The Conference Room
By Tom Livingston
Meetings will never be much fun. Most of us have wasted time in unnecessary or needlessly long ones. No matter what the charm of online meeting tools, better ways to meet don't necessarily make meetings better. Sometimes email or message boards can obviate or reduce the need to get together. Organization, a clear agenda, and delegated follow-up can enhance conferences in ways new technology can't.
Nevertheless, conferencing tools can enable, streamline, and enrich online conferences. Forrester Research has identified Web conferencing as one of the fastest growing communications market segments. In its survey of Fortune 1000 companies, 70 percent of respondents indicated they would use Web conferencing by 2001. A host of tools, such as video, program sharing, and whiteboarding, give you new ways to collaborate online. Here are some of the features today's Web-conferencing tools offer:
- audio or Internet phone
- videoconferencing
- whiteboard
- file transfer
- application sharing/hosted Web surfing
Other features. Most conferencing systems feature typed chat. Some offer instant messaging (IM), and polling (like the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" audience lifeline). Some conferencing programs can be embedded in a Web site for casual chat or scheduled online events. NetMeeting offers "remote control"—a feature more often associated with programs such as LapLink and PC Anywhere—through which one participant can surrender control of his or her PC to another, including file access.
Here's a program-by-program look at some of the most popular conferencing options.
