Virtual Meetings Case Study For Mis

VIRTUAL MEETINGS: SMART MANAGEMENT Case in Brief: For many businesses, extensive travel is a fact of life. The expenses incurred by business travel have been steadily rising in recent years, primarily due to increasing energy costs. In an effort to reduce travel expenses, many companies, both large and small, are using videoconferencing and Web conferencing technologies. Videoconferencing figures to have an impact on the business world in other ways, as well. More employees maybe able to work closer to home and balance their work and personal lives more efficiently; traditional office environments and corporate headquarters may shrink or disappear; and freelancers, contractors, and workers from other countries will become a larger portion of the global economy.

Q. 1: One consulting firm has predicted that video and Web conferencing will make business travel extinct. Do you agree? Why or why not? Ans.: We dont agree with this consulting firm. Because from the case,

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we see that, the global e- Sustainability Initiative and the climate Group estimated that up to 20 percent of business travel could be replaced by virtual meeting technology. So, without revolutionary improvement of technology business travel cant be extinct. Q. 2: What is the distinction between videoconferencing and telepresence? Ans.: Many in the end user community are very familiar with videoconferencing, a solution set that has been around for over twenty years. Videoconferencing provides two-way, interactive audio and video communications between two or more end points. In the past decade, videoconferencing technology and products have advanced along multiple fronts including the move to IP networks that provide higher bandwidth, lower costs, and vastly improved connection reliability; the evolution from low resolution to high resolution images and now to high definition (720p and 1080i) video; and equally important - the advances from tinny, low bandwidth (3 kHz)...

How Planview Made their Annual Customer Event Virtual

How do you host an event when the majority of your attendees cant make it? Planview, a leading independent provider of portfolio management solutions for large businesses, was faced with this challenge when budgetary restrictions limited the travel of many of their customers. Planview decided to take their annual event, which is typically held in Austin, Texas, to the Web and host its first large-scale virtual event. To compensate for the lack of face-to-face contact, Planview created a very customized virtual event with supreme content and interactivity held Oct. 68, 2009. They had of a Planview command center where 14 key executives were present and available at all times, had a keynote address from Guy Kawasaki, more than 200 meet-the-expert sessions, live Q&A; interactive video, 29 customer presentations, real-time networking and more. We spoke with Planviews Kimberly Stone, manager of web and creative service, who discussed how she and her team planned and executed their first virtual event. Why did you decide to conduct a virtual event? The attendees have to pay their own flight, hotel and conference fee. We had already selected a hotel, and we were hearing from customers that they would not be able to come due to travel budget restrictions. So what do you do [in this case?] Do we have it at a hotel and have a handful of them come? That is a sub-par experience, because part of benefit is a bunch of customers getting to talk to each other, network and share tips and tricks. Another option was to scrap the conference altogetherno one was excited about that idea at all. The conference is so much fun, and we put so much energy into it, that seemed like the worst-case scenario. The executives [then] threw around the idea of going virtual.

Planview's virtual event. How did you find your virtual meeting provider? I attended Virtual Edge, and it was such a great conference. I learned what to expect about virtual events. They had the key vendors demo-ing their environments. [I realized] that we could do something amazing, but its not cheap. Our event is for our customers, so we dont put on our event to make money. Why did you select Unisfair? From the beginning Unisfair stood out. It has a very great point-and-click usability. They are very user friendly, as it had to be easy for the various types of attendees. [My team and I] listed out every single aspect of the physical event down to networking in the halls. Unisfair hit the most on our list. How did you overcome the digital connection and make it more like face-to-face contact? Unisfair has some interesting things [to ease the transition] like a chat in the system. We hosted a general chat with our executives in the lounge. We also had a second lounge that was just for a specific topic, and we scheduled Q&A sessions in there. You can chat privately with a booth rep or have a group chat about a topic. You can also chat person-to-person. We had heard that people really used the chat featureyou would be surprised as to how much people used the community aspectthe chat was huge! I also had 112 staffers actively involved in the event itself. Anything that could have been customized on their platform wasit is set up for customization. We had 15 topical booths with avatars with pictures of that person from the company; it came out great. We also created 50-plus videos, plus pieces of collateral, and we customized the background and the colors. We mailed welcome kits to everyone with a How To guide, agenda, T-shirts and really nice notebooks. For live sessions we actually made sure that people came during the conference days. We had one-time-play-only and concurrent events going on. With live Q&A, people would type in their questions.

Planview's virtual expo. How long did it take to put it together? I did nothing for two quarters except for thisit took about 4.5 months to get this going. It was pretty much all I did from the moment we went down this path and it took a huge amount of people to pull it off. This had to be as good as or better than, our physical conference. For a virtual event there are so many steps [in creation], then you have post-production and review. For an in-person event, you hook up their computer and let it roll. Because the software a Web application, its a formal publication process with all the reviews and things in the system. Was the event as successful as last year? Why? It was epic, and we were really proud of that. We considered it a huge success, and the customers responded very positively. There was a huge increase in attendance. A lot of them commented on the depth of the conference. We had 80% attendance [out of those who signed up] because people paid for it. We reduced the cost [per attendee]; for the price of one person, they could send five. We also offered catering to the attendees office. Some groups also went off-site to get away from their desks. We were concerned about the Boomers because they dont chat live, but they were fine. The only negative side was that they missed the party aspect of it, and they missed us and the hugs. But, the vast majority of them would not have been able to come at all. Would you do an event like this again? We are going to do a different type of one in February. We are sold on the Unisfair platform and the virtual events as an excellent way to distribute good-quality content and connect with people and get immediate feedback. The trust level is high, and we pride ourselves on our close relationships with our customers. Because there was a trust and they already knew us, the event was all kicked up a notch. Next year is a bit up for grabs. We need to see what our customers are doing. Our customers will drive the type of event. We would like to do another physical one; in a dream world the event would be a hybrid. They are a lot of options for the hybrids. Virtual events are not cheap and theyre labor-intensive; we hired several part-timers. It didnt cost any less than a full physical event at a nice hotelwe took it to that level. What advice do you have for someone trying to plan a similar event? I would recommend attending the Virtual Edge Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. Its free to attend. [Its coming up Feb. 22, 23 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.] Read up as much as possible and plan to manage it like a technical project. I did formal project management for this. You can save money by doing as much as possible inhouse, but that requires that you have executive buy-in not to pull those resources off-project. The third thing: be aware of time zones and international dialing numbers. Everyone is confused from a global perspective, so we sent a time conversion chart.

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CIO Meetings are hard enough to run when the participants are all in the same room, fighting over the last chocolate doughnut. But any meeting you call, nowadays, probably has at least one person attending who works in a remote location. In some cases, everyone in the teleconference is dialing in. You may be great at orchestrating an in-person meeting, but running an effective teleconference requires new skills.
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Seven Quick Tips for Videoconferencing Beginners Video Conference Grows Up

To help you get the most out of your meeting time, we asked professional meeting facilitatorsand several ordinary peopleto share their advice on conducting live meetings with remote participants (whether by phone, WebEx or videoconferencing).

Ordinary Meeting Guidelines Apply

Most of what you know, as a manager or meeting organizer, remains relevant. You still need to start the meeting on time, define the meeting objectives, invite the right people, etc. But if you don't have good in-person meeting skills, teleconferences will only make it worse. Management consultant Steven M. Smith says, "People in organizations don't follow the guidelines for leading effective face-to-face meetings," he says. "Teleconferences, because of signaling and bandwidth issues, exacerbate those problems." For example, it's good manners to send information in advance of any meeting, but it can be critical for teleconferences. Gerry Mann, Web development manager at Unitrin Business Insurance, urges organizers to prepare ahead. "Send out items to review well in advance and set the expectation for attendees to review the items," he suggests. Include an agenda (short and focused) and ground rules, such as when to use the Mute button, the keys this conference service uses to place the call on hold and so on.

An Aside: The "on hold" thing is a major irritation. Jim Coughlin, managing director of Foundation Systems, complains that people forget that they're not on an ordinary phone call. "I've had people on 50-person conference calls put their phone on Hold; and everyone else in the conference gets to hear their infomercial on Hold." Some teams may be willing to sing along with your on-hold music. Most are not. An agenda isn't about your ability to lead a meeting; it is about the people at the distant end, says Daniel Mittleman, associate professor at the DePaul University School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems, whose research focuses on group support systems and virtual meeting technologies. "They have no access to your nonverbal cues. They will lose place, lose focus and lose attention to the meeting." Also, in a meeting room, you intuitively notice if your audience doesn't get you, and instantaneously adjust. "Virtually, you won't notice if they don't get you; they won't tell you. So you have to be clearermore explicitthe first time," he says.
The ground rules for your virtual meeting might include:

Log on 15 minutes before the start of the meeting, since some online products require downloads and installation. Be aware of background noise. State your name when you speak. If you catch yourself multitasking, be responsible for your full participation. Turn off cell phones and PDAs. Stay out of your e-mail.

Be Their Eyes
But online meetings are different in several ways. According to Ken Molay, president of Webinar Success, meeting organizers should distinguish between meetings with a local in-room audience and some remote attendees, and the meetings where everybody attends remotely. When possible, he says, keep the local meetings local and the remote meetings separate; it is tricky to meet the needs of both audiences when they're combined. "In a combined audience situation, it is very important to continually think about the remote users' perspective," says Molay. "They can't see nods of the head around the table, or actions like looking through papers for the answer to a question. They also can't hear low-volume conversations." It's the meeting moderator's role to provide an audible connection with remote attendees. During a pause in the proceedings, for example, describe what is happening, so remote users understand the silence. Molay says, "Direct commentary loudly and clearly towards the microphone, and encourage other participants in the room to do likewise." Nancy Settle-Murphy, principal and owner of Guided Insights, is making a presentation about a related topic, "Planning for Success: Translating from a Face-to-Face to a Virtual Agenda" at the

upcoming International Association of Facilitators conference. She identifies six critical success factors for getting great results from virtual meetings:

Planning a viable agenda or series of agendas. Effective use of technology. Preparing participants and prework. Keeping participants focused and engaged during a virtual meeting. Building trust and social capital. Maintaining momentum between meetings.

Encourage Participation
Common pet peeves among frequent online meeting participants reflect the tendency for people to become distracted from the matter at hand. It's easy for participants to pay attention to e-mail, chat or other things on their desktop and to lose focus on the meeting. Multitasking sounds good, but often it's not conducive to an effective meeting. Sometimes, people in the same building dial into a meeting so they can multitask, points out Kevin Mackie, director of software development atOracle. But, he says, there's a false economy with multitasking. "To be sure, when people insist on having those 'around the room status meetings,' being able to get other work done is a boon; but for meetings where engagement and interaction is critical, it's important to ensure those who are participating remotely are as engaged as those who are in the room." For example, says Molay, meeting leaders should change the way they ask for feedback. Watch out for questions like, "Does everyone agree?" Remote attendees can't answer easily without stepping over each other's responses, points out Molay. Web conferencing software that includes polling features can help you solicit audience feedback. Construct an agenda that encourages participant input, says Settle-Murphy. Assume that participants will start to get distracted after 10 or 15 minutes, or after three presentation slides. She says, "Design into your agenda ways to engage participants (with questions, online idea generation, visualization exercises, etc.) more frequently than you might in a face-to-face session." Vary the way you pose questions, she suggests, such as alternating a fill-in-the-blank statement, an open-ended question, asking for participants' "top three" of something. One trick Mittleman uses is to engage in dialogue with an individual at a distant end. He says that person asks the questions others are thinking of asking; he can read nonverbal responses from the individual to know if he is following the message; it is less boring to listen to dialogue than to a monologue; and that person can fill him in on how he's being received. Smith suggests that meeting leaders sequence the discussion, because teleconference participants don't know when it's their turn to talk. "Without a traffic cop, they run over each other," he says.

Smith goes around the virtual table; each participant is invited to speak for 30 seconds and no one can interrupt. "Make it clear to everyone that they can 'pass' when their name is called," Smith advises. But, he cautions, silence doesn't necessarily mean someone is finished. "Ask them explicitly, 'Anything else?'" Smith prefers to go around the "table" twice so participants who passed during the first round have an opportunity to speak. The result is that, with six teleconference participants, everyone says something at least every three minutes. Smith, too, assumes that participants will become distracted after the third presentation slide, and recommends interactive behavior such as asking questions, polls and pausing the presentation for a quick brainstorming activity. "If you're using a meeting tool that allows the presenter to control the slide set, it's harder for others to multitask without getting lost later on," he adds. Mittleman also advises that it's important to get people to focus during transitions from one meeting part to another, or you'll lose them. "If you have a video channel, this (counterintuitively) is the most important time to be using it," he says. "Create a scoreboard or dashboard so everyone can see where you are in the agenda, who is up, what is coming next. Also, they should be able to see who is at the meeting." It is much easier to brainstorm than to make a decision virtually. "When you are brainstorming everyone gets to contribute ideas," Mittleman explains. "When you are consolidating ideas, some ideas get swept off the table. People don't like to give up their favorite ideas. They like it even less virtually." That's because people have no sense that everyone else understands their pet idea, and no perception that their own interests were accommodated. Mittleman advises. "This is why many virtual decision making meetings fail. It is not enough to lead a group through a vote; it is vital to lead them through buy-in to the results of that vote. Buy-in requires a sense of being heard and a sense that one's interests have been accommodatedor at least understood."

It's a "Mute" Point

The one issue on which people disagree is the Mute button. Most meeting participants wish others would press Mute on their phones to reduce background noise and to improve sound qualitybut that opinion isn't universal. Settle-Murphy urges people to stay off mute. Doing so, she says, allows people to readily participate in verbal conversation without a pause, and gives the meeting facilitator a greater sense of whether people are engaged and alert, she says. Sarah Churton, general manager of SureSlim, is among those who favor using Mute when the participant isn't speaking. "I came from a business that would regularly teleconference 20+ locations where managers and teams were in an open plan environment," she explains. "You can only imagine what it was like when only half of the participants used the Mute button as requested." Whichever answer you choose, be sure that it's included in the ground rulesand be prepared to remind participants.

Stay Conscious of Time Zones

Meeting participants aren't always in the same time zone; when you plan a meeting, take their time of day into account. Kevin Mackie, director of software development at Oracle, says a lack of colocation isn't nearly as important as the ability to meet during people's normal working hours. "Large differences in time zones are much more of an obstacle to collaborative development than not being in the same room," he says. It isn't simply an issue of scheduling a conference call for 9:00 a.m. in New York (thus 6:00 a.m. in California). Mann advises meeting organizers to be aware of other time-of-day impacts, such as crossing over a lunch hour, keeping someone from leaving work on time or having to arrive extra early. "If these are the only options, work with the people that need to leave early so that their topics are covered, and if someone needs to work across the lunch hour to attend your meeting, provide lunch for them," he says. Another option, says Howard Lichtman, president of The Human Productivity Lab and the author of Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light, is to alternate who stays up late when meeting with people in distant lands. "Alternate for fairness," he says. And be flexible.

Technology Can Help. But Use It for Good, Not for Evil.
You've undoubtedly discovered the myriad tools that can help moderate meetings and share materials. Choosing the right one for the task isn't necessarily easy. Managers should be clear about what they're trying to accomplish in the meeting and how information may flow before deciding on the software to use, says Mittleman. For example:

Live Meeting: Best for a presentation where one person will speak to a group with occasional participant questions. Group Support System (GSS): Best for problem solving or decision making where a team of people will work on a problem and come to resolution. Collaborative Document-Building Tools: Tools such as Google Docs are best for a work product execution meeting where a team will work at developing a deliverable. Settle-Murphy agrees that technology must match the objectives. She says, "Select technology tools that best support different kinds of virtual meetings: communication, data gathering, idea generation, team building, problem solving, decision making." Technology should assist in meeting effectiveness, not drive the meeting process. "Don't become enamored of glitzy features that may contribute little to meeting your objectives. Design your agenda first," she says.
An online meeting moderator needs to know how to:

Put everyone on mute, and toggle mute off. Post questions using the Web collaboration software.

Retrieve responses and questions from the Web collaboration software. Transfer control to another participant and get control back. Change the window being shown. Upgrading your whiteboard can also help. "Most Web conferencing and data collaboration applications come with a whiteboard tool, but they all require you to use a mouse," Lichtman says. "If you are in a field that requires a lot of hand-generated graphics, like networking, consider getting a rear-projection SmartBoard, tablet PC or Wacom tablet that will allow you to whiteboard with the same degree of control that you would get with a regular whiteboard. Your colleagues, partners and prospective clients will thank you!" Technology is greatwhen it works. Test the technology an hour before the meeting, Mittleman adds. Every time, he insists, no matter how routine. Then set things up for real a few minutes early. And, he says, "Have a technology backup plan. Think through carefully what you will do if the virtual technology fails. Will you postpone the meeting, or hold it anyway with backup technology? Don't make this decision on the fly; already know." The challenge for presenters in remote meetings is to move beyond a simple analog of showing slides on a projection screen in front of a room and more fully involve the remote participants in true collaboration, says Molay. "Web conferencing features have made this easier with functionality suited to the task. Make use of things such as file sharing, interactive text chat, polling, whiteboards and cobrowsing to take participants to Web applications of interest." Author's Note: When I began asking questions about this topic, I never imagined it would generate as many responses as it didin a mere 24 hours. For space reasons, I had to leave out plenty more pet peeves (as well as their solutions), such as "Don't drag the speakerphone across the table, as it makes a terrible noise to people on the phone. Lift it, please." So I invite you: Add your own hardearned wisdom about online teleconferences to the comments below.