Live webinars and live events will be more and more used in the near future and will affect more and more people. Because?
People are tired of the old unidirectional style, and boring conferences where the presenter is overly constrained by their slides, while the participants have no chance to intervene, make any contribution to the discussion or even ask questions.
Live online events, such as online video conferencing with many people (or “webinars”), meet the needs of those who want to abolish the classic paradigm of unidirectional communication and would be conducive to a more engaging experience both for the presenter and the invited.
Let’s see what are some real situation where you can use online events:
Businesses: Companies can use live events to show a new product to illustrate the new features of an existing service or host webinars to explain their actual or potential customers how to use a service without reading a 100 pages manual.
Teaching: Educators can overcome the limits of classroom teaching in a classroom by interacting with a large number of students from all over the world. Teachers can take lessons, submit tests, evaluate students by sharing any kind of educational material without being impeded by any physical or geographic limitations.
Leisure: Some individuals can reach other people who are part of their online community. These people can communicate with each other, share videos, photos, or just spend time pleasantly, staying comfortably in their homes and at a reasonable cost.
These are just a few examples to help you get a very general idea of how you can make live events and webinars.
Only a few years ago, the difficulty of organizing an online video conference or big live events was due to having to resort to complex solutions such as WebEx, which not everyone knew best.
Fortunately, there are now a number of easy-to-use online meeting tools, like ezTalks Cloud Meeting with which you can organize debates between ad hoc groups of participants at an affordable price and without having to resort to expensive and special hardware.
The only question is: what exactly are these tools and where to look for the best solution for your specific needs?
In this guide you will find a mental map, two comparative tables, and a series of mini-reviews that will help you choose the best tool to hold great webinars and conferences to help you better assess and choose the best online conference service.
These are the criteria I used for comparison:
Maximum number of participants: the maximum limit of participants that you can manage within the live event.
Key Features: The key features of webcasting tools such as easy screen sharing, the ability to have an interactive whiteboard, manage an online video conference, chat or sharing presentations.
Price: The monthly cost of the tool, which varies according to the number of participants you can manage.
Registration: Store your event so you can forward it in the future, post it on your blog, or redistribute it.
Reporting: Detailed statistics on your event data, such as the number of people who received your invitation, how many people have logged in, who has left the event before it ends, and other useful information.
Branding: Options that allow you to customize the style of your webinar.