Posted by Kevin Micalizzi on Mon, Oct 05, 2009 @ 01:00 PM
What is the secret to a great web meeting?
Wayne Turmel, the president of www.greatwebmeetings.com, offers his suggestions for a great web meeting.
Any meeting is great if it does three things:
- Accomplishes what it set out to do
- Doesn’t take longer than necessary
- Doesn’t bore everyone to tears
First, you have to decide what it is you want the meeting to do and why a web meeting is the best way to accomplish it. Take the time to plan your meeting:
- Who will participate? Do you want everyone to be able to speak at once or do you want them to use the Chat feature to comment and ask questions? Most importantly… do the people you invited need to be there? Nothing drives an audience crazier than being forced to attend a web meeting they have no opinion about, input into or stake in.
- What information needs to be shared and how will you share it? (Think collaboration tools, PowerPoint files, application sharing, documents). Pick the best way to make your point quickly.
- How long is your meeting? Anything over 40 minutes and you’re on borrowed time. Remember, two short meetings are much more productive than one long one. If you can share some information or get people thinking about topics before the meeting it can speed things up considerably. Preparation is key.
- Have you told them what to expect? Always let the audience know what the expected outcome is and how long you expect it to take. If they know it will be an hour, and at the end of it you’ll have a decision on the Johnson project, they’re more willing to hang in there than if they have no idea how long the pain will last or what the meeting is about.
- Are you building in chances for people to participate? The more you actively engage them, the longer they’ll stay interested. If it’s a one way data dump, you’ll lose them shortly. Think about asking questions that require written input, you can have them vote agree/disagree with their response buttons, if their microphones are live, let them talk and ask questions as you go instead of holding them til the end. RULE OF THUMB… you should never go more than 3-4 PowerPoint slides without some kind of interaction with your audience, even if it’s just checking in to see who’s still awake.
- Have you practiced? Nothing kills a presentation like lots of ummm, errrs, looking for lost notes or sounding like you’re reading off the page. Practice the important pieces of your presentation, make notes to yourself, and don’t be afraid to move your arms, talk loudly and look up from your script. These things all add colour to your voice. And reading your slides or notes over to yourself is not practicing. Practice out loud… in real time….. a lot.
Wayne Turmel is the president of www.greatwebmeetings.com, a company that specializes in helping people use web-based presentation tools to do more than simply present, but to communicate and connect. He is also the host of the Cranky Middle Manager Show podcast, and doesn’t suffer bad meetings well. He can be reached at +1 630 347-8369 or wturmel@greatwebmeetings.com
Posted by Kevin Micalizzi on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 @ 10:42 AM
I recently had a chance to speak with Erik Bartz, Marketing Manager at Pivotal HR Solutions.
To better reach potential customers, Erik started a program offering
free webinars. Like many companies they use Dimdim to provide sales
demos, but Erik wanted to do more to develop better relationships with
their prospective customers.
Once a month they host a webinar on relevant HR topics. (They even offer a full list of topics with descriptions
on their site.) While some companies we work with use this type of
webinar to move into new markets, for Erik it's about better reaching
customers in the Toronto area.
Many companies are looking to
move their events online like Erik has done, so I asked how he manages
the sessions and what he recommends. For each of their webinars, Erik
acts as host and moderator. He uploads the presentations, manages the
microphones for the consultants presenting, and monitors the public
(text) chat. He even puts a placeholder slide at the front of the
slide deck for the attendees that join the meeting before the
presentation begins and to remind himself to hit the 'Record' button.
Each consultant presents on their topic for about 15-20 minutes before
they take questions from attendees. Erik’s found that having another
person control the slides and use the laser pointer to highlight key
items frees up their consultants to focus on the topic.
When
someone registers for these sessions, they get a confirmation email,
then starting 3 days before the event they get daily reminders, with
the final reminder going 1 hour before event. Erik has found this
helps to promote good attendance.
When
Erik was looking for a platform to help him make this happen, he
started with Dimdim Free. Once he was comfortable Dimdim suited their
needs, he purchased a Dimdim Pro account primarily for the ability to
add their own logo to the meeting room. He also set up a redirect to a
satisfaction survey when attendees exit the webinar.
Attendance
to their webinars continues to grow. If you're in the Toronto area and
are looking for HR solutions, check out their HR Resource Centre.
Thanks,
-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Dimdim Community Manager
e: kevin@dimdim.com / Twitter: @dimdim
Have an interesting story? Tell us about it!
Posted by Kevin Micalizzi on Thu, Sep 17, 2009 @ 08:00 PM
David Chao of Cisco/WebEx published an article yesterday (9/16/2009) on "The Web Conferencing Blog" called "Dimdim Review". The idea that he (as a competitor) would publish a "review" of Dimdim surprised me. The fact that he would base his review on false information shocked me.
Three and a half years ago Dimdim was created because the existing web conferencing tools weren't doing what the team needed and they were too expensive. The goal was (and continues to be) to democratize web conferencing. We want web conferencing to be available for everyone, not just large companies with big budgets.
We not only built the technology, we built our own data centers to host the service.
In the blog David says:
"DimDim is a web conferencing provider based in Lowell, MA that has built its business on a open source-based value proposition. They can be a cost effective solution for the right buyer but know that the biggest risk with DimDim is reliability, performance, and security. (Note: These three major risks are not directly because of DimDim but indirectly through their business relationship with Amazon.)"
It's a testament to the work we've done if David feels our only risks are based on a relationship with Amazon (that doesn't exist.) Dimdim can run on Amazon EC2, and a few customers have chosen to do that, but they are the exception. David goes on to say:
"Though DimDim is a SaaS-based company, they do not actually own their technology network since they rely solely on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Whether this is because they cannot afford to build out their own network or because they want to try to keep things "open," EC2 does have its limitations and drawbacks which ultimately negatively effect DimDim and DimDim customers."
I'm most offended by this article because David presents it as a "Review" of Dimdim, when in fact it's a technique some of our customers have told us the WebEx sales staff uses. I seriously thought a company like Cisco wouldn't resort to tactics like this.
We're either being attacked for our CEO's comments that "WebEx is history" or because our work to democratize web conferencing is hitting too close to home for them. I understand it's tough to compete with free web conferencing when you're a big expensive player, but it's not acceptable to create fiction for your arguments.
-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
Dimdim Web Conferencing
e: kevin@dimdim.com
twitter:
@dimdim facebook:
dimdim.com/facebookp.s. In the interest of fairness, I did post a comment to David's blog around 9am EST this morning (9/17/2009) to clarify that we do not use Amazon's EC2 infrastructure, but it has since been removed.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
Posted by Steve Chazin on Thu, Aug 13, 2009 @ 03:03 PM
I was talking to my cousin Mike this week and he gave me a great idea. Then I heard from my friend at FanDraft, a fantasy football live draft tool. Because so many people draft their Fantasy Football teams in person or via the phone, Dimdim is a great solution to save them time, money and travel. After all, fantasy football is about making some money and winning...so let Dimdim save you some money and help you win!
Here is how to use Dimdim to draft your team:
1. Sign up for Dimdim for free. You'll be able to host draft sessions with up to 20 people on your fantasy football team. (if you need bigger rooms you can easily upgrade at any time.)
2. Schedule a Dimdim meeting for draft day and enter the email addresses of your draft partners - an invitation will be sent automatically. Or grab our instant Webinar Widget and post it on your site or blog or tweet it to your partners & teammates.
3. Start your Dimdim meeting on draft day and share your desktop or web browser. Your partners all join via the link in the email and instantly see your computer screen while everyone talks to each other via the telephone conference bridge that comes with Dimdim for free.
4. Now collaborate in real time and pick that great team together! And don't worry, none of your draft partners need to install anything to help you pick the best players.
Ready... Set... Dimdim!
P.S. If you sign up for Dimdim or follow or RT @Dimdim or tweet #DimdimFantasy between now and Sept 13 you can win Madden 10 with a PS3, XBox or Wii system and FanDraft software! We're celebrating Dimdim, Madden and Fantasy Football!
Here is Kevin and Lou with the stuff you can win!
Here is the video description of the aforementioned Webinar Widget:
Posted by D D Ganguly on Tue, Jul 07, 2009 @ 03:22 PM
If our hiring process was the same as rest of our industry then we would build an organization like the rest of the industry. We aspire to do better. We want to attract exceptional players and build a great team. And I can guarantee you that Dimdimmers are exceptional not only in terms of skills but also in terms of being a team.
It is my belief that organizations fail not because they lack vision. Look around you and you will find that for each successful company that had a great vision there are dozens of failures with the same vision. Organizations fail because they cannot execute. And organizations cannot execute not because of the lack of talented individuals but because these individuals are not able to play as a team. The main reason for great players not playing as a cohesive force is culture. So the cultural fit between the individual and the existing team is of utmost importance.
When it comes to interviewing there are two different philosophies for determining cultural-fit between the candidate and the company. The first is called the behavioral method. In this method the candidate is asked a series of insightful questions, such as - “Are you a team player?”; What does the interviewer expect to hear? “No, I am not a team player?”; Some interviewers get sophisticated by asking, “Give me an example from your past experience when you played as a team player.”; Again, what’s the expectation here? Does the interviewer expect the candidate to say, “I am sorry I am drawing a complete blank on that one?”; If the candidate does say that then the interviewer can see that there isn’t an alignment between the company’s goals and the candidate’s goals. But a smart candidate knows what the interviewer wants to hear. And so the interviewer is faced with a dilemma - “I am being told this answer because the candidate knows that this is what I want to hear? Or is this really true?”; The interviewer can never make a positive decision based on the answer - unless he’s a trained psychoanalyst and most of us are not.
The second method is a task oriented approach. This is what we use at Dimdim. In the first conversation, the candidate is not asked any questions. He’s urged to ask us questions with the second conversation in mind. In the second conversation, the candidate delivers a presentation on a certain topic. For example, a potential VP of Sales might be asked to present a sales plan for the first six months. An engineer might be asked to learn and present on a topic that he knows nothing about.
We have seen that candidate’s questions tell us much more about her than the answers to those insightful behavioral questions. Which should not be surprising because questions are more interesting than answers - aren’t they?
During the presentation (which of course, is done using the candidate’s Dimdim Free web conference account) we look for 3 abilities. 1. Communication ability 2. Ability to learn 3. Ability to execute. We are usually able to decide within the first few minutes whether we have a hire or not.
This is the process we have followed for every hire. We know it works and btw, we are looking for a great VP of Sales.
Posted by Kevin Micalizzi on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 @ 11:32 AM
We recently introduced a new benefit for our Dimdim Free members: refer a friend and your Dimdim room automatically gets bigger!
It is super easy:
- Log into your Dimdim Free account
- Click Refer a friend
- Invite your friends
For each friend who signs up, your Dimdim Free room size will automatically grow to accommodate 5 more people (up to 100).
We'll be giving away a prize each day to a random friend who accepts an invite. Check back daily for winners and prizes or follow @dimdim on Twitter.
Thanks!
-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
twitter: @dimdim
Posted by Kevin Micalizzi on Fri, Jun 12, 2009 @ 01:32 PM
This week we officially moved into our new offices in the Cross Point Towers, Lowell, MA. As we're settling in I'll add more pictures. For now, here are some shots of how the space was transformed for us.
Thanks!
-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
Dimdim Web Conferencing
e: kevin@dimdim.com
twitter: @dimdim
facebook: dimdim.com/facebook
Experience the Dimdim Live Webinar! Register at:
http://www.dimdim.com/aboutus/events.html
Posted by Kevin Micalizzi on Wed, May 27, 2009 @ 12:39 PM
With more than 10,000 meetings and webinars happening per week on our hosted service, it's clear many are taking advantage of Dimdim Free and Dimdim Pro.
Having a great service to use doesn't guarantee a good or effective meeting/webinar -- so I'm on the hunt for the most fascinating, compelling, and powerful stories of how Dimdim is being used. I'd love to hear from you...
Is your story the best? Let me know!
Thanks!
-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
Dimdim Web Conferencing
e: kevin@dimdim.com
twitter: @dimdim
facebook: dimdim.com/facebook
Experience the Dimdim Live Webinar! Register at:
http://www.dimdim.com/aboutus/events.html
Posted by Kevin Micalizzi on Tue, May 19, 2009 @ 12:02 PM
Less than a month ago, I asked for help with the Webware 100. With less travel and tight budgets we know how important it is to be able to work together effectively while keeping costs down. Many of you have experienced the power of our free web conferencing and even took the time to email me to let me know you'd voted. Your vote made a difference, thank you!
Dimdim is a Webware 100 winner!
You helped us win. Our team is so that we thought it would be nice to do something to thank you. So we're having two Webware 100 'Thank You' contests.
Contests
1. Retweet our Thanks:
For the next 10 days you have a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift certificate. Just tweet the following:
RT @dimdim: Thanks for helping Dimdim be a Webware 100 winner! http://bit.ly/dimdimwins #dimdim
That’s it. The more times you retweet this message, the more chances you have to win that day. There’ll be a new winner drawn each day until Friday, May 29, 2009. You must retweet each day to be eligible to win that day.
2. Login or Signup:
Twitter can be fun, but we know not everyone uses it so we’re also offering a $500 Amazon gift certificate to one lucky winner who signs up for Dimdim or signs into their account between now and next Friday May 29, 2009.
If you don’t have a Dimdim account yet, just sign up. Or, if you are already using Dimdim, just sign in to your account. It’s that easy!
Thanks!
-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
Dimdim Web Conferencing
e: kevin@dimdim.com
twitter: @dimdim
facebook: dimdim.com/facebook
[balloon image adapted from Flickr-House Of Sims]
$100 Amazon Gift Certificate Winners!
Posted by Steve Chazin on Tue, Apr 28, 2009 @ 12:14 PM
OK, so it's not a remedy but it WILL prevent the spread of the virus while ensuring you can still meet freely. Tell everyone you know: don't cancel your business because you have to cancel your trip. Use Dimdim via any web browser and you can still meet - and breathe - freely from the comfort of your home or office.
Remember, meetings up to 20 participants are FREE (sign up for Dimdim Free and start using it within 30 seconds) and a full year of unlimited Dimdim Pro meetings with 100 participants is less than the cost of one round-trip flight: $468 for the year (that's only $39/month). Sign up for Dimdim Pro today.