Meet Me Online
June 2008
Did You Know
Internet technology is constantly evolving and becoming an increasingly integral part of meetings.
While the majority of the meetings you plan may be in-person and face-to-face, there are instances where a smaller, shorter meeting simply does not justify the travel, time and expenses involved. Still, you need to bring everyone together, and an ordinary conference call just won’t make the grade. You may have already heard of WebEx, a program that allows virtual conferences and presentations online, but there’s also a new product on the market: GoToMeeting, by Citrix Online, which makes it especially easy to host and run small meetings over the Web—without being a tech-guru.With GoToMeeting, you simply send out an e-mail to your attendees with the date and time, and each participant clicks on a link in their message to join the virtual meeting. The program is integrated with Microsoft Outlook, so using your contacts and calendar functions are a cinch. Once the meeting is running, the host can run various applications (PowerPoint, Web browsers), and all the attendees can see whatever is on the host’s desktop. If someone else wants to take the reigns, the host simply hands over the controls with a click of the mouse, and everyone now looks at the new host’s desktop, even if they are halfway across the world. You can even allow attendees to control your own keyboard or cursor, which lets them manipulate whichever program or presentation you are displaying on your computer. Users can communicate with each other and the host via instant messaging or by optional voice conferencing.
The simplicity of the program is enough to garner serious praise—it’s been given an Editor’s Choice award by PC Magazine for two years in a row. And those users working with sensitive material will be reassured to know the program uses U.S. government-standard 128-bit AES encryption.
In terms of cost, the basic program allows for unlimited usage for an annual fee of $468, or monthly at $49. Should you require online meetings for more than 15 attendees, a corporate-level product allows you to host up to 25, and comes with additional reporting and tracking features.
If you’re still not convinced this might be the perfect fix for those gaps between in-person meetings and basic phone conferences, you can take a trial run of the program at the company’s website. Better to add it to your arsenal now than to have your CEO tell you about it tomorrow.
gotomeeting.com
