Comments on: Online conferences – the future is now

By: Power Learning 21

Power Learning 21 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:15:36 +0000

Online conferences gives comfort to a lot of people. I kmow a lot of famous people doing it now, some even for free.

By: Kevin Micalizzi, Dimdim Web Conferencing

Kevin Micalizzi, Dimdim Web Conferencing — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:37:18 +0000

Lady & Karen-

Dimdim free web conferencing allows up to 20 people in the room at a time. You can share slides, whiteboard, screen, web pages, along with audio and the host’s video — and record the sessions.

To see our other plans, just visit:
http://www.dimdim.com/products/dimdim_editions.html
Pricing for Dimdim Pro can be seen by clicking More Plans in the center column.

Email me, kevin@dimdim.com, if you have any questions.

Thanks!

-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
Dimdim Web Conferencing
e: kevin@dimdim.com
twitter: @dimdim
facebook: dimdim.com/facebook

By: maggie

maggie — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:16:38 +0000

Congrats on your LITA award! YAY!!!

By: Karen Burns

Karen Burns — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:30:53 +0000

Lady, the ISLOC team is putting together a wiki in which we share our experiences and describe how we have done the conference. It’s still in the works, but if you want to check it out…
http://sites.google.com/site/islocinfo/

As Meredith said we use Wimba, but there are other online webconferencing systems out there. I’ve looked a bit a DimDim, which has a free version that seems to work pretty well, at least in the limited “trying” that I’ve done. It has limits on the number of people who can participate, but the pay version would allow more. (I haven’t checked out the costs of the pay version.)

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:00:30 +0000

Well, it depends on what you want to do. For the conferences I described that are primarily synchronous, you’d at least need web conferencing/webinar software. If you’re interested in replicating what a specific conference has done, the best thing you could do is email the organizers of that conference and ask them how they did it.

By: Lady

Lady — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:41:00 +0000

What would I need technically to have an online conference?

By: stevenb

stevenb — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:57:12 +0000

I am currently participating in the free virtual conference event with jean claude bradley. As an acrl member i want to support these events. I think it’s a great idea to offer a free webcast but given that this webcast experience is so different from the real Learning Times Network webcast I am concerned that it will actually turn off potential virtual conference/webcast attendees. There is some interesting content, but there is no participation. You can’t use a mic to talk to the speakers, you can’t chat with other attendees, there are no polls, etc. Those are all important parts of the webcast experience. If ACRL wants to use this free webcast as a “taste” to get people interested in registering I am afraid it might backfire. If someone is new to the webcast presentation, this could give them a completely incorrect view of what it is and what happens. Since you are on the virtual conference committee I think you might want to share this with the group. I think if ACRL wants to offer a free webcast they should make it as much like what will actually happen at the conference so that potential attendees will get a realistic picture of what it will be like. That, I think, is much more likely to get people excited about attending a virtual conference.

By: Jean-Claude Bradley

Jean-Claude Bradley — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:15:56 +0000

Meredith – thanks for the plug! I look forward to the talk tomorrow. Indeed technology enables more conferences to happen – without really removing the need to attend some face to face events.

By: Karen Burns

Karen Burns — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:37:31 +0000

Thanks, Meredith for your kind words about ISLOC! We were very pleased to have you doing the keynote this year, and happy with the response and enthusiasm you generated. This was the second annual ISLOC conference, and attendance is growing. Thanks for helping us make it a success! The ISLOC Team

By: Meredith

Meredith — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:48:29 +0000

Joan, I’m totally with you on the publicity thing. My guess is that ACRL doesn’t want the virtual conference to overshadow the physical one (which is the big money-maker), but in the end, it may lose them money since people who would not have gone to ACRL anyways won’t register for it because they’ll not have heard about it. However, you’re not just paying for 4 sessions with the Virtual Conference registration, nor is everything only offered synchronously. You’ll be able to watch all of the presentations from the ACRL conference nearly live, and can access them later on as well. That actually gives you better access in some ways than someone physically at the conference because there are so many concurrent sessions that one never gets to everything they’d like.