What is Web Conferencing?

What is web conferencing?

 “Web conferencing is a form of real-time communications—“  Sorry to interrupt, but this blog isn’t about definitions….  Let’s find something to talk about that is a little more substantial.

The question comes up because web conferencing seems underutilized.  Web conferences are a great medium for communicating.  Although the platform is still relatively young, and not fully defined, it seems we often take a web conference and make it a redundancy of broader teleconferencing – one person at the helm, one line of conversation.  Is that what web conferencing is?  Is that what it should be?

It seems like web conferencing could be so much more!  A means to redefine meetings and trainings, then transform them to re-envision business in general.  Web conferencing IS a tool for reinvigorating internal business structures, making meetings and trainings more meaningful, and encouraging the personality of a business.

What is it, then, that makes web conferencing so much more than traditional teleconferencing?

What Web Conferencing IS:

A Means to Conduct Better Internal Business

All too often, teleconferencing tends to be a rather one-sided affair, with one person holding the conversation out of everyone else’s reach.  Web conferences encourage the many to speak up through Chat Pods available to each participant.  In this way, web conferencing transforms typically one-sided monologs into interactive dialogs and discussions.  Suddenly, conducting internal business is no longer stale, but a fully involved process that makes the most of many perspectives.

A Medium for Meaningful Trainings

Until web conferencing arose, trainings depended upon gathering people together. We’ve all had jobs where the training was regurgitated year after year.  No matter how ineffectual the training was, the same cheesy video played, the same instructions were read, and the same corporate well-wisher thanked us for our involvement at the end.  Web conferencing platforms like Adobe Connect offer tools that measure the engagement of training sessions.  If a training isn’t engaging, it can be improved until it is relevant and meaningful.

Personal and Personable

Compared to a conference call, seeing someone else’s face obviously makes the web conference experience far more personal.  But we also have to consider how web conferencing makes a business personable to its employees.  Rather than being portrayed by policies and practices, a business can have a kindly face and authentic voice.  The strictly defined lines between the C-Suite and Cube World can be realigned as bridges, rather than barriers.  The negotiation of ideas changes to be more intimate, like a conversation between friends.

Making More of Web Conferencing

Making the most of web conferencing is simple, you just have to recognize it for what it is.  Web conferencing IS the workplace reformulated.  Lines of communication are opened and encouraged; education is made meaningful for each participant; personality is added to every aspect of a business.

Don’t fall under the lull of typical meeting structures and listless trainings when you use web conferencing tools.  Allow the versatility of web conferencing to guide you when shaping business practice.  The benefits are endless when you utilize web conferences to their fullest scope of use.

To get the most out of your future web conferences, check our blog to see the MeetingOne Online Conferencing Checklist.

Let us show you how to get the most out of web conferencing!