Shoestring TeleConferencing
By Mike Davidge
Monday, February 23, 2004
If you are one of the tens of thousands of Australian businesses with staff or customers scattered around Australia or even the world you have a communication cost. Now in the last 12 months there seem to have arrived some really efficient ways to slash that cost and increase the communication effectiveness. We have all read of the exciting new "multi-media" world but last time we looked it was expensive, or unreliable and needed a staff of experts to make it happen. 
However things have changed and quite quickly. Assuming the far flung customer or staff member has a PC (almost anything will do under 5 years old) and internet access they have just about all they need to be connected. There is a startup cost, ah you say a catch, not really, we are talking about minimum a microphone at $15 Really for a staff meeting or discussion all you need is the headset to talk and listen. So now can you talk and listen to say 8 people scattered around the country. Simply you sign up with a "conferencing host" and set a time for the meeting and everyone logs in.
One person is in charge of the meeting, the manager. Everyone sees the same screen. Everyone can hear what is said, the manager selects the speaker from a list on the screen. (speakers click to be listed to speak) The manager can go through a Powerpoint based agenda talking about the issues, and take comments and questions from the group. This is a sample screen with some discussion issues. At the bottom left is a list of those participating and shows those waiting to speak. 
Pretty simple really and adds the extra advantage of being able to view items as well as discuss. Cost ? well compared to say a one hour STD call to the eight which would average about $9 each or $72 it's an absolute bargain. The cheapest service we found would cost just $40 a month no matter where in the world the people were or how many days it was used. There wer other services around the dsame price and some more expensive with more features- video and document storage for istance. But if all you need to start is the ability to set up a meeting weekly or fortnightly with a spread out group this looks like a really affordable solution.
Now we see big benefits in using this for a weekly meeting for far flung teams to say nothing of the cost savings involved. This is not one of our services