ReadyTalk’s video clip playback feature is now publicly available. Video clip playback gives your trainings, sales demos, and webinars a more engaging, personal feel by incorporating a short video clip into the live presentation. Your meetings will never be the same and your participants will thank you for incorporating rich video content in your presentations. With video clip playback you can:

• Upload and store up to 10 video clips to your access code.
• Playback video clips during your meeting for participants to see and hear your content.
• Record your meeting with video clip content included.

We think video clip playback is a great new feature that will enable you to create engaging and memorable presentations. We’ve seen it used in many successful situations from a professionally produced product commercial, to a short CEO update in an all company meeting. This feature improves the ROI of your professionally produced content by allowing you to re purpose it to a live audience and through the recordings you generate. The playback experience for participants and presenters is exceptional as there is very minimal buffering. This means that your participants will be seeing the videos you push to them in real time creating a seamless viewing experience.

For more information on this feature please or to find out how to get started please check out our How-To guide. If you have any questions about this feature please contact ReadyTalk Customer Care at 800.843.9166 or leave your feedback in the comments below. 

Paul was formerly an Account Executive at ReadyTalk gaining valuable experience with competitors and the state of the web and audio conferencing industry. Currently in his role as Product Marketing Manager, he is in charge of the competitive landscape, on-demand audio products, and the web meeting interface. Paul loves the outdoors, his pup Huck, his wife Jess, and getting to the ski slopes as much as possible.

I know this sounds ridiculous – what’s the point of meeting in person if everyone will be staring at their computer screens the whole time? Using web conferencing while we are all in the same room something we do all the time here at ReadyTalk (and not just because we’re a web conferencing company). There are many benefits to meeting this way, here are a few of my favorites:

• Better quality meeting visuals than trying to project: Have you ever held a meeting where you are hoping to project some visuals only to spend the first 15 minutes of the meeting trying to adjust your computers resolution so the visuals will project in a somewhat normal size? How about dealing with the colors that never look right on projectors? ReadyTalk enables you to share your screen with any participant and will automatically scale your screen to their native resolution in full color clarity.

• Multitasking is much easier (and more productive): Lets face it, we’re all going to multitask in a meeting. What better way to multitask than to have the web conferencing content right in front of your face along with anything else you’re working on. There is a much greater chance of you staying in sync with the content if you’re actually participating through the web conference than not watching the projector.

• Content can be shared by anyone in the room with no need to pass around a cable: I think the most annoying part of projecting is that when the presenter changes, and you spend 5 minutes fumbling around trying to switch the projector cable to the new computer. With ReadyTalk, you can easily pass control from one presenter to the other through our Co-Presenter feature. Co-Presenters then have full access to ReadyTalk’s presentation tools.

• Meetings start much faster: This one is fairly obvious, no fumbling with projector cables, warming the projector up, or messing with screen resolution necessary! With ReadyTalk, simply start your online meeting from the web, on your desktop with the ReadyTalk Quick Launcher, or through the ReadyTalk Scheduler for Outlook.  Participants can easily join your meeting through the ReadyTalk Quick Launcher’s “Join a Meeting” feature. In a minute or less, your meeting can be up and running.

• Record your meeting: Often times you will be missing someone who is vital to the meeting or you’ll simply want to take notes on what was discussed. Since you’re already running a ReadyTalk meeting you might as well record it using our recording functionality. ReadyTalk gives you extremely easy one-click recording abilities so you can focus on your meeting and not getting the technology set up.

These are just a few of the many benefits of adding a web conference to your in-person meeting experience. If you’ve got some suggestions of how to improve in person meetings please share below.

Paul was formerly an Account Executive at ReadyTalk gaining valuable experience with competitors and the state of the web and audio conferencing industry. Currently in his role as Product Marketing Manager, he is in charge of the competitive landscape, on-demand audio products, and the web meeting interface. Paul loves the outdoors, his pup Huck, his wife Jess, and getting to the ski slopes as much as possible.

I’m a marketer. I’m used to fire drills in the midst of planning. It’s a new year and not-surprisingly, many critical pieces of the marketing puzzle have changed. Rapidly. For most marketing campaigns, preparation is key. Yet, how do you plan for something if you’re unaware that process may have to be altered? Sometimes you must adjust in order to gain the greatest return on your investment.

Let’s talk specifics – specifically events: virtual, live, or even a hybrid of the two. Marketing departments are beginning to make significant changes in how they use events to market their products or services. With options in technology, budget and social innovations, there are numerous ways to produce (and market) events and conferences.  As marketers, we know how crucial the planning piece is, so if our strategy is outdated, our initiatives fall short and goals are not met. It is critical to be aware of the tactics that will be most effective in generating leads while being cost efficient. What is the best way to capture your target audience? Craft the right message and find the right venue to do so.

Recent industry research shows virtual events are cost-savers in a number of ways (time, reduced travel, logistics, etc.); however, they are starting to be used in conjunction with live events and tradeshows, rather than a replacement. Consider these benefits:

• Ability to attract larger audiences: virtual events can cover more people in more time zones
• Expansive content AND niche content:  Audiences at an event can be targeted and/or broad. The virtual piece enables the them to choose from multiple content tracks that might not all be accommodated at the physical event alone
• Access to keynote speakers: high-demand speakers can skip the travel and pre-record their presentations for the conference
• Monitoring attendee engagement: the ability to track audience activity (chat, downloads, survey questions) and time spent in each area make for enhanced, targeted follow-up; data that funneled into CRM systems for faster sales outreach
• On-Demand Archives: those that were unable to attend a particular session or had multiples that overlapped can now access any presentation that was recorded

If the landscape of events is evolving and you’re still stuck in your ways from years past (of producing or marketing to), you’re missing out on a big chunk of the pie. Join us for an upcoming webinar on January 25 to learn more about the current state of virtual events from both producer and attendee perspectives. Steve Nesich, Principal of MarketStrike, will discuss how these different event types are currently being used and measured. What you’ll learn may surprise you. See what’s working, what isn’t, and how this could impact your company’s marketing and sales strategy and performance for 2012 and beyond.

What have you seen to be successful in your event marketing strategy? Or what would you warn others against? How do you feel about combining both the live and virtual aspects? Share your feedback and questions below and we’ll ask Steve to address them during the webinar.

Simone has been involved with both the sales and marketing teams at ReadyTalk and is currently the role Marketing Demand Manager and manages the monthly ReadyTalk Webinar Series, which is a free  forum for professionals to interact with their peers and other experts on topics ranging from sales and marketing to nonprofits and funding to leadership and professional development. Simone is an outdoor enthusiast – skiing, climbing, triathlons, and trail runs with her dog, Bucket, are just a few of the things she enjoys outside of the office.

In the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of attention around Adobe’s decision to use HTML 5 for mobile applications and games rather than use Flash. This announcement has led to speculation on what this means for web conferencing vendors that use Flash. You can read Ken Molay’s thoughts on it, Is This The Death Knell For Flash-Based Web Conferencing?

At ReadyTalk, we’ve designed our service to support both Flash and Non-Flash computer environments.

Flash will be around for a long time
While Adobe is no longer using Flash for mobile devices, ReadyTalk expects Flash to be around for a long time on the desktop. Flash is currently installed on 98 percent of computers, making it the best option for easily accessing your Web conference.

For ReadyTalk, Flash allows participants to join a conference in under 10 seconds, so meetings start on-time and without hassle.

We have an Alternative Now
ReadyTalk understands the importance for everyone to be able to get into a webinar or online meeting. We currently offer alternatives to our Flash client that allows those without Flash to still join the meeting.  Whether Flash is around for 10 months or 10 years, ReadyTalk customers and their participants, will be able to start and join web conferences across many platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) and browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari).

ReadyTalk will continue to innovate on our audio and web conferencing services.  We will continue to support Flash as long as it delivers a great user experience.  Our mission is to create “WOW” for our customers through Service and Technology, and with that, you have our commitment to make sure that our service remains easy to use and accessible to all customers and participants.

What are your concerns surrounding Adobe’s announcement?

Scott King is the senior vice president of sales and marketing and a co-founder of ReadyTalk. When he’s not working, you can find Scott spending time with his family, running, or enjoying a nice glass of wine.

The world of conferencing continues to change. First, it was bringing small groups of employees across various office locations together on the phone, followed by the need for web conferencing to show others what you were working on.  Now, those groups are no longer small, or limited to your own organization.  The use of audio and web conferencing has grown to much more than a way to cut down on costs, but as a successful way to generate leads through webinars, or train users on your product.  The use cases seem endless, and maybe even complex.  But something that should not be a brainteaser? Pricing.

ReadyTalk understands that our customers want to concentrate on the subject of their meetings, or content of their webinars, instead of the possibility of the unpredictable costs of their audio and web conferencing use.  We want to provide the highest quality, service and reliability, as part of our pricing.  With that expectation in mind, we introduce our five new web and audio subscriptions:

• Web Meeting Pro (25, 150)
• Webinar (500, 1000, 3000)

What’s unique about these? High-quality audio, included with every package.

The Web Meeting Pro subscriptions include unlimited web conferencing and a bundle of included toll and toll-free domestic audio minutes, at a flat monthly fee.

The Webinar subscriptions include unlimited web conferencing AND unlimited Broadcast Audio, enabling participants to stream high-quality audio through their computer speakers. Again, for a flat monthly fee.

So how do you know which subscription is right for you, or your company?

Do you conduct a fair amount of smaller, internal meetings or  present projects to external clients and vendors where high-quality audio is critical?  Then the Web Meeting Pro options are right up your alley.

Are you managing larger webinars for lead generation, online training, etc, more than once a month?  The Webinar subscription options can give you the cost-effective solution you are looking for.

Interested in learning more?  Contact us today to find out more about our new subscription plans!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to event services and our conference center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.