's Elliot Gold think of the Compunetix acquisition of Sonexis assets? Was it a good decision? To quote Elliot from his August 20th newsletter, "You bet your bippy it is." ...We're forget what a bippy is, but all of this Compunetix buzz sounds pretty good.

August 28, 2008

Why Buy the Cow?

We've always associated the phrase "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" with the fears shudders panic trepidation anxiety options of marriage and cohabitation. Yet now the shortened "Why Buy the Cow?" has been working its way around as the title of a book co-authored by WebEx founder Subrah Iyer in the burgeoning software-as-a-service sector. "Free" may be an exaggeration to make a point, but let's face it: You need to get your head in the clouds - as in cloud computing - to understand the new generation of software application companies and how they're changing the worldwide economic landscape. Pioneers like WebEx and Salesforce.com and a new generation of on-demand upstarts like Upswing CRM are transforming the business landscape.

For a good review of Why Buy the Cow?, read Paula Thornton's post in Fastforward.

January 29, 2008

Best Practice Videos - Meet Gary Anderson

Tune in to "Best Practice Videos," a series on the use of multimedia communications in the business enterprise. Produced by Interactive Media Strategies, these short videos are chock full of useful data nuggets and they showcase the industry's colorful characters. See the latest video featuring Gary Anderson of Netbriefings. Proclaim is Netbriefings latest product and it's tricked out.

January 9, 2008

Every Kinda People

We're not sure what's in the water in Portland but we do know that the colorful kids at Corvent are an interesting bunch. In the world of bland corporate marketing with everyone proclaiming they're the "leading solution" blah blah blah, the folks at Corvent are doing the right thing and telling their customers and prospective partners who they are as people. Real people, with solid educational backgrounds, great work experiences, and personal interests that other people can relate to. Corvent is doing this via Conferencing News' Key People Directory and they've been signing up en masse in the last week.

In that it's Friday and we're still a little tipsy from last night, we figure we'd key in on the personal interests of team Corvent. We find an extreme ice cream eater, a spear fisherman, a Johnny Cash fan, a live mannequin specialist, a musician, a cookie monster, and our favorite, a unicyclist. (Note to Jessica B: anytime you want to race down 5th Avenue, bring it on. Oh, and another thing. We dare you to upload to YouTube a video of you riding your unicycle and proclaiming your company's slogan "Corvent has proven methodologies and personalized solutions for utilizing today’s Web conferencing and collaborative technologies.") Now that will get the message out to the thousands of readers of Conferencing News!

Check out more of the professionals at Corvent on the Key People Directory.

December 3, 2007

Best Practice Videos

Interactive Media Strategies and Aperio Networks (publisher of Conferencing News) have formed a strategic partnership to develop and promote an online video portal that provides executives advice and best practices on how to evaluate and implement advanced Web Communications technologies for business use. The new series - called Best Practice Videos - features video clips of executives discussing lessons learned during the deployment of online video, webcasting and conferencing technologies in their own organization.

The Best Practice Videos series is produced and hosted by the smart folks at Interactive Media Strategies.

We'll also be launching EnterpriseVideo.com soon and you'll be able to access Best Practice Videos from there, too.

Watch some Best Practice Videos now.

November 28, 2007

Thankiness

As we embark upon stressful travel and uniting with crazy in-laws we wonder about the viability of turkey dinner served through telepresence we're thankful that...

Conferencing News is the go-to daily publication for buyers, sellers, and partners in the conferencing industry.

The Key People Directory gets visibility and biz dev leads for professionals in conferencing.

EventSpan is the largest search database and syndication network for webcasts and webinars.

The Webinar Wire is providing marketers with tips and techniques for web-based events.

Enterprise Video will soon provide a news and views forum for video applications in business.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 21, 2007