Tell Me More: Managing video conferences

When you need to meet with colleagues or clients from remote locations, managing video conferences can instantly bring you together. Rather than incurring the high costs of travel or trying to work around various hectic schedules, you can provide a solution that allows colleagues to share images and information using both audio and video without needing to leave your office.

By managing video conferences, you combine the content focus of web conferencing with the visual aid and personal interaction emphasis of video conferencing. While standard video conferences require expensive, state-of-the-art video cameras and professional studio-quality lighting, you can provide a more affordable alternative. For instance, a standard web camera for the video portion and a PC microphone for the audio portion are great cost-effective solutions for managing video conferences.

Managing video conferences also lets everyone that participates to share the same information over a secure Internet connection and exchange ideas. You can incorporate the same tools you would use in a face-to-face meeting, such as a white board or PowerPoint slides. At any point during the conference, you can “pass the controls” over to another participant to run the applications or view a website.

The video conference moderator
Another important responsibility of managing video conferences is to assign a moderator. A video conference moderator controls who can speak and what materials participants can view. The moderator can even receive instant feedback from attendees using polls and surveys, and compile the results for later review.

When the conference ends, the moderator can provide detailed reporting of everything that was said and presented. Moderators can even record the conferences and archive it for future playback. This allows them to edit out some of the disruptions such as program glitches or off-topic conversations.

Getting started with managing video conferences
To begin managing video conferences, you only need a computer with an Internet connection, a phone line, video camera, and microphone. A conferencing vendor will provide client software to run the meetings online, and each conference participant will have to install the client from an email link. Once installed, participants call an 800 number and use the access ID and password provided in the email to join the conference.

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