Free Online Conference & Training Howto
V1.0, 2005-10-01
Maintainer: Frank Bergmann
This a writeup of my personal experiences that I made while trying
to setup an online conference and training services for our potential
customers.
Disclaimer
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
The Objective: Teaching Customers
Our "Online Conferencing & Training" project began
after we have seen that some potential customers had difficulties
to understand certain features of our ]project-open[
project management system simply by looking at our online application.
So we decided to setup online training for them with the following
objective:
- Teach groups of 5-20 people.
This is in order to avoid 1:1 training as we used to do it before.
- Low costs per training.
We are an open-source based project with low revenues. So we can
affort a maximum of €10 per training session.
- Audio and Application Sharing.
We somehow need to get the speaker's voice to the participants,
plus allow somehow that all participants share our application.
- Question Mode.
We somehow need to allow participants to ask questions and interact.
- Knowledge Management.
We somehow want to allow the speaker to take advantage of previous
training sessions.
We found that we couldn't satisfy all of these objectives. So let's
look at the available options.
Online Conference & Training Options
After googling around and asking a few friends, we found several
options to get to our objectives:
- ScreenCam.
This is not very interactive, but very scalable.
- Integrated Audio + Application Sharing.
There are several companies out there (2005-10-01) that offer
integrated audio + application sharing options. Unfortunately,
most of them are quite expensive.
- Audio Conferencing.
There are quite some companies out there that offer audio call-in
conferences.
- Messengers, Chat and Jabber.
These applications allows for online meetings of large groups
of people, but usually there is no audio + application sharing
integrated.
- Desktop Sharing.
VNC and other applications allow to share a desktop between several
participants.
From these options we found that none really satisfied all of our
objectives, with the Audio + Application Sharing offers being far
too expensive. Here are the detailed evaluation results:
ScreenCams
Here is what we found out about ScreenCams. We are probably going
to use CamStudio in the close future to produce some Flash movies
about our application.
- Lotus ScreenCam:
The original. However, Lotus/IBM stopped maintaining the product.
- DemoForge
ScreenCam:
Great ScreenCam for about $300, but free for open-source projects.
The software includes a proprietary format and viewer that compresses
really well and creates tiny ScreenCam archieves. However your
customers need to download a viewer plug-in. DemoForge also can
create AVI and Flash movies, but then it looses its advantage.
No audio track.
- CamStudio by RenderSoft:
These guys have produced a great free ScreenCam. However, it seems
that they got bought by Macromedia (now Adobe), and their software
is not available anymore from their web site. However,
I was able to find the "CamStudio20.exe" binary on Google.
Maybe you are as lucky as we were... :-)
- Camtasia
Studio:
Representing one of the many commercial ScreenCam packages. $35
for a single-use license. OK but nothing special.
- xvidcap
on SourceForge:
This is for X-Windows users only: "xvidcap is a screen capture
enabling you to capture videos off your X-Window desktop for illustration
or documentation purposes. It is intended to be a standards-based
alternative to tools like Lotus ScreenCam."
I'm sure that there are a lot of other ScreeCams available. Please
let us know and we might include a link in this list.
Integrated Audio + Application Sharing
These are the "mercedes" type of applications integrating
everything for you. However, they were all too expensive for us.
This would be a really cool next open-source project...
- WebEx:
The one that pops up first in your mind, but far too expensive.
- Microsoft
Office Live Meeting:
A bit embarrasing to say, but the US$ 19.99/month "personal"
option with up to 5 participants was the best option that we found
in this class of applications. However, these 5 participants really
are not sufficient for us, so we skipped this. The options with
>5 participants is far too expensive with $0.35 per participant.
- BigFoot Conferencing:
They offer an audio + application sharing option for $0.15/minute/caller,
so this was to expensive. Also, I'm very angry about these guys.
I registered for their "free trial" option, only to
see that their application was buggy (I helped them to straighten
out two major issues) and that they charged me 6 times $25 to
my credit card account, even though I had canceled the subscription
and asked them explicitely to delete my credit card number.
- Convoq:
Would have done the job, but again too expensive.
Audio Conferencing
To put it shortly, we found FreeConference, it's great and it's
free. No need to list any other audio conferencing options here
unless they are also free...
- FreeConference
"Free web-scheduled standard":
They offer free call-in conference hubs in the US. I'm not 100%
sure how their business model works, but I guess they get some
money from the telephone companies that carry the call. Or maybe
they cross-finance it with their "Web-scheduled premium 800"
service or their $10/call recording service.
- Skype:
Skype allows up to 4 people to "gather online", completely
for free.
Messengers, Chat and Jabber
These options allow many people to gather online, and in particular
they usually allow to transmit or "push" URLs, allowing
some kind of remote control.
- Jabber:
The mother of all messengers...
- ]project-open[
Chat:
This is modified version of the OpenACS
Chat module. We have added extensions to "push" URLs
and to save phrases for future conversations, allowing for effective
knowledge management.
This module is tightly integrated with OpenACS
and ]project-open[,
sharing logins and allowing you to include the conversations in
the CRM system. However, it doesn't make sense if you're using
a different application...
Desktop Sharing
Finally, there are several options to share your desktop with others:
- VNC:
Is a free desktop sharing application that allows others to "log
on to your screen". However, you need a hole in the firewall
and we haven't tested this with more then one user. It still is
an interesting option for us when we are doing remote trainings
at a customer because we can remote-control their presentation
computer. Together with a hands-free telephone this gives you
80% of an online training for 0% of the overall costs (travelling
costs, overhead time, ...)
- Microsoft
Terminal Server:
Unsuitable, because you get a different session instead of "remote-controlling
the mouse".
Conclusion
We now use a combination of the above options:
- VNC + Telephone for customer's remote training and remote presentations
- FreeConference + ]project-open[
chat for free online trainings
- We may use WebEx or one of the expensive services for paid online
trainings.
- CamStudio to produce Flash movies
Hope this is useful. Please let
us know if you hear about new options.
Also, please tell your friends about ]project-open[
if they are looking for an open-source based project management
system with financial controlling functionality :-)
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