Several weeks ago I was invited to attend a WebEx session about VoIP from a particular manufacturer. WebEx is an excellent tool to hold sessions on topics and provides adequate visual and audio tools.
Let me describe the social maladies of the conference session--I attended 10 minutes of the scheduled 60.
* Three different cell phones went off during the time I was logged in.
* One office phone (Nortel Norstar: I know the RING) went off during the presentation.
* I counted 15 un-muted microphones
* I lost count of the voice interruptions of people coming into a listener's room or space and then talking to the attendee.
* One music-on-hold played when an attendee placed his call to the conference bridge on-hold and made another call or did something else, and
* One person played a radio in the background until the presenter asked that it be turned off.
* Two other attendees had enabled web cams.
* I watched one attendee watch the conference as he sat on his sofa tossing pillows across the room and then diving into a snack bowl.
* I watched another attendee sit patiently at his desk seemingly oblivious that his web cam was enabled.
I lost any desire to listen to the presenter as he tried to cover a historical perspective about the origins of SIP. After bailing out, I thought about what would improve the session--not the topic or content.
There should be a moderator standing by to disable all attendee microphones, video cams and to answer questions or concerns during the conference. If there was a “click-to-record” the video presentation, I missed it, and having a recording of that session would prove invaluable and probably a source of edutainment by posting "WebEx Attendees Gone Wild" on YouTube. Presenters can utilize
