I thought I would take a momentary break from the inbound marketing content and post something from my engineering roots – standards. I’m heavily involved with the International Society of Automation and one of their key missions is developing automation industry standards. However, this could just as easily apply to any number of standards that inbound marketers need to deal with; syndication (RSS, atom), browsers, HTML5, etc…
This comic appeared on the xkcd site today and it made me laugh out loud. I’m sure there are more than a few automation professionals who can identify with this:
Chris Dunlap, ISA Boston Section Vice President, kicks off our October meeting on Livestream.
I hosted a Web 2.0 workshop at last month’s ISAFall Leader Meetings that was an open discussion of social media and collaborative technologies. The overwhelming interest was clearly focused on using video conferencing for holding meetings and presenting information. Before, during and after that workshop I’ve promised at least a dozen people that I would put together a comparison of available services and some hints and tips for using them.
In this post, I’m going to compare four different free services for conducting online meetings and/or presentations; DimDim , Ustream, Livestream and Skype. None of them is a perfect solution and they all have trade-offs that need to be considered for their applicability to your specific needs.
The Big Picture
Meetings vs. Presentations
The first question to answer is whether the collaboration is primarily a meeting or a presentation. While all of these services support online chat, only two of them permit muli-party audio or video conferencing. For meetings that are primarily one-way, Livestream and Ustream will be the best option. If you require audio or video conferencing capability, you need to look at either DimDim or Skype.
Audience Size
This is another critical factor, and will frequently dictate whether or not one of these services will fit the bill. DimDim’s free service will limit the number of attendees to 10, while Livestream’s audience can reach 50 and Ustream is unlimited. Skype’s limitations depend on how you’re using it – it allows up to 9 video conference participants, 25 audio and 50 chat.
Cameras and Desktops
Each of these services (except for Ustream) supports simultaneous broadcasting of both a webcam and computer desktop in one form or another. In my opinion, Livestream does the best job at this by a wide margin while Skype’s is pretty poor. The quality of the webcam broadcasting is always limited by the bandwidth of your Internet connection, but they all offer decent to excellent quality as long as you have a high speed link. Skype’s video quality is hands-down the best, with Livestream and Ustream tied for a very close second.
Head to Head
Feature
DimDim (free)
Livestream
Ustream
Skype
Attendees
10
50
Unlimited
see below
Cameras
1
1
1
9
Record meetings
No
Yes
Yes
No
Public meetings
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Private meetings
No
No
No
Yes
Desktop sharing
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Online chat
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes (50)
Audio conferencing
Yes
No
No
Yes (25)
Change presenter
No
No
No
Yes
DimDim
DimDim has the most versatile of solution of these services, hands down. I’ve used it many times and have to admit that there have been significant reliability issues. I’ve never been able to conduct a meeting successfully with attendees from Australia – have no idea why not. Admittedly, I have only used DimDim once in that last nine months and it worked flawlessly so the service reliability may have improved recently. The bottom line is that when it works, it’s a great service! The downside is that their free option is limited to just 10 attendees.
Livestream
Livestream is a really cool service and something I’ve been using more and more. The screen shot to the right is the online studio that lets you import video fromYoutube, Media RSS Feeds or simply upload a video file. The broadcasting tools are top shelf and the video quality is excellent. During broadcasts, you can easily switch between different camera/display modes which is very handy. The downside to Livestream is that they embed commercial advertisements into your broadcasts.
Ustream
I’ve only used Ustream a couple of times, so can’t speak from a tremendous amount of experience. One interesting difference is that Ustream offers pay-as-you-go pricing for $1 per viewe-hour via its Watershed product.
Skype
Skype is a very different option from the previous two but may be suitable in certain cases. The desktop sharing capabilities are not great; the quality is slightly poor. However, the audio and video quality are excellent. Unlike the previous three web-based solutions, attendees must download a desktop application in order to use Skype. If you are looking to video conference 9 or fewer or audio conference 25 or fewer then Skype may be a good solution.
Paid Alternatives
While this article was meant to cover some free options, it’s probably worth listing a few options that are available on a paid basis for comparison purposes.
Feature
DimDim (Pro)
GoToMeeting
Webex
Monthly fee
$25
$49
$49
Attendees
50
15
25
Cameras
4
0
6
Record meetings
Yes
Yes
Yes
Public meetings
Yes
Yes
Yes
Private meetings
Yes
Yes
Yes
Desktop sharing
Yes
Yes
Yes
Online chat
Yes
Yes
Yes
Audio conferencing
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change presenter
Yes
Yes
Yes
A Word of Caution
And that word is “firewall.” Many corporate firewalls block Skype and video streaming sites like Livestream and Ustream. It’s important to understand who your audience will be and take this into account.
I was invited by Mike Bovenkamp to present at the ISA District 13 Leadership Council. Despite reduced funding from ISA for DLCs this year, Mike and the Sections in his district are to be commended for putting on a successful event with great topics. I enjoyed meeting everyone there and have great respect for these automation professionals.
My presentation and a transcript can be viewed and downloaded from Slideshare and here:
February 26, Manchester, NH – Inbound Marketing University awards the Inbound Marketing Certification to Jon DiPietro as part of its comprehensive Internet marketing training program (http://inboundmarketing.com).
This certification acknowledges DiPietro’s proficiency in inbound marketing principles and best practices. These principles include: blogging, search engine optimization, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.
DiPietro is the owner of Domesticating IT, a technology and marketing consulting company and blog, and author of the upcoming book, “Social Media for Engineers and Scientists: A left-brainer’s manual for an increasingly right-brained world.” He is also the owner and co-founder of Bridge-Soft, a provider of environmental data management software to water and wastewater utilities. DiPietro serves in several positions in the International Society of Automation, including President of the Boston Section, Director-elect of the Water/Wastewater Industries Division as well as participating in the Image & Membership and Strategic Planning departments. He also volunteers for the New England Water Works Association, founding and currently chairing the Social Networking Committee.
DiPietro joins an elite group of Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals. In total, 1,300 individuals have successfully passed the IMU program.
To complete the Inbound Marketing Certification, DiPietro completed 16 in-depth classes covering each facet of inbound marketing and passed a comprehensive certification exam. (View the full list of classes: http://inboundmarketing.com/university/classes)
The courses are taught by a knowledgeable faculty of professors, including New York Times’ best-selling author Chris Brogan, Google’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk, best-selling author and international speaker David Meerman Scott, and more. (View all professors: http://www.inboundmarketing.com/university/professors)
This certification is administered by HubSpot.
About InboundMarketing.com
InboundMarketing.com is an online community and certification program for marketers. The site’s content teaches a new style of marketing that emphasizes business uses of social media, content creation and search engine optimization for marketing. InboundMarketing.com is hosted and moderated by HubSpot, Inc. Register for InboundMarketing.com at http://inboundmarketing.com/user/register.
About HubSpot
HubSpot, Inc. provides Internet marketing software that helps businesses get found online, generate more inbound leads and convert a higher percentage of those leads into paying customers. HubSpot’s software platform includes tools that allow professional marketers and business owners to manage search engine optimization, blogging and social media, as well as landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics. Based in Cambridge, MA, HubSpot can be found at http://www.hubspot.com. HubSpot’s free marketing tools can be found at http://grader.com.
PowerPoint doesn't kill people, bad presentations kill people.
I used to think I was pretty good at creating presentations. I took a business communications class in graduate school and learned the same old rules; limit your fonts, three to seven bullet points, don’t read your slides, blah blah blah. I withstood others’ horrible presentations, invisibly smirking and silently mocking the 250 word novels slides with their horrifying color schemes and monotone, stammering presenter. I congratulated myself on not being “that guy.” But the truth is that I was just as guilty of Really Bad PowerPoint as anyone else.
Then I read Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and everything changed. My goal in this blog post is nothing short of paying forward that same change, and so I’m using myself as a case study to show what my presentations used to look like, what they look like now, and what I aspire them to be in the future.
But before we go down that road, in case you’re dubious about whether or not really bad PowerPoint is a problem, here is a presentation that Guy Kawasaki put together that was used as the forward to Presentation Zen.
The Presenter As Storytellter
The number one lesson I’ve learned is that “slides do not a presentation make.” Rather, they are simply a prop for the story you’re telling. The following slide show contains a series of before and after shots from the same presentation, which I completely overhauled after reading Presentation Zen. They illustrate the first major change; move the narrative off of the slides and into the oratory.
Once the presentation is transformed from a distraction to a storytelling prop, the burden of communication falls on the story itself. Based on the recommendation in Presentation Zen, I also read “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die.” This indispensable book presents six principles that make stories “sticky.” It’s invaluable to crafting messages of all sorts, not just creating presentations. Whether writing an email, composing a blog post, or crafting a memo outlining your thoughts on your organization’s next mission statement this book will help you do it more effectively and memorably. These six principles can be represented by the acronym “SUCCESs”:
Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories
The Presenter As Designer
Duh. That’s the one word that best describes how I felt while reading Presentation Zen. Reynolds eloquently and convincingly makes the case that design is important, poorly understood, and badly implemented (by and large). Those were the “duh” moments, as I realized that those are all true and that I had never realized it or paid much attention previously. But next came salvation, as basic design principles and techniques are presented that make it possible to learn how to improve design. Imagine that – you can actually learn how to design! Looking back, I can’t believe that design wasn’t part of the core curriculum for my engineering degree or any of the computer science tracks I’ve seen. And now that we live in the age of Web 2.0 where we are all content producers, it seems to me that it should be required in all college programs. But I digress.
Reynolds begins by stressing simplicity, balance, noise suppression, and space. These are all related and as I look back on my old presentations it seems as though I was deliberately violating as many of these guidelines as possible on every slide. Take the slide shown below, for example. This is not simple at all; there are too many ideas at once and even the screen shot, while appropriate was still complex and distracting. The layout is completely unbalanced and top-heavy. The slide template is noisy with lines and the “ISA” logo implanted in the corner of every slide. Finally, there is a small amount of empty space on the slide, but it is concentrated in one corner and looks more like something is missing. They eye darts around this slide searching for meaning with no help provided from the design.
My personal design renaissance has begun with what Reynolds calls “The Big Four:” contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. I’ll now provide examples from my own presentations on how I’ve implemented these principles.
This slide uses contrast in two different ways. The first is the color contrast between the dark gray background and the pure white text. The words jump off the page in way that bullets never can. The second use of contrast is the emphasis of the words “interesting” and “boring” by changing the font size. For some reason we seem to be afraid to make things BIG enough or bold enough.
One of the central themes of this particular presentation was the abundance of free tools available on the Internet in our Web 2.0 world. Therefore, I made use of design repetition by placing the “Free” price tag graphic element on eight consecutive slides in the exact same spot. I also made sure to emphasize this in my delivery by asking the audience to guess how much each solution cost. Of course, the answer was the same and the audio and visual repetition made sure that this point would be driven home. Plus, the audience had fun with it.
Alignment stresses the importance of making objects appear as if they were placed in a particular place deliberately, rather than simply thrown anywhere there was space available. This slide aligns the letters of an acronym quite deliberately to show their relationship. While this is a good example of alignment, I’m not sure it’s a great example of contrast, balance, or noise. I’m sure there is a better way to present this idea, so I will keep tinkering.
This title slide demonstrates the use of proximity. The graphic and title are strongly related and so they are grouped together in close proximity. My name, company, and position are also grouped together and separated from the title in order to distinguish and de-emphasize them. You can also see elements of contrast and alignment in play here as well.
The Presenter As Heretic
Alas, as much as I believe all of this makes sense, it remains heresy to create a PowerPoint presentation that does not utilize the prescribed template or can’t be used as a handout. If you look at most of my presentations now, they are completely useless without the presenter and that’s exactly as it should be. Nonetheless, many conferences are still beholden to the same formula of “Email me your presentation three days in advance so that we can print them out.” Adopting this approach means that you need to create your own handouts that contain the substance of your presentation and not just the props. This all takes more work, but it’s worth it for you and your audience. My recommendation is to write the document in Word, then upload it to Scribd (or Posterous or other similar service) so that you can embed it in web pages and blog posts and also increase your online visibility. Leveraging Social Media & Internet Technology (Handout)
Looking Ahead
While my presentations are a night and day difference from what they used to be, the one thing for certain is that I still have a long way to go. I’m continuing to hone my public speaking skills (which I still think are not very good) and currently enjoying “Confessions of a Public Speaker” by Scott Berkun. I’m simultaneously thumbing through Nacy Duarte’s “Slide:ology,” which is not merely informative; it is incredibly beautiful, mesmerizing, and inspirational. I now look upon each public speaking engagement with excitement and optimism of not merely meeting the challenge, but improving each and every time. I’m looking for an end result that comes close to something like this…
Photo credits:
“death-by-presentation” from HikingArtist.com on Flickr (Creative Commons)
DimDim has the most versatile of solution of these services, hands down. I’ve used it many times and have to admit that there have been significant reliability issues. I’ve never been able to conduct a meeting successfully with attendees from Australia – have no idea why not. Admittedly, I have only used DimDim once in that last nine months and it worked flawlessly so the service reliability may have improved recently. The bottom line is that when it works, it’s a great service! The downside is that their free option is limited to just 10 attendees.
Livestream is a really cool service and something I’ve been using more and more. The screen shot to the right is the online studio that lets you import video fromYoutube, Media RSS Feeds or simply upload a video file. The broadcasting tools are top shelf and the video quality is excellent. During broadcasts, you can easily switch between different camera/display modes which is very handy. The downside to Livestream is that they embed commercial advertisements into your broadcasts.
I’ve only used Ustream a couple of times, so can’t speak from a tremendous amount of experience. One interesting difference is that Ustream offers pay-as-you-go pricing for $1 per viewe-hour via its 
Skype is a very different option from the previous two but may be suitable in certain cases. The desktop sharing capabilities are not great; the quality is slightly poor. However, the audio and video quality are excellent. Unlike the previous three web-based solutions, attendees must download a desktop application in order to use Skype. If you are looking to video conference 9 or fewer or audio conference 25 or fewer then Skype may be a good solution.
And that word is “firewall.” Many corporate firewalls block Skype and video streaming sites like Livestream and Ustream. It’s important to understand who your audience will be and take this into account.
